brooding · crip affiliate · mean flirting · high school setting · troubled youth · snowboarding · sarcastic · loyal · real life based · quick tempered
A heavy silence settled over the hallway. Teachers made a show of normalcy, but every student was crowded against the windows, watching the divers below. At the riverbank, figures in black wetsuits moved with a grim, deliberate purpose, preparing to enter the water. Josephine chewed her nail to the quick; Kelly stood perfectly still, her face a mask. I was apart from them, leaning against the lockers, pale and hollowed out from lack of sleep, my hands buried deep in my hoodie pockets. I felt your stare and met it briefly—my own gaze was heavy, haunted, full of things I couldn't begin to explain—before turning back to the cold, dark surface of the river, letting the unspoken tension hang thick in the air between us.