Several days later...

 

Iahn groaned into his pillow, reluctant to unbury his head from the pillows.

 

Today was Monday.

 

The first day at a new school.

 

Every kid’s worst nightmare.

 

He had managed to hide in his room the majority of the time since they moved in; filling his sketchbooks like he was going to lose his hands in half a year and texting his friends almost non-stop about how they were all going to run away, buy train tickets, and come swim in the pool he told them about.

 

Other than those saving-grace distractions, the last few days hadn’t been much better than the first. Definitely not any easier.

 

He didn’t tell his friends about how mean Yuen was, he couldn’t. So, he didn’t bring the teenager up, and neither did they and as a result, they didn’t talk about him much at all.

 

Thank the starlight.

 

Yuen’s known him for barely 4 or 5 days and the older has hated him from the minute he got here, for no reason! For the mere fact that he exists!

 

So yeah, he would rather not think about Yuen if he didn’t have to.

 

He’s even already using Yuen’s music as an indicator of whether he’s in his room and if it’s safe to go down the hallway.

 

Worse yet, Yuen was even less happy about sharing the bathroom.

 

It’s right across the hall from Iahn’s room and connected to Yuen’s.

 

It’s the only one upstairs that isn’t in the master bedroom, and as much as he wanted to avoid Yuen, he was not going to intrude in there.

 

Needless to say, he’s been using the one downstairs as much as possible.

 

Iahn took a forceful deep breath through his nose and sat up for the third time in less than 10 minutes.

 

He had gotten up and gotten dressed a long time ago, but every time he tried to walk out his door, he couldn’t do it and ended up face-down in his pillows again.

 

As he glanced at the clock on his phone though, he finally couldn’t delay it any longer.

 

Pushing himself up once again, he slowly blew a nervous breath out of his mouth, letting his cheeks puff up as he shuffled towards the door and grabbed the cool doorknob with his clammy palm.

 

He twisted the knob and slowly peeked into the hallway; just like every day since the first night, he got here thanks to nearly peeing himself when Yuen came out of his room at the same time he did once. He had never stepped back so fast in his life or closed a door so quietly. You’d think he’d escaped captivity on an alien spaceship and was avoiding capture.

 

So, to avoid breaking that record for near misses, he carefully checked that the coast was clear every time he wanted to leave his room now. So far, he had managed to avoid him for the most part.

 

The only time everyone in the house was in the same room and was unavoidable was mealtimes. Which was weird on a whole other level, because Grandpa & he never did mealtimes like that.

 

Usually, they would just decide what to make, and cook it together. But here, it was usually ordered from a restaurant and delivered, or the house-keeper lady made it before she left at 3 o’clock, and it was just warmed up in the oven at dinner time — or worst case, microwaved.

 

Sitting at the table with his mom and two strangers was the most awkward thing he had ever experienced, and he had had a lot of awkward experiences as of late.

 

Eating a meal with ⅔ people who don’t like him and don’t bother to hide it, and ⅓ who acknowledges his existence in the way a CEO acknowledges their normal office worker in an elevator.

 

Just thinking about it gave him stomach knots that were borderline painful.

 

It was weird seeing his mother home all the time too. Even just knowing she’s in the house is weird.

 

He isn’t used to it. And he isn’t sure if he ever will be.

 

He was simultaneously glad and annoyed that it had been uneventful since his first day here. On the one hand, it was nice that things were consistent. On the other, he was paranoid and, on his toes, nearly every minute of every day and it was starting to affect his sleep.

 

Aside from the shouting, Yuen seems to do with his father almost every afternoon when the man gets home from work, nothing else happened around here. The two of them are on even worse terms than him and his mom. It shocked him the first time it happened. If he ever spoke to his mother like that, she would make him sleep outside.

 

Yuen was older than him though. Not as dependent on adults, they didn’t have as much control over him. If he got kicked out, he would probably just go stay with a friend or even sleep in his car or something.

 

Maybe someday Iahn would be like that too. Not having to worry about what your parent would do if you broke a rule or talked back. You could stay with a friend or just wander around and stay up all night.

 

Iahn shook his head, this is no time to fantasize. He has to get to school, and what’s worse? It’s the same school Yuen goes to.

 

Some semi-private institute, with all the different buildings linked together and sharing spaces and everything. It sounded more like a college campus than a high school.

 

It has every grade from daycare & preschool all the way up to high school seniors, and there’s even a community college campus farther down the road that’s part of the same thing but needed a separate place because colleges are much bigger. And all of it was owned by the same company/family who built them some 30 years ago.

 

It’s the most unconventional school Iahn had ever heard of, and just thinking about how many people there are in one place made him feel sick.

 

Another wave of nausea hit him and Iahn covered his mouth with his hand. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it through breakfast like this.”

 

Other than those details, he knew extraordinarily little about this school.

 

He couldn’t even guess as to what it was going to be like or how many people go to the school — it had to be in the thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands with a school that size — and the fact that Yuen goes there too didn’t help one bit.

 

He only knew this much about it because he had dared to ask his mom the other day and she gave him the Wi-Fi password instead, telling him to look it up himself. She didn’t even remember the name of the school, she asked Mr.Min.

 

If the kids at this school were as nice as Yuen, he should head out back and dig his own grave before heading off today.

 

Iahn finally stepped out of his room and mumbled on his way to the stairs.

 

“Maybe I’ll get hit by a bus on the way and never have to find out.”

 

---

 

‘I’m gonna be sick.’ Iahn stared at his plate of swimming sugar and had to start breathing a little deeper just so he didn’t add stomach acid to the mix.

 

‘I don’t think I can finish this.’

 

He grabbed the glass of juice above it and deliberately blocked his view of the plate as he guzzled it.

 

Mealtimes have been the worst. All four of them sitting around the table like enemies at a war table or a gang of old & new gangsters coming to rocky agreements about territory. Yuen glaring at everyone and everything — even his plate or looking so tired he might not have even realized they were there; His mom putting way too much energy into not smearing her lipstick as she ate like a bird, having wine with every meal, even breakfast; And Mr. Min sitting next to him like a police superintendent, making him feel like if he didn’t finish his food, he’d write him up or send him to juvie.

 

When Mr. Min suddenly cleared his throat, Iahn jumped like somebody with a machine gun had just burst through the windows, and Yuen smirked from across the table; not even bothering to hide his mocking amusement.

 

“Boys, your mother and I both have meetings this morning, so Yuen,”

 

The teen scowled at his father.

 

Iahn couldn’t help but think, ‘Not so amused now, are you.’ Not that he had any room to talk. He had a bad feeling about whatever Mr. Min wanted to say.

 

“You need to take your brother to school and the administrative office to get him set up.”

 

Iahn gasped — completely forgetting that his mouth was full of juice — and immediately started coughing into his cup. He barely managed to not drop it and almost sloshed bright yellow juice all over his breakfast as he clumsily tried to get the glass back onto the table without breaking it over tipping it over, where it landed with a ‘thunk’. His mother jumped as cried out in shock and disgust. Iahn turned away from his plate, trying to cough into his elbow as the droplets in his windpipe tried to slip further into his lungs and jumped himself again and switched sides because Mr. Min was on that side and he would rather meet his mother’s grossed out expression as she watched him hack juice out of his windpipe.

 

Yuen’s chair almost hit the floor as he stood up and slammed his hands on the table, causing Iahn to jump yet again, rattled, along with every other dish and piece of cutlery on the table.

 

“Why should I!? He’s her fucking kid—”

 

“Watch. Your. Tongue.” Mr. Min snapped.

 

Even though Iahn wasn’t the one getting yelled at, he wanted to shrink into the corner, cover his head just at Mr. Min’s tone. He was scary enough with just his presence, but when he yelled, it almost made tears come to Iahn’s eyes.

 

Yuen just glared even more fiercely at him — as if he’d won something by making his scary dad angry.

 

“I’ll watch my mouth when you kick this gold-digger and her stupid kid to the curb.”

 

Mr. Min slammed his fist on the table and Iahn flinched and felt his eyes start to sting prickling with tears.

 

“Apologize.”

 

It was only one word, but it was enough to make Iahn start shaking. One word had never seemed so threatening before and he wanted it to be over. He couldn’t even tell what he was chanting in his own head to get through this, but he felt the gripping sensation around his heart start to tighten, the anxiety in his stomach erupting like a swarm of bees in a blender, and the uneven breaths from choking a moment ago began to increase.

 

“Make me.” Yuen held his father’s glare.

 

He wanted to die.

 

“Very well. It seems your stepbrother means more to you than your car or your computer. In that case, you can either spend all day here with Iahn,” Iahn flinched and shrunk as his name was mentioned. “Or you can go to school together and hang out with your friends without having to get up at 5 am tomorrow to walk to school.”

 

Mr. Min stood up, straightening his tie as he checked his watch, then his phone. “Your decision.”

 

Mr. Min walked around the table behind Iahn, and no one noticed how he stiffened so much steel would be jealous, simultaneously frozen solid and shrinking even further into his seat like there was a lion stalking around him and this was the one spot where it couldn’t see him, and he would be safe so long as he didn’t draw its attention.

 

It was a miracle he hadn’t shed tears, but in truth, he was too scared to even do that.

 

“I’ll be late tonight.”

 

Iahn heard the unique sound of a kiss but he didn’t dare to take his attention off of Yuen who was both scandalized at the threat, disgusted at the PDA, and aghast that his dad wasn’t listening to him; perhaps this method of his for getting his father to listen to how displeased he was with something had worked in the past but this time it had earned him the opposite of what he wanted.

 

Iahn was desperate for a black hole to open in the room and either take him or everyone else. Either way, he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be far far away, as far as humanly possible.

 

No matter which path Yuen chose from his ultimatum, both were equally bad for Iahn and made worse by the fact that Yuen was now angry and in a roundabout way, Iahn was the cause. He knew it wasn’t rational to believe that it was his fault, but he also knew that — ration be damned — Yuen would probably see it that way.

 

As Yuen began to argue uselessly with his father again, Iahn unconsciously tuned himself out. It was strange the first time this happened to him. He still remembers that feeling of regressing into himself. He was 7 years old; he doesn’t remember what was said but he remembers sitting on a dusty old tan couch in someone’s rundown apartment. His mom and her boyfriend at the time yelling at each other on the other side of the coffee table. He had been crying silently, trying not to draw attention to himself, just like now, and the tears trickled to a stop as this same… detaching sensation slowly came over him. He was staring down at his hands, watching the fight from the top through his peripheral vision but it was like he was both there and not. Like he was both there and outside of himself, watching as if he was a third party.

 

He remembers his mom grabbing his wrist and dragging him to the car, but he remembers it as if it happened to someone else.

 

Now that he thinks about it… after that, when his mom got a new boyfriend and wanted to introduce Iahn to him, that was the first time he had a panic attack.

 

“FINE!” Yuen suddenly shouted as his dad walked out the door and shot a glare that could wither plants at Iahn.

 

“Get in the car or I’m leaving you here.”

 

Iahn jumped like a mouse and watched Yuen stomp towards the back of the house, grabbing his backpack off the back of his chair and this time it did fall over from the force.

 

Iahn glanced at his mom, only to find her on her phone, not paying attention.

 

With no other choice, he stood up quickly, grabbing his own backpack from under the table beside his seat, and ran after Yuen through the kitchen, to the garage door tucked in the corner.

 

Silence had never made him more uncomfortable. And that was saying something considering he quite enjoyed the quiet.

 

Yuen’s quiet anger however was a lot worse than his loud one, even when coupled with open disdain.

 

When he’s quiet, it somehow felt like Iahn was the one in the wrong. Like he’s the one who did something to Yuen.

 

He glanced at Yuen again. At least the teen wasn’t a distracted driver like his mom. He hasn’t even tried to reach for his phone since they got in the car, even though the ringer had gone off a few times.

 

Iahn couldn’t say that he wasn’t smashing himself up against the car door anyway. If only he could have sat in the backseat without it being weird and drawing more attention — or better yet, he could’ve just walked to school. Yeah, he’d be late, but would that be such a bad thing? Anything would be better than this.

 

Eventually, an enormous dark green building came into view, along with dozens of other kids with backpacks and uniforms, more and more of them condensing on the sidewalks the closer they got to the building.

 

As soon as the car pulled into the parking lot with dozens of others and stopped, Yuen was out and headed for the building before Iahn could even get his seatbelt off.

 

“Keep up or you're on your own, brat.” Yuen snapped at him and Iahn flinched but did his best to keep up.

 

The more kids that surrounded them, the closer he stuck to Yuen. The intimidation was almost too much to handle. Not to mention, a lot of them were looking his way and glancing at him; most likely because they didn’t recognize him, but he also got the distinct impression that it had something to do with Yuen too.

 

Iahn’s not blind, Yuen was a handsome boy with a cool attitude when he wasn’t glaring at everything. He exuded the ‘cool’ atmosphere that you normally only see around characters in movies and stuff. It wasn’t surprising that he was popular.

 

Little did Iahn know just how popular his soon to be stepbrother and his friends actually were.

 

Iahn tried to focus on following Yuen without stepping on his heels but there were a lot of students. There was a space bubble around Yuen as he walked into the building and through the halls, like everybody knew not to get too close to him and some of them were shooting Iahn concerned looks — even warnings, probably thinking that he was just new and didn’t know to not get too close to the older boy’s space. That was the power of an older student in this part of the building (the middle school part, if Iahn had to guess) where everyone was around Iahn’s age from the looks of it.

 

All Iahn had done was walk through the hallway and he was both mortified and exhausted.

 

As soon as a door with a small green sign with the words ‘Administrative Office’ in crisp white letters came into view, Yuen said, “There, you can take it from here.”

 

Just like that, one second Yuen was in front of him and the next he was disappearing through the sea of students. Not even an “At school, we don’t know each other.” like Iahn half expected. Iahn couldn’t even open his mouth before Yuen was gone.

 

Abandoned in the hallway, Iahn’s hands curled around his backpack straps and he hesitated before heading towards the office. This part of the hallway was a little more abandoned because there were no lockers over here, it was mostly students migrating their way towards their classes before the final bell.

 

Iahn felt like every single individual nerve in his body was fraying and shriveling up like dried squid in the sun.

 

Despite how nerve-wracking it was, Iahn pushed the office door open and went up to the desk.

 

It was a decent-sized office but Iahn felt it was a little bit small for a building this size and it had the feel of a dentist waiting room rather than a school office. Granted Iahn had only ever been in one school office before and it was run by a kind little old lady who lived down the street from his grandpa whom he used to mow the lawn for, so Iahn was quite familiar with her.

 

As he walked up to the next, an older middle-aged woman with dark brown curly hair in a red cardigan raised her eyes from her computer screen. She readjusted her glasses on her face as if to get a better look at Iahn before asking, “Yes, what do you need?”

 

“Um, I just moved here and,...” Thankfully before Iahn had to figure out how to word what he was here for, the woman’s face brightened a little and she spoke for him.

 

“Ah, you’re the transfer student for this week. What’s your name?” She returned her hands to her keyboard, ready to type.

 

“Iahn Summerholt. I-a-h-n.”

 

The receptionist’s typing sounded like she was attacking the keyboard, and she found whatever she was looking for right away. It was impressive.

 

After a moment, she got up and said, “One moment.” before going to a door behind the reception desk opposite to the one that said ‘Principal’ that had the gold lettering, ‘Teacher’s lounge’.

 

When she came back, someone else came with her.

 

The woman smiled politely and greeted him, “Hello Iahn, I’ll be your class teacher for this year.”

 

Iahn nodded and returned her greeting just before a shrill bell rang outside in the hallway.

 

“Let’s get to class then, shall we?”

 

He wouldn’t say the teacher wasn’t particularly nice, but at least she didn’t seem mean. Yet.