Jake Addams April 16th, 20XX

The room was eerily still, despite being filled to the brim with students. A high-pitched voice sobbed in the middle of the room. What was striking about the scene was the way no one stepped forward to comfort her.

I moved as silently as possible and tapped a baby-faced student on the shoulder. He looked back, and his eyes widened in surprise. I sensed he was about to call my name, so I placed a finger to my lips and waved him out of the room.

"Uh, Teor, right?"

"You know my name?"

He sounded way too excited at the fact that a schoolmate knew who he was. But then again, he was a freshman, and I was a senior in another department; it wasn't weird for him to question why I knew his name. I only knew his name because his friends were always yelling it all around the hallways.

I figured saying so would embarrass him, so I came up with another good reason. There was always a large crowd around Alice and the others, and I'd often see Teor within that crowd.

"You're always around, aren't you? It'd be weirder if I didn't. You mind telling me what's going on?"

While I could have texted Alice and asked what was going on, or even have gone right up to her and asked, I wasn't sure if I wanted to get involved.

If for nothing else, I was her boyfriend and had been for the last three years, whether or not she was happy about that. If it were about something she'd wanted me to know, she would have told me.

"Sorry, but I'm not sure. I think miss Alice got into a fight with miss Vanessa because she stormed out right before miss Alice got a phone call and started crying. I heard a few of the seniors debating whether or not to call you."

Ah, so it looked like this hadn't been going on for long enough for Alice to remember my usage as an emotional dumping ground.

Wait, that was unfair. It was like that now, but she'd been there for me more than she'd needed to be in the past. Compared to all she and her family had done for me and mine, this much was bearable.

"Is there anything else you wanted to know, Mr. Jake?"

Aside from his weird habit of addressing me like I was an old man, his deep voice heavily contrasted with his cute appearance and took me for a bit of a spin. I snapped out of it pretty quickly and gave as warm of a smile as I could.

Now wasn't the time to get into my feelings.

"Ah, no, that's fine. Thanks, and you can just call me Jake. It's not like I'm that much older than you."

He looked troubled by my attempt to be friendly, but I wasn't too happy about being called 'Mr at eighteen.

"Don't be a stranger and come say hey to me next time you see me in the hallway. Don't think it's okay to ignore me just because I'll be out of here in a month or two."

My paper finals had ended recently, and the championship games were long over by now.

At this point, all I did at school was make up attendance points I'd missed in the year and hang out with my friends. I would occasionally help the coach train the freshmen and the kids that would replace the graduating class, but I didn't take it too seriously. It wasn't like this school was all so renowned for its sports program.

I patted him on the shoulder and quickly made my way toward the crying girl in the middle of the public space.

As much as I tried to enter the room quietly, the news spread quickly, and the group split like a single-celled amoeba and quickly enveloped me into its center where I was put face to face with Alice.

She was curled up into the corner and had her head down on the desk. Her smooth, long hair ballooned onto her back and around the desk like a cape, barely doing its job of hiding her shoulders as they trembled.

Ahh. This looked like it would be troublesome.

It wasn't like this was the first time she'd cried at school, but the fact that she let such a big audience see her meant that something monumental had happened.

I looked around in a desperate bid for someone else to deal with this, but all I got were apologetic stares and a couple of chuckles as they filtered out of the room.

Now that I was here, they could finally escape.

The door clicked with a quiet sound as the last person closed it behind them. Soon the only sounds in the room were Alice's sobs and my breathing.

Asking her what had happened would only get me ignored or yelled at, so I brought out my phone and started flipping through Squire. There were still a few articles about the hostage situation at North high a few days ago, but otherwise, the site was mainly filled with celebrity gossip.

I resisted the urge to search up my name and instead clicked into what looked like fanfiction about superheroes. It used the names of a few popular kids on the site, so I wondered if it would stay up for longer than the others. I didn't particularly enjoy fanfiction, but my younger sister was into it, and it was an easy topic of conversation.

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We stayed like that for another few minutes before she finally broke the act and growled at me. It shouldn't have been as cute as it was, but I found myself restraining the urge to smile.

Ah, I really sucked at the whole staying angry thing.

"Aren't you supposed to be cheering me up?"

I finished the last few words on the page before looking up and connecting with her puffy red eyes. Their addictive hazel iris flicked up at my shoulders as they watched me shrug and her nose scrunched into an annoyed expression.

"Jake!"

She flipped her hair out of her face and whacked my shoulder with a familiar harshness. It hurt more than I would ever admit, but this much was okay. The sooner she could take out her frustration at me, the sooner I could leave.

"What? I can't cheer up someone that isn't sad."

I didn't have the guts or the will to break things off with her yet, but that didn't mean I could get past it either.

My cowardice was pathetic enough to make me sick, but there wasn't anything else I could do. Aside from my personal feelings, I couldn't blow up at her and risk her talking to her dad about it.

I'd done so much for her over the last ten years, more than I should have. Going for a few more weeks until she finally broke it off with me was nothing.

It would hurt, but I could be as pathetic as I needed to be.

"What do you mean, I'm not sad? Did you not just see me crying?"

She flinched as I gently grabbed at her hand and placed it back on my shoulder where she'd just hit me.

"Now, I'm no psychologist, but as far as I know, sad people cry. They don't start hitting another human like a professional at a tournament."

I exaggerated the wound and rolled out my shoulders like I was in a lot of pain.

"Ahh."

She gently removed her hand from mine and burst out into a fit of giggles. An occasional stray tear would find its way down her face, but otherwise, she looked much brighter than she had a few seconds ago.

"You've known me for so long, but you're still so terrible at trying to cheer me up."

I debated retaking her hand but decided against it. What did I think would happen, anyway? I redirected my hand into my bag and pulled out a bag of candy. While I wasn't originally a huge candy guy, it was one of many bad habits she had pulled me into. Thankfully, I was off-season, so I could afford to cheat a little.

"And you still suck at expressing the right emotion. Want one?"

She shook her head and drew the back of her hand across her nose like a kid. I handed her a tissue in the same breath I unwrapped another piece of candy, this one lemon-flavoured, and popped it into my mouth.

Ah, this addictive feeling.

It was always so challenging to eat unhealthy around others. Either I would get asked about my diet overall, or one of my well-meaning teammates would report me to the coach, and I would have to run another three laps on the field.

She casually loosened her top before shifting into a more comfortable position before she replied.

I wasn't sure whether I should be grateful that she considered me someone that she could be herself in front of or if I should be insulted because it meant that she didn't see me as a 'guy' anymore. I forcefully averted my eyes from where they wanted to go and looked at the ceiling as she spoke.

"My uncle got called in for a meeting at his job about his past activities. I'm afraid he might lose his job and-"

She dissolved into tears again, but the unspoken part was just as clear.

And if he loses his job, then my connection to Volui won't exist anymore.

"I mean, it's not like I can become a scholarship student or anything! And you know my acceptance to the company is conditional on my uncle."

It was rare for Alice to be so honest about these things, but then again, it wasn't like I didn't already know. I took comfort in the fact that she trusted me enough to tell me these things, but then I remembered her words from earlier, and the warm feeling disappeared into thin air.

"What do I do, Jake? It's not like I'm smart enough to do anything else, and who knows if Volui won't blacklist me if I try to make it as an actress."

I doubted a company would blacklist her just because they'd fired her uncle, but she had a point about not being able to do anything else. Not that she wasn't intelligent, but she'd essentially spent her entire life preparing to make it in the industry. Even if there had been time to learn other things, I doubted she would have wanted to.

"Oh, this all started when 'He' came along. Jake, what should I do? Should I just go audition for another company now and pray I get in before he's fired? No, that wouldn't work; there's no way they would give me a decent contract."

I had more than an inkling of who this 'He' was, but I chose not to comment. There was no point in shooting myself in the foot like that.

There was no definition by which I was the best person to talk to about this, but I understood I was her best and only option. I wondered what had happened between her and Vanessa, but as long as she didn't volunteer information, I had no way of knowing.

I'd worried about what to say in response to all of her questions, but aside from making a few sympathetic noises and agreeing with whatever she said, she didn't give me the space to say a word.

Alice ranted until she tired herself out, like a child throwing a tantrum, and cried for a few more minutes before the bell rang and she composed herself.

"Thanks so much, Jake. I don't know how I would survive without you."

Usually, I wouldn't respond to her when she said things like that, but this time I really didn't know if I could say anything back to such a blatant lie.

How could she say things like this regularly and then turn around and say such awful things later?

Before this, I had thought little of our relationship, and like she'd said, I hadn't even thought of us going any further than dating. But I'd been happy, and I thought she had been as well. Was it something I'd done? Or something I didn't do?

I was busy with work, being department rep, school, the team and taking care of my younger siblings, but I'd always try my best to make time with her. Most of the time, it would be her canceling our plans to spend time with each other.

She landed a peck on my cheek and shocked me out of my torturous thoughts.

"See you later, Jake. Pick me up after school?"

I nodded like a puppet and could only watch as she ran out to her next class. She and many others had opted out of the early finals.

I could have opted out as well, but since my season was over and I wasn't doing too badly in any of my classes, I'd chosen to test out and just hang around until the showcase and graduation. This way, I could still spend time with my friends, but I could also help out with my siblings.

When I finally walked out of the room, it wasn't surprising that no one had waited for me. But then again, a lot of them had classes, and all the others would have left the campus to play around.

A few sophomores tried to strike up a conversation with me and a few juniors from the track team, but I could see how awkward they were. I waved them away to their classes and even walked a few of them there on my way to the gardens.