The principal’s office shrank around , walls closing in as my mother’s voice ricocheted off every surface, a relentless tide of fury and concern. “How the fuck could this happen! Where the fuck was the school nurse! Why the fuck wasn’t I notified my son fucking passed out in the first place?” Her words were bullets, each aid squarely at the principal who sat behind her desk, mouth tight, eyes flickering to , then away.
I slumped lower in my seat, trying to beco invisible. The sterile scent of antiseptic from the nurse’s office still clung to my clothes, a haunting reminder of the day’s surreal events. Eliot Turner’s mother, Bethan Turner, stood adjacent to us, her posture rigid with shock, her face a ghostly pale mask that distorted occasionally with grimaces of horror. Her daughter’s actions, a violent storm cloud over our heads, seed to have shattered her world as much as they’d annoyed .
‘This is so awkward. I can’t believe I had to et Eliot’s mom like this. I wonder if she’s yandere enough to be my girlfriend?’
She crossed a few check marks. Hold down, check. Threaten , check. She kinda implied she loved , didn’t she? Huge check! The only thing that would ruin it now would be if she was the type to just kill on a di. That’s my hard line for yandere.’ I nod to myself, affirming my very normal, very human thoughts.
“Mrs. Parker, please believe when I say we are taking this very seriously,” the principal began, but my mother was a tempest not easily cald.
As they spoke, Eliot’s mother turned towards us, her voice trembling like the tremolo of a violin. “Emily, I—I can’t express how sorry I am for what Eliot... for what she tried to do to Jason.” She clasped her hands together, knuckles whitening. “I found a note in her room. She... she was planning to—to hurt him. To—to murder-suicide the first vulnerable boy she could find today after raping them.”
My head snapped up at that, the weight of her words hitting like a physical blow.
“What the fuck?” I muttered under my breath. My mother briefly made eye contact but looked back at them. She hates it when I swear, but I think this much should be fine.
‘Vulnerable? Was that how Eliot saw ? A target for her twisted farewell to the world? She was going to murder ? Well, then, she is certainly not girlfriend material.’
I felt a cold sweat break along my hairline, an uncomfortable prickle dancing across my skin. I wanted to say sothing, anything to break the tension, inject so absurd humor to make sense of the nonsensical, but my throat closed up, leaving mute.
Silence swallowed the room for a mont, thick and suffocating before my mother responded. Her anger had shifted, now edged with sothing brittle. Fear, maybe, or disbelief. “Thank God that delinquent girl found you when she did.” she whispered, her gaze finally resting on with an intensity that made squirm.
Eliot Turner’s mother nodded, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I just wish I had seen the signs earlier.”
The grip on my arm was ironclad, and before I knew it, I was being hauled out of the stifling atmosphere of the principal’s office. My mother’s fingers dug into my flesh through the thin fabric of my shirt, her other hand clutching a set of jingling car keys. The corridor outside seed to stretch endlessly, our footsteps echoing sharply against the linoleum, punctuated by the muttered expletives slipping from Mother’s lips.
“Damn irresponsible... How could they not... Unbelievable...”
I could only stumble alongside her, the shock still buzzing in my ears, drowning out the particularities of her rant. Students peered curiously from classroom doorways, but none dared to attract the attention of Officer Parker in full maternal fury mode.
‘It’s nice to not be the focus of her ire for once.’ I smiled.
We burst through the double doors, the chill air nipping at my flushed cheeks as we approached the imposing silhouette of the squad car. She practically shoved into the passenger seat, the door slamming with an ominous finality. The engine roared to life under her forceful ignition, and we were speeding away from the school, the incident, and Eliot Turner’s dark plans.
‘I didn’t even get to go to class on my first day. So embarrassing.’
Once the initial adrenaline tapered off, Mother’s rigid posture slumped ever so slightly, her hands still vice-like on the steering wheel. Her head turned toward , eyes narrowing, searching for sothing—answers, perhaps.
“Jason, why were you even in the nurse’s office?” Her voice, though quieter now, held an edge sharpened by concern and frustration.
I shrugged an automatic response, my mind grappling with the fragnted mories of the day. “I was talking to Justin,” I started, the image of my weird friend flickering hazily in my thoughts. “That’s the last thing I rember. Then, I woke up with the Eliot locking the door and hovering over .” There was a strange gap, a blank space where ti should have been, and it left feeling unmoored.
‘oh woah, this is hype. It’s like I’m in a thriller movie.’
The silence in the car was like a thick fog, broken only by the occasional hiss of tires on wet asphalt. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mom’s jaw clench and unclench as if she were grinding down her frustration into sothing manageable.
“Justin?” Her voice cut through the quiet, laced with confusion. Her eyes processing my answer. “You an your friend Justine, the weird lesbian?”
My mind tripped over her words, trying to align them with my own recollection. “No, Mom,” I said, feeling the edges of my patience fray. “I’m talking about Justin. The tall guy who plays on the golf team? Not soone nad Justine.”
Mother’s stare flickered at with sothing between anger and brutal confusion. She was silent for a mont as if digesting this piece of information that didn’t fit into the puzzle she was trying to solve.
“Justin,” she muttered under her breath, almost to herself, before her gaze snapped back to . The lines on her forehead deepened, and her lips pressed into a thin line. “We’re going to the hospital. You’re getting your head looked at.”
Her tone brooked no argunt, but it wasn’t just the authority in her voice that made sink deeper into my seat, it was the undercurrent of annoyance, a subtle tell that she didn’t fully believe . Or maybe she did, and that scared her even more. Whatever the case, I stared out the window at the passing scenery, feeling like a specin under a microscope, poked and prodded for symptoms of so unknown condition.
I check my phone, but the case is differnt than the one i rember. My wallpaper is the sa though. A Corgi in pants.
‘Heh. Gets every ti.’
Weirdly I can’t figure out the password but it’s fine maybe Eliot did sothing to it when I was sleeping. I had nothing on their other than my discord chats with my friends.
‘Jesus Christ, if she leaks the chats with the boys, I am fucked.’ I briefly sweat, but then rember my mom told she’s gonna be locked up for a long while.
‘Thank god she can’t leak the chats from jail.’ I smile, knowing my darkest secrets are kept.
***
The chlorine like sll was starting to make my head swim, or maybe that was just the leftover dizziness from before. I shifted in check up room chair, attempting to find a comfortable position to no avail. Beside , Mother sat rigid as a statue, her eyes occasionally flitting to the clock, then back to , as if she could will the hands to move faster with her gaze alone.
“Jason Parker?” The voice cut through the muffled hospital room ambiance like a scalpel.
I looked up, following the sound to the woman in a white coat who held a clipboard like a shield. Her eyes were fixed on the film displayed on the lightbox behind her, lines of concern etched across her brow.
‘I don’t know what mom’s deal is. I am clearly operating at 100%. If there was sothing wrong with , I would have noticed by now. I am incredibly self-perceptive.’ I confidently think to myself.
“Based on the initial scans,” she began, tapping the X-ray with a manicured nail, “there’s definitely sothing... irregular in the pattern here.” She pointed towards a shadowy area in the image of my skull.
“Sothing funky, you an,” I muttered, trying to inject a bit of humor into the situation, but it fell flat, absorbed by the thick tension hanging in the air. My mother glared at . Her eyes were far sharper than the knife Eliot held to my throat earlier.
‘I wonder if Eliot would have let cum before killing . I think I would have had I, had even like ten more seconds. But thankfully, despite my blue balls, Erica ca to my rescue.’
I think about my busty blonde savior. ‘I definitely heard a rumor Erica sells fentanyl, so I wonder why she helped .’ I get lost in my thoughts as a way to escape the situation. ‘I wonder if fentanyl has a taste, and if so, what drug tastes the worst?’
Mother leaned forward, her posture telegraphing her demand for more details without her saying a word.
“It appears there’s been so trauma, likely from your fall. It would account for the confusion you’re experiencing and the... discrepancies in your mory.” The doctor looked at like I was an idiot.
“Discrepancies?” Mother echoed sharply, a crack appearing in her usually unflappable deanor. For a mont, I saw sothing like fear flash in her eyes as they t mine. She was scared for . It was unsettling to see the angry facade of my mother waver, even slightly.
“Is it serious?” Mother asked her voice tight with barely concealed anxiety.
“Too early to tell,” the doctor said, maintaining the professional detachnt that I suddenly found irritating. “We’ll need to run more tests.”
“Great,” I sighed, slumping back into my seat. More ti to sit around in this purgatory of uncertainty. They already took a bunch of blood for the STD tests earlier.
“Until then,” Mother said, straightening up and turning to with a sigh. “Button up your shirt, Jason. You’re not at ho.”
I looked down at myself, only now noticing a few buttons had co undone, exposing part of my chest. When I glanced back up, I caught the tail end of the doctor’s lingering gaze as she quickly averted her eyes, her cheeks tinged with a blush.
“Uhh, sure,” I mumbled, fumbling with the buttons. My fingers felt clumsy, my movents sluggish, as if through a haze. I managed to close up my shirt, hiding away the skin that seed to have drawn unwanted attention.
‘Why is Mom acting like I’m so girl showing off her cannons right now?’
“Let’s hope it’s just a temporary glitch in your system,” Mother murmured, her hand briefly brushing mine in a rare gesture of comfort before she withdrew it, folding her arms across her chest once more.
“Glitch,” I echoed, though it felt like more than that. Sothing deep inside whispered that this was just the beginning of a much larger unraveling.
‘Obviously, cocaine would taste the best, right? So if I was a betting man, which I sure as fuck am, I’m betting fentanyl tastes the worst.’ My adhd pulled back to the genuinely important thoughts that needed to be had as Mother led back ho.
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