“So, you’re telling me Niklas is in a mental hospital, and this is the first time anyone’s ever told me this?” Marianne asked Ryan right after the last class of the day.
“‘Fraid so,” Ryan answered as nonchalantly as he could.
Marianne threw her backpack onto the ground. “Damn it, Ryan! How long have you known about this?!”
“Erhm… about… about a week or so. I swear it hasn’t been that long though.”
That didn’t make Marianne feel any better. “Well, shit! I wish you would’ve told me this sooner!”
Well, Ryan would’ve, but he didn’t know how to break the news to Marianne.
“If you ever visit him again, give him this,” Marianne said, giving Ryan a piece of paper.
Ryan quickly shoved the piece of paper into his pocket and looked at Bridget, who had been trying not to stare at him the whole time. “You got anything to say too?”
Bridget looked down at her lap and said quietly, “Damn… I’m sorry about what happened to your friend.”
The pair was completely silent during the rest of the ride. When Ryan returned home after dropping Bridget off at her house, he hastily shoved the piece of paper Marianne gave to him to Greg. “This is for Niklas.” Then he bumped into Anima.
“What the fuck, asshole?!” Anima exclaimed angrily, “Watch where you’re going!”
Ryan stared at Anima for a good while. She didn’t look too hot; her eyebrows were deeply furrowed into her forehead, and her eyes were baggy and darker than usual. “What the fuck happened to you?” he asked.
Anima sighed deeply and internally as she thought back all the way to her sixth-period class- Ms. Henderson’s Pre-Algebra class. Anima was sitting in the back with Uh-Oh and Jeremy near the teacher’s desk doing her pre-bell assignment.
“Psst,” Uh-Oh whispered to Anima and Jeremy, “Is that an eight or a zero on Number two?”
Anima squinted at the board, but all the problems were blurry as fuck.
“Shit if I know,” Anima whispered back.
Uh-Oh slid into his chair and scowled. “Motherfucker,” he mumbled to himself.
As if the motherfucker word wasn’t said enough in the classroom, Ms. Henderson’s phone started going off. “Oh, you sweet motherfucker,” Ms. Henderson groaned to herself.
Anima, Uh-Oh, and Jeremy inched out of their seats just a bit to eavesdrop some more.
“Sorry our blind date didn’t go as well as it did last night. Would you like to… what, no!”
“Ms. Henderson, what blind date was you talking about?” Jeremy asked.
That got the whole class’s attention; Ms. Henderson’s dark green eyes grew big, and her pale white face turned all sorts of red.
“You said something about a blind date,” Jeremy replied.
Ms. Henderson swiftly jumped out of her chair and announced as briskly as she could, “Everyone, pass your pre-bells up.”
As pre-bells were being passed up, more and more students became interested in Ms. Henderson’s blind date.
“Ms. Henderson, what was your blind date like?” Eli Cross asked.
“Is he cute? Is he rich?” Melanie Wade asked, “Come on, Ms. Henderson! Give us at least one hint!”
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Ms. Henderson relented, “I’ll grade your pre-bells, and if the class average is seventy percent or above, I’ll give you one little hint. Deal?”
The class cheered, forgetting about the fact that Ms. Henderson was a harsh grader. But that didn’t seem to matter because surprisingly, the class average was eighty-three percent.
“Shit,” Ms. Henderson whispered to herself. Writing the eighty-three percent on the board and hearing the class whoop even louder with joy, she took a deep breath and said, “Remember, this is the only hint you’ll get.” She took an ever bigger breath and announced, “It was a girl.”
At first, the whole class was silent. Then the whole room, as tiny and cramp as it was, started buzzing with a whole lot of gossip- most of which was quite negative, though quite subtle.
“Yo, is this normal?” Uh-Oh whispered to Jeremy.
“Shit if I know,” Jeremy whispered back.
Watching all her classmates whisper to each other about Ms. Henderson, Anima didn’t see why nobody would just admit the truth. “Ms. Henderson, are you gay?” she bluntly asked the teacher.
The entire class halted into a silent screech. Anima looked up at Ms. Henderson’s face, which was completely red and steamy. And then the only noise that came up was Uh-Oh snickering his black ass off. Next thing they knew, they were in ISS- in-school suspension.
“So what the hell you two in for?” Leandra Miller asked. She, Sabina Johannsson, and Sabina’s best friend Brianna Maxwell were also in ISS.
Anima looked at Leandra dead in the eye and answered, “Me and Uh-Oh asked Ms. Henderson if she was gay.”
“…What?” Anima asked after a minute of shock and awe.
“You realize what city we live in, right?” Leandra said to the girl.
Anima shrugged. “Yeah, Portland. Why?”
“Uh, Portland’s the gay capital of the fucking United States,” Sabina piped up.
“Yeah, bitch. You guys can’t just ask those types of questions right out in the open like that,” Leandra added, “Are you trying to get fucking expelled or what?”
“Bitch, I wasn’t the one asking questions!” Uh-Oh insisted.
“Yeah, well you were laughing your ass off when I asked the fucking question!” Anima told him off.
Brianna sat there silently until she eventually asked, “So, is she gay?”
Sabina practically spat out her drink that she never had in the first place. “BITCH!”
Seeing Uh-Oh and Sabina cackle with laughter, Leandra’s face in her hands, and Brianna biting her lips, Anima blushed. “Alright, well what the fuck are you guys in for?!”
“Dress code violation,” Brianna answered.
“Dress code violation,” Leandra answered.
“I tried beating the shit out of Christian Seger during P.E. this morning,” Sabina answered.
“Damn, what the fuck did he do to you?” Brianna asked.
“Fucker tried to ask me to touch his dick,” Sabina answered.
Anima blushed even harder and started randomly doodling because she didn’t want to hear SHIT about middle-school students touching ding-dongs or any of that other shit. Thank God for the pencil scratches on her piece of notebook paper on top of the hard gray desk. So, what was up with her life? Well, Niklas was still in the psychiatric hospital, and Tamie has been hallucinating a lot more lately. And the more she said anything about Ryan, the worse.
Anima hated to admit it, but she kind of missed Niklas. Speaking of Niklas, that drawing she drew looked eerily similar to him. Hey, maybe she could pawn this off to him as a gift of some sort.
Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.
“Here,” Anima said, handing Ryan the drawing, “This is for Nikki.”
Ryan hastily snatched the paper out of Anima’s hands and stalked to Greg’s room. “I got some fan-mail for Nikki,” he said, giving the old man a bunch of letters and Anima’s drawing of Niklas.
Greg grabbed the pieces of paper and said, “Thank you.”
ManictheMod 
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