Chapter 3: The Proper Way to Determine Whether Or Not You’ve Gone Insane

Step two is called, well, it's directly above this paragraph, so I don't see any point in retyping anything, and apparently the way to do it is to talk to Sebastian Fucking Smythe…

I didn’t sleep well the night I met Kurt. It had been the weirdest meeting of my entire life and I was only about fifty percent sure that it had actually happened. The fact that I woke up the next morning lying face up on one of the couches in the Student Lounge really didn’t help matters much as far as clarity went.

I don’t like being uncertain of things. Mostly that is because the certain truth of everything is usually punching me repeatedly in the face. So it was no surprise that I was in a shit mood that morning and I carried it with me all the way back to my dorm. Stevie was sitting on the edge of his bed when I got there.

“I need you to promise that you won’t tell anyone about last night,” was the first thing he said to me.

“Nope.” I walked over to pick up my toothbrush off the floor, which was where I had thrown it the day before in my early morning laziness. The bag with my shampoo and conditioner was a few inches off to the side and once I grabbed that too, I turned to leave. I had to stop short to keep from plowing into Steven.

“Please,” he begged and I credited him for the fact that he actually sounded kind of sincere. Then he ruined it. “I’ll do anything.”

No, I won’t, his mind hissed in mine and I had to resist the urge to punch him in the fucking face. I settled for shoving him forcibly away from me and left the room with his “Fuck you, Blaine!” trailing after me.

A shower did nothing to improve my mood. The water actually felt like slim on my skin, so I cut it short without bothering to condition my hair, which would leave it completely out of control once it dried, but I was too annoyed with everything to care. 

I ignored anyone who tried to talk to me in the hall and slept through my first two classes. My third class was in the same room as the second so I merely shifted into a more comfortable position at the sound of the bell and forced myself back to sleep.

I woke up sometime in the middle of it to yawn and stretch without bothering to use any kind of discretion.

“Alright, that’s it!” Mr. Hedley snapped, finally having had enough of my blatant display of apathy. He went on to say more but I had stopped listening way back at “that’s it” because an annoyed glance to my left caused my joints to tightly lock and sent blood rushing in my ears. Sitting in the desk next to mine was the boy from last night. Hedley’s voice was no more than a dull roar in the background, insignificant and unimportant. 

The boy sat quietly and comfortably at his desk, completely at ease as if he had been sitting there every class since the beginning of the year. He held a book with both hands and was obviously not paying attention to Hedley’s math lesson. His limbs were once again arranged in the most compelling way, but I hardly cared about his arms and legs, because I could finally see his face.

The hint of unique perfection I had seen the night before was fully on display in the light of day and I was consumed by the overwhelming compulsion commit every tiny, but still greatly significant detail to memory. My gaze roamed over the almond shape of his eyes under two wonderfully shaped eyebrows, from left to right over both full, thick lips that made his mouth look wide and tantalizing, across beautiful skin that begged to be touched in the gentlest way possible.

Everything stopped in my mind but around me life went steadily on.

I knew it the very second Hedley gave up on his pitiful attempt at discipline and started teaching again because once his head was turned back to face the board, the boy turned to look at me and I promptly got lost in his eyes. Finally being able to see his eyes was like a booted kick in the face. His eyes were colored both crystal clear and thicker than storm clouds. They were sky blue and earthy green. They were the kind of eyes you saw everywhere and nowhere. He had everything eyes.

I stared, trapped. He looked away without effort. I kept staring.

And guess what. It fucking sucked.

It pissed me off too. Last night he had stared at me so long and hard it made my stomach hurt, now his undivided attention was back on that damn book. The expression on his face was so gentle and loving that it was as if he was trying to do the impossible and caress the words on the page with his eyes. Like those black squiggles called letters held the key to everything that made him live and breathe. The intensity of it made me wonder whether he was reading the words or just admiring at them.

For the first time in my entire life I felt trapped inside myself. I wanted to look away but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Hell, I wanted to copy down the bullshit Hedley was writing down too forcibly on the white board. I wanted to get up and walk out of the room and never see that boy again. But I didn’t. I sat there and stared at him like some sort of mental patient drowning in his own inability to break free of his worst impulse. It was maddening.

It was never ending. When the bell rang I actually got up and followed the kid like some creepy stalker from a bad 80s movie. It was only dumb luck that we happened to be in the same class or else I probably would have sat in the wrong classroom like a fucking moron.

I had enough control over myself to sit myself down in the desk as far away from where he was sat as I could get. I felt jittery and on edge, ready to snap like a rubber band wound to tightly around rapidly purpling skin. A rubber band that just wouldn’t come no matter how fanatically you pulled.    

A tingle run up my spine. I turned around in my seat to look in the back right corner of the room against my better judgment. This time he held my gaze for less than three seconds before his eyes dropped down to that fucking book again.   

“That’s my seat.”

I bristled at the sound of Smythe’s slimy voice but couldn’t look away from Everything Eyes. “It’s my seat now so fuck off.”

Sebastian grinned widely at me and slid into the seat behind mine. “Touchy, touchy. I bet I know how to loosen you up.”

“Not interested.”

Sebastian chuckled and turned to look at the boy as well. “Yes, I can see that. He sure is pretty,” he said and I felt a humongous weight lift off of my shoulders. I had been half convinced I made him up. “He’s also a mental case.”

I tore my eyes away from the boy to narrow them at Sebastian. I wanted to rip his fucking ears out the sides of his head. All for a boy whose name I didn’t know. “How the fuck would you know?”

“I read in his file that he’s got some sort of imbalance.” He shrugged. “He doesn’t talk. The teachers aren’t supposed to call on him during class.”

“That doesn’t make him a mental case.”

“Maybe not,” Sebastian pursed his lips. “He’s still a fucking freak, though.”

“Lots of people are mute,” I pointed out from between my teeth.

“Yeah, but he’s not mute.”

“And you know this how?”

“Because he’s my roommate and I know for a fact that he sings.”