Three in the Morning (very slow updates)

four

We walk out of the main school into blinding sunshine, and it turns out I wasn't the only one who saw Dan.

"Did you see Dan Stevens going out of the nurse's office just now?"

I stop in my tracks. "The nurse's office? The nurse's office is on the other side of the school!"

Essie playfully slaps me. "No, you idiot. That one's the counsellor's office."

"Oh." I carry on walking and then stop again. "Wait. What was he doing in the nurse's office?"

"That's what I'm asking you! You know him better than I do, seeing as you two are pretty much made for each other."

"Shut up." I punch Essie.

"Hey! That was hard." Essie punches me back, and I grab my shoulder in pain. "Anyway, Casey, it's not that surprising. He does spend a lot of time moping around in the library."

"He doesn't always mope around," I say defensively.

"Sticking up for your boyfriend, are you?" Essie grins. "But come on, it's not exactly as if he looks particularly over the moon every break time."

"True." I sigh. "Essie, we can't make assumptions he's depressed or whatever, though. Maybe a teacher's just worrying about him and referred him to the nurse but he's actually fine? I mean come on, they referred both of us and the rest of the squad to the nurse because of the music thing."

Essie chuckles. "I still haven't gotten over Nurse Susan being convinced I'm schizophrenic. She actually walked past me in the corridor and asked if I was okay, since she hadn't seen me for a while."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. But I don't blame them for being worried about Dan. He's always looking so down. And a bit dodgy."

I wince at the numerous possibilities that come to my mind when I put 'dodgy' with 'nurse's office'. "You guys need to stop judging people, you know. Dan isn't that bad."

"No, I know! He seems nice enough. Pretty cute as well. But there's something about him which is just a bit, you know, hidden away and you never really see him smile because he has no friends, and he used to be popular but now he has nobody, and you know, he's just a bit-"

I clamp my hand over Essie's mouth and tell her to shut up under my breath when we see Dan come round the school field and into the area of school we're in. He looks even angrier than when we saw him last, and he seems to be speed-walking towards the gate. We watch him as he slams the gate shut behind him and heads to the bus stop.

"You see what I mean?" Essie whispers. "He's just so..."

"Dark? Miserable? Emotional?"

"Well, I was going for sad, but there you go. Come on. Herr Brown is going to come and yell at us any minute now." Essie grabs me and drags me towards the school gate.

And there ends the discussion about Dan with Essie, but after we split ways, I carry on thinking about what really happened to Dan, and why he was in the nurse's office, and why he's so dark and miserable and emotional and sad, and I think about how I want to get to know him, get to really know everything about him and make sure he's always okay. Because I'm sure he isn't really okay right now, and as much as I hate to admit it, I do care about him.

***

I log onto Google Drive at seven o'clock in the evening, and just as we had arranged, Dan is also online so we can work on the story together.

c: hi :)

d: do you want to start?

c: i did the last paragraph, you might as well do the next