❝If you have fallen down, you cannot go further down, so pick yourself up and aim high, you've got nothing to lose.❞

- Unarine Ramaru

[ H U N T E R   W I L L I A M S ]

I woke up to the rain lightly tapping my bedroom window, I had locked myself up in my room for three days, putting the world on hold. The sound the raindrops made when they connected with the glass was oddly soothing, helped me calm down my thoughts.

It was around seven o'clock on a Friday morning and I had finally managed to muster up the strength to attend school. As a somewhat responsible person, I knew that taking unannounced breaks from your responsibilities was a dumb move. But I doubt I could've focused much on my studies with my head being in absolute shambles.

As therapeutic as the break from the outside world was, I was all but ready to overcome my demons, partially because of the dreadful talk my mother and I had last evening.

Never in a million years would I have thought that Bailey was as malicious as she had been all along. She had told my mother that I was the one who cheated on her and that I just straight up dumped her without any explanation. The worst part is that my mother ate it all up and shifted her onslaught on me.

Did I try to reason with her? Yes, of course, I tried.

Did it work? Absolutely not.

I felt like I was slowly overcoming the utter mess that I was in and then an asteroid called 'my mother' crashed into the progress, sending me back to rock bottom.

My mother spit-roasted and belittled me for hours before I stormed out of the living and cried myself to sleep. I needed to get tougher somehow, I couldn't just cry my way out of every situation I was in, but I didn't know where to begin. The fact that my mother was an avid manipulator did not help the case, I had almost started believing the utter nonsense she said about me. I felt and still do feel like an absolute wreck, but I think it's time I stopped moping around and continued living my life.

At this point, I've said it a million times, I was going to overcome my sorrows and learn from my mistakes, one step at a time. The first step is going back into the public.

Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep in on Fridays quite as I could on Mondays.

The first period started at eight in the morning, meaning I had around thirty minutes to get ready for school and then actually walk there. On second thought, maybe I should just stay home... I shook my head in hopes of getting rid of these malicious thoughts. I can do this, I am strong, I got this.

Oh god, I don't have this.

Okay, Hunter, take a deep breath and collect yourself. I mentally coached myself, having mental anxiety battles with myself wasn't a rare occurrence, however, at this very particular point in time, I felt extremely vulnerable and wasn't sure if I could win over myself.

I rushed to the bathroom and decided on taking a quick, refreshing shower, partially hoping it could wash my sorrows away. News flash, it didn't. I dried my body and my hair, before putting on a fresh pair of underwear and headed back into my room, not bothering with shaving the stubble that had grown over the last couple days.

I settled on a red Adidas jumper and a pair of jeans, no point in dressing too flashy today, didn't exactly want to impress anyone, I just needed to get my life back on track.

I had minimal contact with people over the entirety of my small break, a few words between Eve and I, couple messages from our other friends and an avalanche of unread messages from my ex-girlfriend. Might as well just block her number and be done with her.

I put on my sneakers, grabbed a waterproof jacket that was hanging near the front door and off to the world I went, not even bother to check whether my mother was awake or not. It was seven-thirty-seven, I should be able to make it to school without being late to class.

My approximate calculations were correct and I made it to the school's front entrance with five minutes to spare. Unfortunately, the fact that the first lesson of the day was advanced English literature with Mr Carter where I sat with my ex-girlfriend, Bailey Woods, hadn't dawned upon until I stepped inside of the main hall.

Panic started rushing my veins once again, my head started getting dizzy, but I ignored the feeling and walked hastily towards my locker. I punched in the combination with shaky fingers and took out my English literature book and walked over to the classroom door.

Outside, I could see Evelyn tapping on her phone and I let out a shaky breath before walking over to her. She seemed surprised when she noticed my presence. "Hunter! I didn't think you'd come back to school this week." He declared happily.

"I thought about moving to China and changing my identity, but I thought maybe I should face my demons." I tried joking with her.

"Without me? That wouldn't be fun at all, now would it?" She teased.

I nodded in response, still shaky. "Evelyn, could I sit with you? I forgot that I shared a seat with my malicious ex-girlfriend in this class." Evelyn was so intimidating to other people that she had the only free seat in the classroom, finally, her terrifying demeanour to outsiders could be put to use.

"Oh shit, yeah of course. I think you should be worried about the teacher more though, you missed the meeting remember?" She reminded and I flinched at her question.

"Yeah, I'm kind of regretting coming back here," I muttered under my breath, loudly enough for Eve to hear.

She put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "You'll be fine, don't worry about it."

"Let's hope so." I choked out. Suddenly, something rushed to my mind that I wanted Evelyn to know. "I've got some news about Bailey, turns out she's worse than I could have ever imagined, but I'll save it for lunch," I concluded. The fact that Bailey tried to push the blame on me and call me the cheater was uncalled for and it deserved her attention, let's not forget that my ex-girlfriend was Evelyn's best friend.

The bell interrupted our conversation and we stepped inside the classroom. Mr Carter was already inside, dressed the same way he always did, a suit, a tie, his hair styled into the same position it was always in. He was organizing something on his desk before he spotted me. We briefly made eye contact, but not a single word was muttered between us, instead, he narrowed his eyes, but nodded regardless. I gulped and followed Evelyn to her desk.

The fact that I was changing seats made the teacher raise his eyebrow, but he didn't bother interrupting.

The class filled up with the regular students and began shortly, however, as soon as Mr Carter uttered a word, the classroom door opened once again and in stepped my snake of an ex-girlfriend, Bailey. 

You see, despite everything she had done, I was far from over her and I couldn't help the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw her again. We briefly made eye contact and suddenly I wanted to cry again, I broke the eye contact and decided to focus on literally anything else, like Mr Carter's tie.

It was a baby blue tie with darker blue stripes all over it, quite the change from the red tie he usually sported, it's fascinating how that was the only change in his appearance over a couple of weeks.

Surprisingly, the class went swimmingly, apart from some suspicious glances at me from the teacher, time seemed to fly and I was extremely grateful for that. Evelyn had been on her phone during the entire class, but it wasn't like she needed to focus anyway, she was an absolute whizz went it came to academics.

Mr Carter decided to challenge the class by assigning an essay due next Tuesday. It was supposed to based on a book I was actually familiar with - Dante's Inferno, I knew I would manage to screw up the thousand-word essay somehow, but at least I've read and understood the book before.

Suddenly, the bell shrieked and everyone, myself included, sprung to their feet and started packing their belongings. The absolute avalanche of students leaving through the door had soon dissipated, but I was quite yet ready to go because of none other than Blake Carter.

"So, are you going to explain yourself or just brush everything under the rug?" The teacher asked me with a serious tone, ignoring Evelyn's presence.

"Listen, sir. I'm dealing with something right now and I couldn't come to the meeting, I don't think I can today either, considering I've missed two days worth of practice already." I explained myself without going into too much detail.

Mr Carter's features softened for a second before returning to the same serious state they were usually in. "Come look for me in the teacher's lounge after practice. Now go, before you're late to the next class." He said with a sort-of demanding voice, that made me tense up.

All Evelyn did was raise a brow and shrugged it off as we turned to make our exit.

Don't tell me that I was going home late again.