Monophobia

by Aquaman

Chapter 11: My Place Up High

Campus is quiet at this time of night — not quite silent and certainly not empty, but quiet in a way that makes it feel unreal. Without hundreds of bodies packed into them, the sidewalks between lecture halls feel unnaturally wide, and the air feels colder and heavier every time I see a group of people — or usually just one person — muscling their way through it. Nobody’s really moving anywhere right now. They’re all either already where they want to be, or going home to somewhere they’re wanted.

And then, drifting between them like a ghost without a house to haunt, there’s me. And Source, I guess, though he has been completely silent since we left the rush party a good fifteen minutes ago. I still don’t know where we’re going — or rather, where he’s leading me, and I’m being led for lack of anything better to do. God knows I’m not going back to the KNZ house tonight, though, and the farther we get away from my dorm, the less I feel like making the hike back there either.

So instead, I just keep trudging along behind him, staring at the sidewalk under my feet and shivering even with my coat on. Maybe once I’m done with whatever this is about to be, I can go hide from the world someplace a bit sunnier than this. Be a hermit on a tropical island or something.

“Here.”

It’s the first word I’ve heard from Source since we left the house. He’s pointing up at a squarish building in front of us about three stories high, with wide double doors at the front and covered walkways leading around to auxiliary wings on either side. While I’m getting my bearings, Source veers towards the wing on the left, and more specifically towards a big tree with branches hanging overtop of the walkway’s metal awning thing.

“What is this place?” I ask him, jogging to catch up again.

“Theater,” Source replies without stopping. “For plays and improv shows and shit.”

A vague memory from a campus tour I took last year floats to the front of my mind. I’ve seen this place before, but I haven’t been inside it, and it looks locked up tight right now.

“Are we…” I start to ask — and then Source reaches the tree, braces one foot inside a hollow in its trunk, and heaves himself up onto one of the lower branches, so the question I end up blurting out is, “What are you doing?”

He pauses and glances my way, braced in a half-crouch with both feet on the lower branch and his back braced against another one. “Figuratively or literally?” he blithely replies.

“I… either!” I sputter. “Both!”

Source chuckles and starts moving again, crawling hand over hand up and out onto the tree branch with his duffel bag balanced on his back. “You act like you’ve never climbed a tree before,” he says as he goes.

“I… haven’t?”

He stops again so he can squint down at me. “Really?”

“I grew up in the suburbs, we didn’t have trees!”

“Okay, well… now you’re gonna try it. Just do what I did.”

“And go where?” I ask, right before he shows me. With a grunt, Source swings himself off the branch and onto the roof of the sidewalk canopy. The metal vibrates from the impact but holds his weight just fine, and once he straightens up, he gestures towards the tree with a “we haven’t got all night” look on his face. If this is part of a joke being played on me, I don’t think I get it anymore.

“Come on, man, it’s easy,” he calls down to me. “You’ve done harder shit this week already.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t break my neck doing it,” I mutter. But Source is waiting for me and I still don’t really feel like leaving, so I do my best to follow the path he took up onto and across the tree branch, except with more shimmying on my belly than crawling. Also, he made sticking the landing on the canopy look way easier than it actually is.

“You good?” he asks over the fading echo of my knee hitting really hard metal.

“Figuratively or literally?” I reply through my teeth.

He laughs, then sticks out a hand to help me up. Once we’re both vertical, he nods up towards some scaffolding along the side of the theater’s main building that wasn’t visible from the ground.

“Onwards and upwards, then,” he says. I bite back a groan and keep following him.

Thankfully, the rest of the climb is a lot easier than the first part, and pretty soon we’re on top of what I guess is the roof of the theater proper. From this high up, I can see most of the campus lit up like a soundboard — little squares of yellow light from school buildings, mixed with reds and blues and every other shade from fairy lights inside dorms and, way in the distance, a few off-campus houses. I still don’t know why we’re really up here, but the view’s a pretty good reason by itself.

“Over here,” Source says, skirting around a raised partition bulging out of the roof. On the far side of it, there’s a bit more scaffolding coming up to about waist height and built over a tarp covering a pile of two-by-fours. Once he reaches the scaffolding, Source swings his bag around in front of him and unzips it, extracting a plastic bottle from inside that he tosses my way. I catch it, barely, with both hands and with my chest as a backstop. I just climbed my first tree. My arms are still a bit shaky.

“What’s this?” I ask Source.

“Soda bottle,” he bluntly replies.

“What’s in it?”

He glances towards me, brow glibly raised. “Soda.”

Source pulls a second bottle out of the bag, unscrews the cap, and takes a drink from it. Shrugging, I screw the cap off my own bottle, take a pull, and just about spew it all over the scaffolding.

“Oh, and some rum,” Source adds. “It might mostly be rum, actually.”

“No shit,” I cough, swallowing over and over again until I can breathe again past the liquor’s numbing, cinnamon-y burn. Source just grins again, then tosses the bag up onto the scaffolding and then hops up himself, motioning for me to grab a seat next to him.

He must have gotten something else from the bag while I was busy killing all my taste buds, because the moment I get settled up on the scaffolding, he tosses it into my lap. It’s a black-and-white marble notebook, time-worn but otherwise unmarked on the outside.

“And what’s this?” I ask again.

“You ask a lot of obvious questions, you know that?”

Source takes a swig of mostly-rum and twitches his free hand’s fingers as he does, telling me wordlessly to open the notebook and start reading. So, after another bracing shot of almost-entirely-rum, I flip the cover and the first few pages back. Chicken-scratch handwriting fills just about every inch of paper, some words scribbled out and the rest organized into cramped rhyming lines.

“Sunlight, blacklight, dead of night,” I read, squinting and angling the paper so I can make out the words in what little ambient light bleeds up from the campus below. “Echoes of an endless fright… frozen, floating in mid-flight… living’s only half the… does that say ‘flight’ again?”

“Fight,” Source corrects me. “‘Living’s only half the fight.’ I don’t know what it means either.”

I look up at him, then back at the notebook — and then it all clicks together. “Wait, you… you wrote this?”

“Wrote everything in there,” he says, shrugging up at the stars. “Think that one was… ninth grade? Yeah, there was an eclipse that summer. I was inspired.”

I look down at the notebook again. “It’s, um… y’know, it’s…”

“It’s…” Source drags the word out as he glances over at me. “Fucking terrible?”

“No!” I tell him, wilting as he smiles. “It’s fine! Good. Good poem.”

“How are you that good at poker and this bad at lying?”

I grit my teeth. He’s right — about me and the poem. “It’s not great, no,” I mumble.

“I believe the words I used were ‘fucking’ and ‘terrible.’” He pauses to chuckle and drink. “But I wrote it. With my own fifteen-year-old edgy little hand.” He levels his eyes on me, upgrading from glancing to pointedly staring. “Not very fratty of me, is it?”

Oh, okay. That’s what he’s doing — what the point of all this is. “You were fifteen,” I say. “No one’s fratty when they’re fifteen. But you changed, and I…”

“You didn’t?”

I shake my head. “I’m the same little kid I’ve always been. Just… clueless.”

Source leans forward, blowing a soft sigh out of his nose as he gestures at the notebook. “Do me a favor,” he says. “Flip to the last page real quick.”

I do as he told me, and find a longer poem waiting for me — still definitely Source’s handwriting, but a bit neater with fewer words scratched out. “You want me to read this one too?”

“I mean, you can if you want. But when you get a chance, check the top of the page there.”

I follow his finger towards a set of numbers scribbled into the top left corner. It’s a date — from this year, less than a month ago. “Oh, and I actually like that one, so be nice about it if it sucks too,” Source says when I look up again.

“You’re still writing?” I ask, and I’m bad enough at lying that I don’t bother trying to hide my surprise.

“Sure am,” he brightly replies after another drink. “Bit less edgy now, like… twenty percent less edgy, but yeah. Still doin’ it. And talk about ‘changing,’ you wanna know something else? I almost quit when I got to school here. Because I was never gonna get a job doing this, right? Had to do something practical. Go into engineering like my dad did.” He throws me another wry glance. “‘Cause, y’know, Source Code. That’s my full name. Never understood why people do that, name their kids after what they think they’re gonna grow up to be. I mean, I’m sure you get it. Your dad a gamer?”

“Uh… my mom, actually.”

Source twitches his eyebrows once but doesn’t make anything more of it. “That what you wanna do, though? Video games, computers, all that?”

“I…”

I don’t know. That’s what I thought I wanted to do — but I never really, truly thought about it. I just signed up for Computer Science courses and slogged my way through them, and not once has coding or circuit boards or anything mechanical ever made me think “I could do this forever.” Not like…

“Music,” I mumble — like I’m confessing to a priest, and not drunk on a rooftop with somebody I think is my friend. “I’ve been, uh… messing around with it. It’s…”

“Completing,” Source finishes for me. “Like patching a hole you didn’t realize you had in you. Because you thought you were the only one who wasn’t already a whole person. Who didn't know exactly who they were and weren't.”

Yeah. It’s exactly like that. I guess he really is a poet. When I don’t say anything in response, he looks at me like a librarian reminding me to pay a late fee.

“Am I being too subtle?” he intones.

“No,” I mutter, snapping the notebook closed and handing it back to Source. “I get it. But it doesn’t matter. I need everybody in the frat to like me if I want a bid, and they’re all just… faking it. Humoring me.”

“You think I’m humoring you right now?”

“Well, not you, but –”

“You think Sloop’s just pretending to be a giant O&O nerd? The whole frat lost their shit over you last night as a bit?”

“I… I don’t know,” I mumble. “I heard Al and Case talking about… I guess I thought about me. Something about a pet project.”

Source’s mouth drops open for a moment, then he pulls his lips tight and leans back on his hands, “soda” bottle trapped beneath the fingers closer to me. “Well, I can tell you one thing for sure,” he says through a sigh. “They weren’t talking about you.”

“Who were they talking about?” I ask — and in response, Source just lolls his head towards me, purses his lips, and points straight up at his own chin. “Wait, you? How are you a pet project?”

Source takes a drink before answering. “Okay, so brief KNZ history lesson,” he begins. “Two years ago, Al’s a sophomore, Hawthorn is President, and the chapter as a whole goes the hardest of anyone on campus. So, end of the spring semester, they decide they’re gonna throw the mother of all ragers, and they do, and it’s a clusterfuck. There’s fights, the cops get called, undergrads get arrested, two people end up in the hospital. Admin says, ‘That’s it, you guys have gone too far, you’re on probation for a year, and if you fuck up again you’re gone for good.’”

He spreads his arms for emphasis. “Enter me, eighteen-year-old edgy poet who’s only gotten drunk once before at his cousin’s wedding. I turn out for fall rush because a bunch of my hallmates are going out too, they end up… I don’t even know where, but I end up at some ratty off-campus house KNZ has to use during probation. I meet Case… or corner him, really. Talk his ears off about a book we’d both read, I think? Any event, we trade numbers, he pretty much adopts me for the rest of rush, and it isn’t until the end of the semester, about a year ago from now, that I find out why.”

Source stares up at the stars, lost in memory. “He tells me that KNZ isn’t coming back from probation, or at least the old KNZ isn’t. The way he sees it, the chapter can either take control of itself or have control taken away from it, and if they’re gonna do the first one, it’s gotta start with their new bids. People like me, who want to party but want to keep their shit together while they’re doing it, and who’ve got more going for them than just partying. And he was just the rush chair at that point, just a sophomore, but he was already gunning for president, and he thought I had the chops to be the next one after him.”

Source shakes his head, chuckling. “Or hell, I don’t know, maybe he just wanted me on his side come election time. Fuckin’ PoliSci majors.”

“So… he won, I guess?” I say. “The election?”

“He survived the election,” Source replies. “And from minute one the upperclassmen have been on his ass, ‘cause they wanna make up for the year they lost on probation by going even harder this year. And… okay, this might sound crazy to you, but trust me, we haven’t. And I’ll give you three guesses who’s been the most pissed about that.”

That’d be two more guesses than I need, and Source knows it. “Alkaline,” I answer.

“Hey, got it in one,” Source soberly confirms — which is kind of impressive, with how much rum and/or soda he’s had since he started telling this story. “And on the one hand, I kinda get it. He came in when the frat was one thing, he lost a year of what he thought he was supposed to get out of that thing, and now Case is trying to make it something entirely different. It’s not entirely fair. On the other hand…”

Source trails off, and I learn from the tipsy lilt in my voice — and what words I actually say — that I’m not as impressive as Source by a long shot. “He’s a dick.”

Source laughs in agreement, but his tone gets heavier with each word that follows. “He is such a fucking dick about it. I mean, we straight-up lost rushes last semester because he all but chased them off with a stick. He didn’t even run for president the whole time he’s been here, but he’s loud and obnoxious and… God, much as Case wants to think otherwise, he’s got some people on his side. Not enough to really change anything, but enough to fuck things up if he wants to.”

“Does he want to?”

Source gives me a cock-eyed glance. “You tell me, Mr. Wizard.”

Fuck me. Maybe Woody was right. Maybe I am a liability. “Look, I…” I try to say. “I-I’m sorry, I just –”

“You just showed him his whole ass in front of the whole chapter, and it fuckin’ ruled, and he fuckin’ deserved it,” Source says. “So first things first, you can stop apologizing, because that was awesome and you know it.”

I waste a few seconds wordlessly working my jaw up and down, caught perfectly between wanting to argue with Source and really wanting to believe him. “Okay, yeah, but now Al’s pissed at me, right?” I eventually say. “And you said some people are on his side. If he tells them I shouldn’t get a bid, that Woody shouldn’t…”

Source’s eyes narrow. “What’s Woody got to do with it?”

Nothing, or maybe everything. I don’t know. I don’t think I’d know even if I was sober right now. “He just… he thinks Al might take it out on both of us. Or maybe he thinks that, or maybe he just really wants me to get a bid, and I just… I was a dick to him earlier. I’ve been… I don’t know. I don’t know how any of this works.”

Instead of filling the silence right away after I finish Source, Source just stares at me for a few seconds — long enough that I start to wonder whether I said something wrong. “God, you’re me,” he finally murmurs. “Holy shit.”

“I’m… what?”

Just like he’s been doing all night, Source answers my question with a story. “Okay, remember how I said I ‘cornered’ Case when I went out for rush last year? I left out the part where I spent, like, a full twenty minutes beforehand juicing myself up to even talk to him at all. ‘Cause he was the super-chill frat guy, right? And I was some dork who wrote poetry and didn’t know what parties really even were, let alone what I was supposed to do at ‘em. What being social was supposed to look or feel like.”

I’ve been taking Source at his word all night up to now, but that’s a step too far. Maybe he’s got layers to him, but there’s no way the friendly, confident, effortlessly cool guy on the other side of this scaffolding was ever really like me. Not in that way. And I don’t say that out loud, but Source seems to get the message from whatever he sees on my face.

“Man, I meant what I told you your first night out,” he says, staring at me and waiting until I stare back before he continues. “Nobody knows who they are coming into college. This is where you’re supposed to start figuring that out, and whatever you did or didn’t do when you were a kid, whoever you thought you were before now… it only matters if you decide it does. And I decided I wanted to try something different, just like you did. Just like you’re doing.”

“But I only did it because –”

“You did it,” Source interrupts. “I’m dead fucking serious, that’s all that matters. I rushed last year because my hallmates wanted to go out and I didn’t have anything better to do. You know Mandarin? He rushed second semester of his freshman year because his dad paid him to. Literally told him, ‘Go make some friends, or I’m cutting your tuition off.’ And he did, and look at him now! Look at you, man!”

I don’t want to look at me. I know who I am — a nerd, and a fuckup, and an unlikeable, unlovable loser. Or at least, that’s the echo of someone’s voice bouncing around in my brain right now — not Source’s, not Sweetie Belle’s, not really even mine. I never really thought about who it belonged to before. I just always listened to it anyway.

My eyes are burning. I look away and try to rub them dry. When Source speaks again, his voice is softer, and totally sincere.

“This isn’t a fluke, Button,” he tells me. “And it’s not a joke, or a prank, or some other fucked-up fake thing. You’re a cool guy. You’re funny, you’re interesting, you’re fun at parties, and you look out for your friends. If you wanted to, you could probably be chapter president in a couple years. After me, obviously. I’ve got dibs after Case.”

“But Al…” I can’t stop myself from saying.

“Al can fuck himself,” Source scoffs — but he doesn’t answer the question I tried to leave unspoken, so I go ahead and spell it out.

“Is he gonna fuck me and Woody?” I ask. “Did I fuck us over with the poker game?”

Source sighs, and for the first time tonight, he looks less than sure about what he says to me. “I mean, Woody’s a legacy, so he’s probably in whether he wants to be or not. And as far as I’ve heard, last night helped you a lot more than it hurt you. If you don’t get a bid, it won’t be your fault.”

That’s still not really an answer — which I guess is really all the answer I need. “I guess that’s worth something,” I mumble into my bottle.

“It’s worth a lot, Button,” Source insists. “The frat’s in a fucked-up place right now, and the only reason you’re in the middle of all the fucked-up-edness is because you’d be a lock for a bid if we had our shit together. And honestly, I talked a lotta shit about Al, but he’s not a total psychopath. He’ll go with the crowd more likely than not. Just… I don’t know, butter him up a little bit tomorrow. Bring him a beer or two, act like he’s hot shit in front of your date. He’ll eat it up, and you’ll be fine.”

After a moment, Source realizes I’m staring at him out of confusion and not reverence. “Oh shit, uh… spoiler alert for tomorrow night,” he adds. “House party. Bring a date. That’s the theme, if there is one. Blame the upperclassmen, it was their idea.”

Great. Bring a date. Just select a girl from the list of exactly one who I’m on speaking terms with here, who I completely blew my shot with tonight, and who apparently might start taking shots from any guy within arm’s reach as soon as she leaves our dorm.

But that’s according to Alkaline, who’s a dick not just to me but seemingly to his entire frat. Why wouldn’t he just make something like that up just to upset me? Actually, knowing him, why would he have been doing anything else? I know Sweetie Belle way better than Al does, and I know she’s not like that no matter what he, or the sour little voice in my head, or anybody else outside my head thinks.

And maybe I don’t completely know myself yet, but according to Source, the me he’s met isn’t all that bad. That’s definitely worth something. And I guess there’s no way to find out exactly what it’s worth but to keep moving forward with it.

“Might focus on the first buttering-up option,” I tell Source. “Save my date the trouble.”

“Fair enough,” Source answers. “Sounds like things went well earlier, though?”

They could’ve gone better — but they could’ve gone a lot worse too. All of this could be a lot worse, and I’d feel a lot better if I stopped worrying so much about what could be happening and focused on what actually is.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I say. “When I’m sober.”

“At graduation, then?”

I clunk my bottle against his, matching his grin with my own. “I’ll drink to that,” I say — and as we both do just that, the voice in my head doesn’t say a word.

===

I don’t know exactly how long we stay up on the theater’s roof for, just that our bottles are empty and the moon is hanging straight over our heads by the time we call it a night. Rather than climbing back onto the oak tree we used to get up, Source just slips off the sidewalk canopy to hang by his fingers and drops a couple feet down to the ground, and I do the same thing after him without eating even a little shit. My arms are still shaking afterwards, though. I really, seriously need to start going to the gym.

“You know your way back from here?” Source asks once we get some distance from the theater.

“More or less,” I tell him. “I’ll try not to puke on any buildings this time.”

“Is that a habit of yours?”

“I hope not.”

Source laughs and shakes his head. “Boy, I don’t miss being a rush,” he mutters, before chucking me on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow, Mr. Wizard.”

Source treks off back in the direction we came from earlier. I watch him go, and only realize once he’s completely out of view that when I said I “more or less” knew my way back to my dorm, only one of those words was accurate.

“Where the hell am I?” I mutter as I pull out my phone, because I figure there has to be a campus map somewhere online that even my sloshed brain can interpret. But instead of lighting up when I lift it in front of my face, my phone screen stays dark.

Oh yeah. I turned it off earlier, when I was trying to avoid thinking about how badly I fumbled my chance with Sweetie Belle. I hold the button on my phone’s side until the manufacturer logo glows on the screen, suddenly anxious for it to boot up. I wonder if she texted me again. Maybe she’s still awake. Maybe she’ll find drunk me charming — or tolerable, at least. I can work with tolerable, probably.

A half-second after my phone’s lock screen appears, it buzzes with a text message notification — not from Sweetie Belle, but from Woody. I starting reading the preview:

Hey man, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think

And that’s all I get a chance to see before another notification bumps it down the screen. My heart leaps. This one is from Sweetie Belle:

Are you still awake?

Yes, Sweetie Belle, I sure am. How quickly can I sober up? Is there a coffee place –

Another notification — Sweetie Belle again:

Please call me

Then another one — a missed call from her. Two missed calls. Three. My heart leaps again, and doesn’t stick the landing. This doesn’t feel like she wants to pick up where we left off earlier. Something’s wrong.

More notifications, from the rush chat — a flood of them, popping up so fast I can’t read anything but the first few letters of each message. They sound excited about something. About what? What the hell did I miss?

I swipe up and unlock my phone, but before I can open the rush chat, one last text message comes in, from Crescent:

yo where are you? the rush chats blowing up over your girl. you good?

My coat doesn’t do a thing to keep out the chill that rolls through me. I open Crescent’s message and type out a reply with trembling thumbs:

What are you talking about?

Right away, an icon pops up to show that Crescent is typing something, then it vanishes, then it pops up again. Seconds tick by, each one longer and more nauseating than the last, and finally:

shit

uh

okay so

dont shoot the messenger

Below the last message, there’s a hyperlink to a site I don’t recognize, and a link preview that leaves nothing to the imagination — an icon of a cartoon woman with blonde hair and a massive chest bulging under a crop-top with “COLLEGE” printed on it, and the caption, “Hoe-Ed Central – Your One-Stop Source for Campus Cuties and Sorority Sluts.”

There’s no way. This isn’t real. Al’s full of shit. I know Sweetie Belle better than this.

I clench my teeth and tap the link, and reality — impossible, shitty reality — sinks in.

There’s no mistaking Sweetie Belle’s face in the photos that appear: the loops of her pink-and-purple hair and the softness of her grass-green eyes, and the creamy white shade of her completely exposed skin. It’s her kneeling and facing away from the camera, the swell of her bare chest just visible past the arm she’s lifted to tie back her hair. It’s her with her eyes squeezed shut and her lips wrapped around something that’s not in the frame and doesn’t need to be.

It’s her on her back, head thrown back and fists clenched — her on her hands and knees, face pressed into a mattress — her with her hand rising towards her face, grimacing as she starts to wipe at streaks of off-white…

It’s her. It’s really her. It’s exactly what Alkaline said she was. And I didn’t know — or wasn’t told — or refused to see what was obvious to everyone on the planet but me.

My palm and fingers are slick with sweat. I can barely keep my phone steady enough to close the browser window, swipe out of the app, squeeze the little brick as hard as it takes to keep me from throwing it as hard as I can anywhere away from me.

And while I’m thinking about it — jaw locked, face flushed, eyes stinging from something I don’t have a name for that I’m a few seconds away from drowning inside of — my phone buzzes again. It’s sending me reminders of Sweetie Belle’s texts, the ones I’ve read but haven’t opened yet. The times she tried to call me. The hours she thought I was ignoring her when she… what? Wanted to explain herself? Knew I’d be a baby about this? Pitied me?

I blink hard — fast — not fast enough. Tears trail down my face. I wipe them away, scrub with my hands until my cheeks are dry and chafed and cherry-red.

And then I stuff my phone and my hands in my coat pockets and start moving in whatever direction I was already facing. Maybe this path leads back to my dorm. Maybe it leads nowhere. All I know is I can’t stay here. I can’t think about this. I don’t know what I should think about this.

So I don’t think anything at all. I just keep walking. And with every single step, the voice in my head gets louder, and seems angrier, and sounds more and more like it’s the only thing in the world that’s ever told me the truth.

Author's Note:

Comments

[Miller Minus]

It's been fun seeing the whole cast sans Button receive a new dimension these last couple chapters. Well... Sweetie's isn't very fun.

I remember the sexual dynamic between guys and girls in high school and how upsetting it was even for my closeted self--the idea that every girl who participated in sex was a slut, but that her willingness to put out was somehow also the core measure of her worth. The "lock that can be opened by many keys" metaphor in particular got tossed around a lot.

(in uni I was in a program whose male population was 95% button mashes, Woodys and crescents, and the girls in my class all knew their worth, so thankfully that sort of talk disappeared then)

I wasn't expecting this story to explore this topic, but I'm glad to see that you're not holding back. I wonder if some deep-seated misogyny on Our Hero's part will be coming to light.

[creep]

the idea presented in the previous chapter comes to life. not many can deal with someone being that particularly active, i know i probably couldnt have the guts if it was a girl i knew in my childhood and all of that. interested to see how it unfolds

[FuzzyVeeVee]

A haunting twist. The realisations through 'late to the event' post-update messages on a phone are truly a gutpunching way to realise. Her repeated missed calls, that goes for the heart. As a friend put with something else "Spears to the heart". Poor Sweetie.

But Button, you are hurt, you know don't know what its doing yet. You've got some thinking to go through my boy. Because what he thinks is true sure isn't what I believed happened (or, if I may be a little cheeky, not even what some other comments may be thinking).

Check that post upload date, Button, you may have some new evidence as to the true nature of this thing turning up. Sweetie Belle knew Al when they spoke before. She already disliked him. ("It's more than he deserves" or something to that effect). There is history there, and Al knew her off the bat too. He got beaten by Button, and then he got pulled up by Case. He can't go at Button directly, so he's taken the most hideous option of all. Revenge of a sort that is more horrid than most, to post his own 'damning evidence' attacking an innocent's character from things mistakenly done in confidence, before she knew what kind of abhorant person he was and left that guy, I'll bet.

What a genuine vile piece of work. Logic would say, go right to her, be there for, and the moment you get a chance, contact Source. But Button's head is elsewhere right now in its own problems, and my great worry... and prediction... stems from that what Al's done to Sweetie here, puts him in a position where he feels he must take a date to a place and meet the very man who did that to her. The man he's just been told he needs to cozy up to or he'll lose his (believed to him) fragile social worth he's gained. That's a choice where trying to have your cake and eat it is going to lose the one that matters most to you.

We have our big conflict of choice now. That's for sure. Time to choose what really matters most. We all know the answer, but it's oh-so-easy to sit, type and be logical, and so much harder to bear in mind how someone that age and caught in the winds of social worry really thinks. Low self-esteem and anxiety are a nasty combo. Maybe not this exact situation, but I've been there, and there may be some rough seas till he realises some life lessons.

Harsh, more cutting than I expected this story would go, but damn, that sent me for a loop of hollow stomach feeling last night. Now I'm anxious for that follow up, as much as I am fearful for it.

[FuzzyVeeVee]

11640182
In a follow up to my own train of thought really. Something observed about Button is how much he (rather understandably) sees things from his own flaws. That of course is the viciousness of what he struggles with, entirely understandable, it directs flaw and problem and failure at himself. It's been his flaw throughout the entire story, overthinking how whatever he does could be bad for him.

But this? This now? There is going to have to be a rapid re-evaluation of who's troubles he needs to focus exclusively on for the time being. And part of that worry in my last comment is after so much time building self defeating habits, that could be a recipe for a real problem. There's a minefield of 'letting his own worries about stepping out of KPZ line hinder his doing the right thing by Sweetie' ahead ready to blow up in his face here if he doesn't get his mind focused right.

Thankfully, we've also seen he is capable of avoiding this. Him standing his ground against Sweetie even being frustrated and angry with his attempt to keep her fleeing the stage was a glimpse that he is capable of putting aside his own worries and recognising it. It's been some time since I've pulled for a character to make the right calls. Especially one so relatable in occasionally eerily accurate ways of how overthinking, self-defeating assumption and anxiety work and feel.