*This chapter contains multimedia relevant to the plot*

Carter drove with Mike to school on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

The morning sped by at usual pace and he took his regular seat at lunch. Mel sat to his side, with Jenna and Joey in front of them. Chaz Wheeler was one seat to Carter's left, with Sienna Mathers glued to his side in her full cheer uniform. The empty chair in between was empty. And Carter had yet to hear from Seth.

"Anyone seen Myers and Gonzalez?" Joey asked, with his mouth full.

To his side, Jenna rolled her eyes impatiently. "Who cares. Swallow before you talk," she chided dryly.

She wasn't in her uniform, but she wore a green and white Miami Hurricanes varsity jacket over her grey top, with #63 stamped to the left breast—Joey's number.

Carter shrugged wordlessly. In truth, he hadn't even noticed Scott and Bobby, their senior teammates, were missing. Mel looked at him, as though she was contemplating saying something, but then she stayed quiet. No one asked about Seth, because his absence was a recurrent affair.

Without explaining himself, Carter finished his lunch in a hurry and got up with his tray. His friends looked up at him as he hiked his bags over his shoulder, but asked no questions as he left the cafeteria.

It wouldn't be long until the warning bell sounded, so he made his way to his Calc class, expecting to find Johnny there. When he walked in, he saw Mr Thomas on his desk and Johnny's working partner in his seat, with a black hood pulled over his green hair. But no Johnny. A little downcast, Carter walked to his seat at the back and waited for class to start.

When it finally did, Johnny still hadn't arrived. 

Johnny had never missed a day of school. 

When the bell announced the end of the period, Carter sprung to his feet, sweeping his stuff into his bag haphazardly so he could rush to Johnny's green-haired friend.

"Hey," he said touching the boy's arm. The kid turned around to give Carter a strange look, the space between his eyebrows furrowing with confusion as one of his hands twiddled with the strings from his hoodie. "It's Forrest, right?"

The boy nodded.

"Do you know where Johnny is?" Carter asked. "Did he tell you something about skipping today?"

Forrest shook his head timidly. "We don't talk much," he murmured.

Carter forced a half-hearted smile. "Yeah, okay, thanks."

The kid seemed positively anxious to get away from him, after Carter said that, like he couldn't cope with standing in a conversation with Carter Parrish for more than a few seconds. Or maybe he didn't like conversations in general.

"Hey," a female voice called next to him. Carter turned to face Mel's warm smile. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah."

She gestured towards the exit. "Walk together to practice?"

And they did. Carter entered the locker room, meeting Seth for the first time since Saturday night. Joey stood next to him, with a grin on his face as he powered through some story. 

Seth's eyes landed on Carter as he dropped his stuff on the bench beside him. Joey went on with his emphatic narrative, without picking up on the tension between his friends as Carter finished changing.

Coach's hollering and his teammates' ragged breaths played only in the back of Carter's head throughout practice, as he switched off his brain and set his body on auto-pilot. Still, he was uncomfortably aware of Seth's presence at all times. It was the only thing he couldn't tune out. And it bothered him.

Seth didn't try to approach him after practice though, and Carter skipped the shower altogether.

He charged into the library, only to find it empty, except for a pair of underclassmen who raised their heads to look at him when he turned the corner. 

Confused, Carter turned on his heels and walked toward Mrs Lewis's desk.

He cleared his throat to get the old woman to look up. She lifted her head, appearing a bit startled.

"Oh, hi, dear," she said, smiling in kind recognition as she pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose. "May I help you?"

"Uhm, maybe," Carter said, adjusting the strap of his gym bag on his shoulder. "Have you seen Johnny today? He's not in his usual table."

"I haven't seen him today, since lunch."

"Right." Carter nodded. "So, he did come to school."

"Yes."

Carter smiled, somewhat disheartened. "Thank you," he said, before heading out.

He took out his phone out as he crossed the hallways to text Johnny, adding to their conversation string of the day.

He stared down at his screen waiting, without too much conviction, to see whether a reply would come in the following couple of seconds. When he reached the door to the parking lot, he pushed it open absently, startling when somebody else blocked it from the other side. In a stupid moment of dumb hope, he looked up expecting to see Johnny smirking at him.

The smirk belonged to Jenna Torres, though.

"You shouldn't look at your phone while you're walking," she mused slyly.

"Yeah, I know. Sorry." Carter slipped his phone back into his pocket.

Jenna looked at him curiously, stepping inside the school building. "What are you doing wandering around alone? Need a ride?"

"Uhm, no, it's fine..."

She tilted her head. "So...you have a ride?"

Carter smiled. "I can take a bus. Or walk."

"Or I can drive you," she offered bluntly. Her full, red lips curled prettily into a smile when he laughed awkwardly. "Just let me run back to the locker room real quick to get Joey's jacket so he doesn't kill me tomorrow for losing it, and then we'll go."

Carter nodded wordlessly, watching as she sped down the hallways, in her cheer uniform's white and green short skirt and crop top, high jet-black ponytail swinging behind her.

She came back a couple of minutes later, with Joey's varsity jacket swung over he shoulder.

Carter followed her through the parking lot to her red Mercedes, sliding into the passenger's seat.

"Don't you usually ride with a couple of other girls?"

"Chaz drives Sienna everywhere, now that they're together. And Dana and Carrie tag along, like a ridiculous third and fourth wheel duo," Jenna said, touching up her lipstick on the rearview mirror before starting the car. 

She smiled stunningly at Carter as she pulled out of her parking spot, though he wished she kept her eyes trained ahead.

"On a more important note, guess who just made it to the top of the pyramid."

Carter smiled, propping his elbow up on the rolled-down window. "You?"

Jenna turned her eyes back to the front as they pulled into the road. "Of course."

"Sounds important."

"It is." Jenna nodded. "So, go ahead, pretty boy. Congratulate me."

Carter snorted. "Congratulations, Jen."

She smiled at him again. "Why, thank you."

Carter took out his phone then to check for an absence of text messages in his inbox. No reply from Johnny. He kept his eyes fixed down, even as the screen locked again.

Usually, he enjoyed Jenna's company because she wasn't talkative by default. She was popular and sociable, but she didn't have to be constantly making herself noted, like Joey or some of the other guys from the football team, to be noticed. 

Carter appreciated that, when it was just the two of them, because she often knew how to identify a good moment to stay quiet as well as she knew when to open her mouth. Carter had assumed this ride was one of those moments, until she spoke up as they approached the Santoros' neighborhood.

"Rebecka Queens was at my house this weekend," Jenna said smoothly.

Carter looked at her in quiet. 

Rebecka Queens. That was Seth's mom. She used to be friends with Jenna's mom, before they both got divorced. Carter wasn't sure how much they'd kept in touch after their respective husbands moved away. Which meant he had also never been too sure just how much of Seth's home situation Jenna knew about. She had never made any comments either.

"How was she?" Carter finally asked.

"How's Seth?" Jenna shot back, in a light tone.

Carter turned his head away from her scrutiny. He only shrugged and Jenna seemed to accept that. She slowed down the car and Carter realized, with one look out the window, that they had arrived.

"See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah. Thanks for the ride."

Jenna shrugged nonchalantly. "Don't mention it." She winked.

As soon as he closed the passenger's door, Jenna made a quick U-turn and drove off to her side of the city, where the houses were bigger and the fences grew into walls with automatic gates. Carter watched her disappear before he turned to the house. 

He stood on the Santoros' driveway for a few moments before he made a spontaneous decision and started walking down the street. He kept walking until he was standing at Johnny's doorstep. Forbidding himself from thinking about it, he rang.

Mrs Mason opened the door. She smiled, looking pleasantly surprised to see him.

"Hello, Carter."

"Hey, Mrs Mason." He smiled. "Is Johnny home?"

Johnny's mom looked at him for a second, her smile relaxing the tiniest bit.

"He is," she said. For a moment, Carter thought she wasn't going to let him in and this had been a stupid idea, but then she opened the door all the way. "Would you like to see him?"

"Thank you." He scraped his feet on the doormat before stepping inside the Masons' home and Johnny's mom closed the front door behind him.

"Johnny is upstairs in his room."

He thanked her once again.

On his way up the stairs, he crossed paths with Lydia, who stopped on her way to look at him, a little surprised. Carter offered her a flimsy smile as way of greeting, which she returned with a strange kind of smile he didn't try too hard to read into.

Once he reached Johnny's room, Carter knocked.

"Go away, Lydia," Johnny mumbled from inside.

"It's not your sister."

Only silence followed. Carter was getting ready to knock again, when the door opened. At first, his lips curled into an involuntarily smile at the sight of Johnny, but the grin fell the instant he took notice of Johnny's state.

There was a patch of red, scratched skin over his right cheekbone and a square of clean white gauze taped to the right side of his forehead. It looked like he'd been roughened up. Something hot and ugly crawled up Carter's spine and tightened around his chest.

"What are you doing here?" Johnny asked tiredly, crossing his arms over his chest. Carter could still get a glimpse of red, bruised wrists before they were covered.

"I came to see you," he answered, walking into Johnny's bedroom when he stepped aside to let Carter in.

Johnny closed the door, leaning his back against it, arms still crossed. "Why?"

"You weren't in class, or at the library." Carter shook his head, because all that was clearly not the priority in that moment. "How did you get hurt?'

"I went to see the nurse and she sent me home to rest," Johnny said, only addressing the first part of what Carter had said.

"Shouldn't you have gone to a hospital too?"

Johnny looked down at the floor. "I'm fine."

"Johnny..." Carter called softly. The other boy didn't look up. "How did this happen?"

"I said I'm fine," Johnny insisted, finally looking up. "You already checked on me, now go."

"I'm worried about you."

"You don't have to be."

"Seriously?" Carter shot back, in disbelief. "Look at you, Johnny."

"I'm fine," Johnny repeated under his breath. "The nurse just said to watch out for headaches, ringing in the ears, nausea, blurry vision, confusion, fatigue and a whole bunch of possible delayed signs of concussion. And rest in the dark," he added, gesturing to his dimly lit room, with the blinds pulled almost all the way down.

"Well," Carter murmured. "Have you felt any of those?"

Johnny sighed, pushing away from the door. "No. I told you. I'm fine."

He walked past Carter to sit on his bed. 

Carter followed him with his gaze. He let his eyes skim over the injuries on Johnny's face. It made his stomach coil tighten unpleasantly.

Johnny had mentioned possible concussion. As a football player, Carter was familiar with the term. And he knew how serious it could be.

"Stop looking at me like that," Johnny pleaded weakly.

Carter shifted nervously from one foot to the other. "Somebody did this to you and it's not the first time, Johnny," he whispered. "Just tell me what happened. Tell me who did it so I can try to help you."

"What exactly can you do to help?"

Johnny's question felt like a stab to Carter's chest. He shrugged meekly. "I don't know," he confessed. "Not unless you talk to me. Or your dad, or someone. Anyone at all." 

"It's no use." Johnny shook his head. "I can't tell you, or my dad."

"Why not?" Carter asked, a little too eagerly. Johnny looked away again and Carter stepped closer. "Johnny, why not?" He repeated, gently. Johnny refused to meet his gaze, so Carter sat down at his side, touching his fingers to Johnny's chin tenderly to make the other boy face him. "It's someone on the football team, isn't it?"

That would explain why Johnny didn't want to tell Carter, co-captain of the team, or his dad, the school's football coach. It would explain other things as well.

"Just tell me," Carter implored quietly. "If someone's hurting you, then you need to report them. The school has policies against this sort of thing—"

"What sort of thing?" Johnny cut him off, but there was no actual cutting edge to his tone. He didn't move away from Carter's touch either.

"It doesn't matter, okay?"

"Except it does matter. A lot," Carter argued.

"They wouldn't even be paying so much attention to me this year if they didn't see me with you so often around school."

Carter's lips parted and Johnny closed his eyes pressing his lips together tightly, like he had said something he didn't mean to.

"I didn't mean it's your fault," he whispered, looking at his lap. "Just leave it, okay?"

"No. Not okay," Carter protested, letting his hand fall from Johnny's face to his lap. "This isn't okay at all. You need to talk to someone. A responsible adult who'll take action."

"There's no point," Johnny huffed under his breath. "These guys are my father's players. You guys get away with everything."

Carter's heart dropped like someone had tied it to a block of led at Johnny's use of 'you guys'.

"That's not true."

"Yes, it is."

"It can't be," Carter insisted. "It's not right. Someone's hurting you. That's wrong and they should be punished." He touched his hand to Johnny's cheek, guiding his face again to meet his urgent gaze. "Please, let me help you."

Johnny trapped his bottom lip between his teeth with a hesitant look in his eye. Carter brushed his thumb over his cheek gently. 

Johnny gulped and Carter followed the movement in his throat, before locking their eyes together again. He turned his brain around for something else to say—a final plea, a last desperate appeal—when Johnny's bedroom door swung open.

Carter and Johnny looked to see Coach Mason staring at the two of them. The surprised look on the man's face quickly faded into one of neutrality, just as Carter's hand fell from its intimate touch on Johnny's face to land on his own lap, feeling heavy and cold. He gulped, but the bulge swelling in his throat wouldn't budge.

"Parrish," Coach said tonelessly, before looking at his son. "I didn't realize you had company. I came to see how you were feeling."

Carter got up from Johnny's bed, like his legs were equipped with a pair of springs. "Mrs Mason let me in, sir. I should go though," he rushed out.

Coach nodded. "Right. I'll walk you to the door," he said flatly. With one last look at his son, he said, "I'll come back to check on you after."

Carter didn't see Johnny's reaction. He was too busy avoiding eye contact with everyone as he tried to get out of the Masons' house as quickly as possible. Mrs Mason and Lydia walked out of the kitchen as they heard them come down to bid Carter goodbye at the door. He returned their warm grins with a clipped smile and left—maybe even a little too urgently.

The air from the street did nothing to melt the feeling of entrapment. On the contrary, Carter felt it tighten around every muscle in his body.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.