Corbett's POV

"You're right. But the problem I see with this is that you think other people are the ones to blame for everything. Don't you think that the person is also partly to blame? Because what I've gathered from all of this is that, yeah sure, other people judge someone they don't really know, but how else are they gonna come to a sound conclusion about someone? It's really also the person's fault because they choose not to help those people understand. They are the ones who let people judge them. The trick is whether they believe the people's judgement over their own because that's really what it comes down to. Realizing that this - what you're saying - doesn't matter unless we allow each other to understand. So please, help us understand. No, help me understand because I have no clue what the heck any of you weirdos are even talking about."

My body was buzzing. My fingers felt like stiff nails I wanted to drag across the surface of a chalk board to create some kind of grating friction, or curl them into fists and pummel them into the face of Zachary Rogers, I couldn't quite pick. I couldn't feel the break in my knuckles, the bones shifted in odd positions from hitting the brick wall, but my brain vaguely registered the blood trickling from the scrapes on my infected hand, the thick, red, platelets warm and dripping in patterns onto the dirty concrete. My legs were quivering with the adrenaline and anger I was feeling, the intense emotions literally drawing each of my breaths in painful fire.

Annie's stiff ministrations were not helping, but I was too focused on the two boys across from me, my humbling head cracking at the situation before me, to push her away from me.

"Zachary. . ." My eyes briefly snapped to the boy who spoke up, to Andrew's face, and I saw that hopeless look in his eyes, that downward tip to his lips that made me hate what I was just bullshitting from my mouth even more; but I ignored my own self hatred, his own helpless avoidance, and I set my sights on the biggest fucking dick I had ever met, the one guy I could honestly say didn't deserve Andrew more than me. And that was saying a lot.

I took in his confusedly furrowed brows and pursed lips and felt my idiot problem growing at the back of my throat, that lump I got when I didn't want to say shit, but knew I couldn't control myself. And before Andrew could finish any part of what he was going to sugar coat to Rogers, I opened my god damn mouth. "I've got it. I've got the both of you," I violently pointed at him and Andrew, "on tape. Kissing. I'm just wondering what I should do with it." I wasn't really. I just couldn't decide whether to spew the shit covered truth that plagued me every waking day of my life, or stir the pot even more. I knew I shouldn't have, but I was just a burnout, wasn't I?

I was a kid going to a therapist trying to solve his problems, but doing a shit job at it. I was trying. I really was; I just couldn't fucking help it. I needed to have the control in this situation. I needed to have the upper hand so that I wouldn't lose. I didn't want to lose.

I just didn't feel like I was winning when I said what I did, though.

Andrew's face turned an ungodly shade of red, the kind of red I only saw in one of my most intense bursts of anger, as he spluttered, "Why are you so goddamn smug? About everything! Why? Why are you even doing this, Connors? Huh?"

Why? Why am I even doing this? I don't fucking know! I just wanted control! I wanted to have you as my own! I wanted you to notice me! I didn't fucking want to turn into this mad freak!

I could feel it. I could feel my insides igniting, my organs bubbling and frying and seering the walls of my skin with that white sort of static only TVs must have been able to feel. It was that trailing numbness that tickled the back of my neck with goosebumps and made the end of my toes curl. It made me feel awful and nothing all in one.

"We actually kissed at that party, then, didn't we?" My heart spasmed for a breathless moment with anxiety and jealously, and Owen Bright's face flashed behind my eyes telling me to let it out, but I didn't. I didnt listen to him because when have I ever? I just kept my glare trained on my friend - I couldn't even call him that anymore because of my own selfish reasons - but felt Annie's prodding hands stop and he spacing herself from me.

Then she was throwing her therapy voice at me, the one she got when she was talking to one of the others, and I absolutely hated it because Annie was a prying bitch who never kept her thoughts to herself and made it her life mission to tell people exactly that, exactly what she thought, "What the hell, dude? Blackmail is illegal, isn't it? Isn't it?" I just couldn't stand that voice, her truth because she was right.

I looked away and found the end of a Juul pod to stare at on the ground. I studying the metal tip, letting who questions poke at my brain, letting time pass before I could admit the inevitable. I waited to say anything because I really have never been good at the whole sharing my feelings thing; but after an extended second, that static feeling if numbness was fizzling out and this exhaustion and throbbing pain was flooding my aching soul, and I could suddenly feel everything; my anxiety, my desperation and pain from my broken hand. And I said in a voice I never knew I could speak in front of so many people, "I just didn't know what else to do. I panicked."

I did. I panicked when I rendered the videotapes of the party. I saw them - I saw Zach and Andrew alone and arguing one minute, and then kissing like they were each other's life-lines - and I felt like everything had been shifted a couple of inches in my body. You know, like it was something that was so shocking that it tilted your center of gravity just the slightest bit that you noticed what it had left in its wake. It wouldn't have been so shocking any other day of the week if I was normal, but it was, and I felt absolutely panicked afterwards. It made me feel off seeing them kissing, like my body was screaming at me to be be where Zachary had been. I saw them on video kissing, and I hated it so god damn much.

"You panicked?!" Andrew exploded then, catching me from slipping into that blackhole in my thoughts. "You fucking panicked? What the fuck about any of this is making you panicked? Huh? Please - Please tell me!"

I don't know how exactly I had finally succumbed to that creeping static still prickling my skin, but I did. I had been good at controlling it - all this time and I hadn't succumbed to that one part of me that I had buried so deep inside of myself, it was just a whisper of my past - but then I wasn't so good at it anymore.

I felt like that jumpy Kleptomaniac, that sad mother, the OCD man, Annie when she looked into a mirror, Polly when she felt herself telling a lie, the man whose wife left him so long ago, all in one. I could feel how they must have felt and all because of a situation I created for myself. I felt like so many other people - an outsider, a burnout, a emotional rollercoaster - and I had never felt like this before. It was foreign but familiar all in one. It was that part of me I was trying to hide, that I had not seen in so long.

It was sort of weird to be feeling a million things all at once. It was like all my emotions were fighting eith each other, clawing at the edges of one another, ripping their way the different layers of all the other emotions. It was a sort of turmoil, this mass hurricane swirling inside of my soul so powerful, that no emotion could physically find their ways out. It was so much at once, that that static numbness I had felt almost taking ahold, finally took hold. It rolled all of my emotions one by one and all at once into a massive ball, and held it in a suffocating grip so not one of them could escape; a sort of coping mechanism I hadn't felt in a long, long time. It was a dark shadow in the background that hadn't seen the light of day in ions.

I squirmed in my own body, the many different emotions in m squirming in unison under that Corbett facade I was so accustomed to only in the company of my worst enemies. My body, all on its own, tensed up at the war inside of it and the fight outside around it, and I vaguely saw Annie noticing that change in me; a change she had never really seen me undergo before. Really, she hadn't. Nobody had because I was just so used to keep everything in check.

This was me being set free in a way. This was the real me taking the spotlight. She had never seen this side of me.

And I heard it in her shallow voice, that clueless bite at the back of her words that I knew she hated because she hated not knowing anything. "I don't really. . . think that that's really what matters right now. We should just - like - we should focus on trying to. . . to. . .," my hardened eyes slowly fell onto Annie next to me and I saw how confused she was feeling, like a dog trying to climb a tree.

"No," and I felt immense pity for her. That was her coping mechanism. She dealt with things by trying to know everything. I saw that and I knew Mr. Bright saw it, too. That's why I decided in that moment to take things into my own hands. I was going to do something I knew was going to make me uncomfortable, but I didn't need to drag Annie down. I was doing this not only for myself, but for Annie, and most of all for Andrew, too. Stepping closer to Annie and laying a hand I tried to soften over her bony shoulder, I sighed and whispered, "It's okay. Let me handle this. Alone." Her eyes were understanding at what I had implied, but I bet she could have guessed she had no idea what I really meant.

Then I was looking back at Andrew and into his glossy eyes as I said at last, "I'll tell you."

"Wait wait wait," my eye twitched and that nails-on-a-chalkboard itch lit up in my hands again at Zachary's berating voice, "Don't tell me. Let me guess." Rogers had that joking smirk on his face that he used on people he liked to piss off - that fucking smirk - and he was standing so close to Andrew, it made me want to rip him away because of pure jealousy.

"Let me guess," Zachary repeated and that plan I had before only solidified at the tone of voice and brilliant know-it-all look on his face, "you were panicking because you were angry that Andrew was kissing me, right? You were angry, and I know - no we all know - how you get when you're angry. So my only question is. . . Why were you angry that Andy and I were kissing? Do you. . . Do you perhaps like one of us?"

My swollen hand throbbed.

My blanketed emotions screamed all at once, all together under that numb sheet to be set free.

The split skin on my knuckles that were cracked with dry blood moistened again from the wounds opening back up.

Andrew looked at Zachary for a moment, then crossed his arms stiffly over his chest and stood taut in apprehension when he looked back at me. That fuzzy static rippled between my ears, under my skin, down my back, and made me lose that Corbett everybody knew.

My fists opened, closed, then opened back up in time with my throbbing heart and ringing ears.

And before that static numbness could push that ball of emotions further in me, the ball unfurled and all these people - these emotions - crashed into each other to create that one emotion I knew only. Anger. Lividness. Madness.  "You shut you're fucking mouth before I shut it for you, Rogers, I'm not even kidding. You better back the fuck up and take your twisted -" my words got caught behind the lump of anxiety I had forgotten about, "- your twisted little guesses some place people actually care to believe what you're shitting from your mouth!"

I noticed then Andrew's unnerved fear towards me. His eyes widened and his hands came up in a defensive, palms-out stance as he glared at Annie, who had her usual, calculating stare and that I'm-the-Leader look she carried around us all.

"Annie," Andrew's voice was panicky as he hissed, "What are you doing?! You're in the punching zone, and I dont think he discriminates!" I felt my teeth gritting together.

Annie looked away from me, let her gentle eyes cast away and settle on Andrew for half a beat, then turned back to me. "Corbett. . ." She started. "Whatever you're about to do, don't. You're so close, so close to starting to get better. Don't revert. Don't let the notion that you can't get better stop you from getting better. Corbett, you are going to get through this. Just don't let it take control. You can control it, whatever it is." I wasn't even trying to listen, though.

Zachary still had that fucking smirk on his face as he looked at me, and Andrew wasn't even looking at me anymore. His eyes were only trained on Annie like he was trying to save her from the fucking monster I ever was. So I ignored him and glowered at Rogers.

"Corbett. . ." I heard her call again, "look at me." Like a shock had stung my hand, the cool presence of soft fingers took my attention away from the two boys across from me and settled it onto the tall girl in front of me. And suddenly, I felt that sting in my eyes and defeat that had been beating every other emotion to the finish line.

"It's okay. You've got it. You've got help. I will help you, Mr. Bright will help, and that lady therapist will help. You don't need to do this anymore. You don't have to fight anymore. Let," she breathed in, "go," breathed out.

". . . 're different from them. We work. I don't think Corbett can work with anyone but himself." My eyes snapped away from the green house of soft flowers and emotional support that was Annie's bright eyes when Andrew Parlsey's rigid voice flew into my ears.

Annie swore to herself and swiveled on her heels to look between the bestfriends. Her voice was harsh and rude and different from the bubble of dulcet remarks she was using to calm me as she said, "Really, Andy, I think you and your little sidekick should just get out of here. I don't want this to get anymore out of hand than it already is."

Andrew looked like he wanted to disagree, but I really didn't want him to. I didn't want to fight with him anymore. It was taxing not only for him, but me too. And Annie was right. I needed help and I shouldn't ruin because I let my emotional instability take over my rational side. "Listen to her, Andrew. This is really none of your goddamn business." 

"This is my business, you giant fuckwad." Of course he wouldn't fucking listen, though. He never listened before, so, as he kept spewing nonsense, I guessed I would give him something to listen to. "That's my fucking friend that's trying to calm your little bitchfit and you're harboring video blackmail of me and Zachary, so this has everything to do with me!"

Like a monster lurking behind walls and in the wind at night, the numbing feel of TV static was back again. Its sharp talons shredded everything in me, it's terrifying grasp choked me into submission, and it shut off all other people trying to take me alive. My muscles all bit expanded into bricks of tension and my jaw set into a hard tick.

I needed to do this alone.

I needed to do this alone.

I had to do this alone.

I had to do this alone.

I needed to do this alone.

I had to.

I needed to.

That aching burn scorched my lungs as I took in a large gulp of air, the adrenaline kicking in and numbing me further so that I couldn't feel a damn thing. Next to me, faintly, I could hear Annie cussing and jumping towards me. Like I had been possessed, I dodged her.

"Corbett. . . !" She screamed hysterically.

I reared my arm back as I stomped my way up to Zachary Rogers.

I need to do this.

I need him alone.

"Oh fuck," was the last thing I heard that bastard say before I had punched him so hard in the face with my good hand, that I felt the bones breaking in that hand to match its twin. It didn't hurt like I thought it would, and maybe that was the fight-sense kicking in from the adrenaline, but I didn't care.

I had to do this.

I needed to do this.

Andrew was screaming at me and throwing his hands at me, trying his hardest get away from me while Annie rushed to a disoriented and bleeding Zachary. That would distract her.

"You crazy bastard!" Andrew kept yelling as I pulled him harder away from the scene of the crime. I ignored him, only tightening my grip in acknowledgement, and let him fight me. I knew he couldn't beat me. I had already let the part of me I tried so hard to hide win. I was already out, and Andrew could never put me back in that place if he tried his hardest. Not even I could do that once I let that part of me take over. It's why I was always trying to keep that part of me locked away in the depths of my despair.

Tonight, however, I had failed at doing that, and now I felt that monstrous static pulling me along like I was his marionette and it the puppeteer. It was the part of me from the beginning of my disorder. It was that uncontrollable urge and that heartless anger only numbed by abuse.

Yanking Andrew one last time, I threw him against the frame of my car. He winced, and deep down I cringed, but I knew that I needed to do this more than anything, so I ignored his wince. He made to push me away, but I moved my towering body closer to his to subdue his fight, and one of my hands came between us to grip at the collar of his jacket - the place where I had been dragging him - to push him back my car. He tried one last time push me away, but then he stopped as he realized how useless he was in the position we were in.

Any other time I would have liked the position we had been in, but then and there, I did not. I didn't even acknowledge it fully, only at the back of my mind.

Nose to nose, I scanned Andrew's eyes and noticed my chest heaving up and down at that look of disgust he was directing at me. I wanted to kick and scream at him that there was so much more that he didn't know, that he had no right to judge me so harshly, but my violent anger had been sedated by that static monster of complete control and utter lack of resolve. It was an emptiness I had reserved for private that was now going public.

"You -" I began, my voice low, yet dipped in anxiety so hard to ignore, "- You don't. . . get it. Nobody really gets it, these-these feelings inside of me. You don't fucking understand, and I want you to - fuck!" I squeezed my eyes shut as the suffocating hands of my own self-loathing pressed further on my neck. That wretched desperation I felt with Mr. Bright a while back was back.

"It's the only thing I know how to be! Just so angry all the time," I opened my eyes to gaze back at my own pitiful reflection in Andrew's beautiful eyes, "and I want people to understand, but they - you just don't. I can't explain it because I'm not - fucking hell - I suck at the whole using your words bullshit, I always have. But I want, I want you to understand - understand me." And I