I tilt my head back to look up at him. “You’re not ‘Best’ either.”
Kaleb laughs the hardest over my comment, the sound a deep rumble, and he leans heavily against the lockers.
Donovan glares back, his arms crossed over his expansive chest. “And I bet you think you’re ‘Best’.”
With no hint of humility whatsoever, Kaleb shrugs and grins. “You do like to point out how I’m referred to as ‘Perfect’.”
“Not this time, Cap,” I say with a smirk. “You’re not Best Boy, either.”
Kaleb looks genuinely surprised, and I bust up laughing, enjoying this new game.
“Clearly it's me,” Felix chimes in, his bright smile returning. “We nerds stick together.”
Connor issues him a raised brow, which I interpret as challenge that he is more likely Best Boy.
“Sorry, Casper. You also fail as Best Boy.” Connor offers up a smug grin that quickly falls when I add with a squinty glare, “All of you laughed, so none of you are Best Boy.”
“But one of us has to be the best,” Nolan proclaims, cocking his head to the side and tapping at his lips. “I’m pretty sure that’s how favorites work.”
I shake my head and grin. “Nope. You gotta earn it.”
While they squabble among themselves over which one of them is clearly the best, I open my locker, and as if a strong gust of wind whooshed from the back of the locker, out flies what feels like hundreds of folded pamphlets. All of them have the sheen of high quality commercial prints.
At first I don’t understand what I’m looking at. It’s just a sea of sad looking teenagers, some crying, others staring off in the distance or curled into themselves leaning against an unseen wall. It isn’t until I see some have “KILL YOURSELF”written in angry, red sharpie that I finally understand. They’re all suicide prevention pamphlets, like the ones in the overfilled racks next to the counselor's office.
The whispering around me becomes a roar. Their eyes feel even more liked heated spotlights, and a cold sweat starts to break out on the back of my neck. A familiar numbness takes over my emotions as I try to process what’s happening, and I calmly start collecting the pamphlets-- new ones seeming to slide out of my locker every time I pick one up.
“Fucking bitch!” Nolan hisses, dropping to his knees to help gather what feels like a never ending stream of sad faces and angry words.
With a tone so cold it might as well be shards of ice piercing any that hear him, Connor growls at the surrounding bystanders, “Leave. Now.”
“You heard the man,” Donovan snarls, fire to Connor’s ice, “Get your shit and go. Now!”
The whispers transform into the sounds of hastily slammed lockers and the rush of stampeding feet, self-preservation finally kicking in for our audience.
“I’m sorry, Callie,” Felix murmurs while he kneels down, his warm timbre laced with sorrow.
He reaches out, as if to help pick up the pamphlets that are now festooned around us, but they phase right through his grasp. Hands braced on the floor, his fingers curl into fists, and he releases a frustrated sigh.
“It’s okay. We can pick them up,” I assure, an overabundance of paper already filling my hands.
Felix nods with a defeated slump of his shoulders and stands back up, wrapping his arms tight around himself. He has the same look from the time Gina walked through him that awful day at lunch.
With a tight smile, I joke, “She really needs to get new material, right? Telling me to kill myself via red sharpie-- do you think she means this to look like blood? --anyway, telling me to kill myself won’t make it any more possible to do.” I frown. “Well, decapitation might do it.”
“That’s not funny,” Kaleb snaps. His deep baritone is drenched with fury so fierce it’s shocking, causing my heart to leap in my chest, and my gaze to snap to him.
He’s on his knees beside me, his body rigid as stone, and crushed in his hand is one of the pamphlets-- something designed to help people covered in words of hate and malice.
I let the papers in my grasp flutter to the floor, so I can put a hand on his arm. The muscles beneath my fingers feel more like heated marble than flesh.
“Kaleb, it’s just a prank,” I murmur softly, for the first time truly worried he’s about to go off. “A stupid prank from a pathetic, desperate girl. Like I said, I can’t die-- remember, our current concern is I might blow up the town and kill everyone else…”
“Stop,” he interrupts through gritted teeth. For a moment his gaze rests on my hand, before slowly rising to meet mine. The mask on his face is shattered, and staring back at me is the true tumultuous feelings that hide beneath its surface. “Stop dismissing this. Stop turning it into a joke. It’s not funny. It’s wrong.”
“Whoa there,” Nolan cautiously wades in. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you need to calm down.”
“Yeah, man,” Felix adds, like he’s talking to a pod person and not the real Kaleb. “It’s not her fault. She’s the victim here, remember.”
