I would've never expected Dallon Weekes to be so intractable, so stubborn and foolish, so full of these qualities that will throw him to the wolves of high school until he wishes he had applied concealer, but he didn't, and he's in for trouble, a trouble that I can't resolve easily.

It'll take time, and lots of it. It'll take teary conversations with each other when he's finally aware that he might not be able to withstand this tumult. It'll take all of the doubts I once experienced, flooding back like the incoherent horrors of deja vu. It'll take injuries mutilating the mirror, with the crimson of blood and the violet of a bruise, with the acceptance that this affliction has never been okay.

Now, Dallon is strong. There's no denying that. He knows the rules, the ropes, the minds of bullies, and he knows how to toy with them to his advantage. He's better off than I ever was in middle school, but no one is safe.

I'm not saying I won't console him if he is ever attacked by the bullies, but he should've been smart enough to realize that leaving his bruise out in the open isn't healthy for both protecting himself and protecting my anxiety from sweating through its boundaries, because Dallon is my best friend, and it's my duty to worry as much as I can about him while guarding him from every possible threat, but he's refusing help, and my best friend senses are screaming at me to do something. I'll be beholden to tell them that I can't, that I'm helpless and inane, that despite my knowledge of bullies, I have no idea how to cure anything related to them.

When I was in middle school, life was hell, and I was perpetually horrified by every shift in the air, every tapping of feet on tile, every tick of the clock. So I began to count so that I would know what is truly the clock and what isn't, what is the bullies emerging from the other end of the corridor and what isn't, what is my heart racing in my chest and what is simply the paranoia that never relents.

Fear has struck a blade over my wit until it's sharp and effective, until it manages to defend my weak brain from any warning against me and any bully that so much as breathes my way, and it may be unnecessary, like a corporal verbiage, but I depended on it at the time. Now it's just excess, but it's excess born from well placed caution, though it seems with the state of things that it's not so excess anymore.

I will rely on it to shelter Dallon, even if he declines my help. I've taken it upon myself to view life in a lens of assisting my friends, primarily one who has been excluded from our adventures and is now worried while asking about them.

"What's on your face?" Ryan asks obliquely, then squinting to decode the answer before his sleuthing is discredited by the real response. "Is that a bruise? What happened to you yesterday? A street fight? Why would Brendon allow you to get involved with that?"

I would never allow Dallon to get involved with a street fight, and he should never allow himself to get involved with a street fight due to common sense, but Dallon isn't heeding my advice anyway and is too out of his right mind to tend to his own welfare, so I suppose any attempt to save him is null and void.

Dallon limbs bean each other uncomfortably, and he chucks a glance at me to evoke sympathy, a sympathy that I won't willingly expel because of his ignorance to this situation with the concealer or lack thereof. "Yeah, it's a bruise. What does it matter?"

Dallon is cognizant that I'm frustrated with him, because chances are he's never before been slandered by people that should be his friend, and he doesn't understand how this school operates, how to survive in it. He won't cover his bruise, and he won't help himself, so somehow I'm the bad guy for suggesting that his health is more important than a metaphor? A bruise doesn't have a viable backstory. Dallon does, and pain could be a part of it.

"Well it's not like you acquire a bruise from Brendon tutoring you in English, now is it?"

"No, not from tutoring, but the real anecdote isn't important to anyone." Dallon's teeth twitch against each other over and over, contemplating how to avoid discussing this, discussing something that could've been effortlessly mended with Kara's concealer, but he declined its presence on his skin, and now he's acting as though it's Ryan's fault for pointing it out.

"It's important to me," Ryan disagrees. "You could've gotten in a fight, for all I know."

I desire to inform Ryan that Dallon did, in fact, get into a fight — a one sided fight, but a fight nonetheless — and just won't share the primary events, but that would ruin my quiet veneer of chewing sluggishly a baked potato and not vocalizing a single word, so I lean back (metaphorically, of course) and observe as the drama swishes around me.

"Not a fight that I started."

Not a fight at all, really, because Dallon was too stunned to fight back, to defend himself, and he's even scared right now. All that occurred was Spencer threatening him with brows so gnarled that it's a surprise they're still functional, with lips so pinched that they lapsed into white, with every warning that shouldn't affect Dallon but does, because to the outside world they're petty insults that don't mean a thing, but to him he knows deep down that maybe they're correct about who he is and what he's been through and apparently what scarlet winters on his floor every night, and maybe they're the only ones who truly understand him.

"You don't seem like the fighting type, or in your case, the type to be caught in a fight." Ryan's still whirring like that bruise on Dallon's cheek isn't as prominent as it is, like no matter if Dallon is or isn't the fighting type he didn't wind up in that situation, like he suddenly knows every detail about yesterday's trauma and can pick it apart, but I surmise he might as well know more than Dallon himself, because my friend is so unresponsive that it's as if he's been coronated by amnesia and spat back out to us in time for lunch.

A sigh rows out of Dallon's lungs, a jaded lullaby. "Yet it happened."

My fork clatters against the plate in a signal that I'm speaking up for myself. "You know, Dallon, if you protested so thoroughly about trashing Kara's concealer at home, then why are you being so evasive? I thought you were proud of that bruise. Where is your pride now?"

Dallon should've recognized that I'm upset with him, but he's nevertheless astonished at my unbridled animosity. I will forever be his friend, but he needs to fathom that a friend's job is to aid the other. I'm unapologetically ruthless about his security.

Battling through ambivalent emotions towards me, partially distressed and partially nervous, he counters, "I didn't say I would advertise the event, and I'm not even advertising the bruise, either. It's just there as a reminder of what ghastly deeds Spencer oppressed me with, and—"

Speaking of Spencer, that's who's approaching us with a piggish swagger in his step and a business card in his fingers, which he promptly tosses onto the table and scoots away, the same gait his mentor.

I slant towards the card to read it, each torturous word intended to calumniate anyone who seeks help, anyone who's taking care of themselves, anyone who is attentive to the stigma forced upon mental illnesses, anyone who's breaking down through it all, and the entire note is laden with hatred for Dallon.

Ms. Lindsey Ballato, PhD

Trauma, depression, and anxiety

Las Vegas Mental Health Associates

Without a second glance at the card, I smite it against the table and rise from my seat to accost the treacherous Spencer Smith who decided it was a clever joke to trivialize mental illnesses and those who are racked by them. I'm not certain whether or not that applies to the receiver of the note, but I'll strike Spencer in honor of the world, if not in honor of Dallon.

"Do you think this is funny?" I shriek, hastening my feet towards Spencer, and though Ryan's face fevers with apprehensions, he doesn't stop me from obtaining justice for my companion.

Halting, Spencer smirks, swelling from ear to ear like a hyena. "I thought it was pretty great as a prank, but I figured Dallon also kind of needed it."

"What you know of sickness is from lies," I snarl, pushing Spencer, and he stumbles back from a lack of faith in my strength.

Mr. Way, now on lunch duty, corners me, snatches me away from that tyrannical bully, and palms me a pass to the principal's office. "This kind of violence is not tolerated at this school," he declares, features carved in stone. "I'm disappointed in you."

I look back at Dallon, at Ryan, at a sneering Spencer, and I acknowledge what has become of me. "I am, too."

~~~~~

A/N: this is killing me why the fuck are they so bitter to each other I'm just ???

while I'm writing this, it's the day of the mishapocalypse pray for me

Quonnie: Have you experienced the mishapocalypse?

Aonnie: it's my second time

~Dakotalypse