Teenage Calamity ━━ MAYFIELD

019

"Yeah. I mean, we had a funeral for him and everything." Lucas explains, telling her just enough without telling her much of anything.

And by anything, she means... the whole truth.

"After a week?" Max questions, her tone laced with skepticism.

Violet sighs heavily, decidedly joining the conversation. "It was a whole thing, pretty fucked up really. There was another kid who drowned in the quarry around the same time that Will had disappeared, everyone had automatically assumed it was him."

"To be fair, his body was super decomposed." Lucas chips in.

"What?" Max scoffs in disbelief, she halts in her steps making the other two stop. "Okay, that's not funny."

Lucas and Violet exchanged looks.

"We're not joking." She insisted, "We're dead serious."

Lucas nods in agreement, "Yeah, it's public knowledge. You can ask anybody. Except Will."

Violet nods quickly, "Yeah, don't ask Will. He's super sensitive about it. It's really traumatic for him to even think about it. So just... don't ever ask him about it. Okay?"

Max shoots them a mildly skeptical and somewhat caged look, but she nods nonetheless. "Okay."

The three of them walk down the hall to Mr. Clarke's class together, and Violet makes her way down the aisle and drops into the open seat next to Will. As soon as she sat down the bell rang signaling that the hour had begun, as she opened up her science book she noticed that someone was missing. Dustin, where the hell is he?

He's never late, especially not when it comes to Mr. Clarke's class.

As she pondered this, propping her cheek on her fist, Mr. Clarke began his lesson for the hour and set up his overhead projector.

"Phineas was a railroad worker in 1848 who had a nightmarish accident." He explains to the students in the class, the ones who were sat there listening and those who were not. "A large iron rod was driven completely through his head. Phineas miraculously survived. He seemed fine. And physically, yes, he was. But his injury resulted in a complete change to his personality. So much so that his friends that knew him started referring to him as "No longer Gage". At the time, this was known as the American Crowbar Case. Although it wasn't a—"

The door of the classroom flies open, and a panting Dustin Henderson rushing into the room grabbed everyone's attention.

"I am so sorry, Mr. Clarke." Dustin sheepishly apologized, breathing heavily as he makes his way to the open desk next to Violet. "Really, I'm so sorry. Please continue with the class. Don't mind me. Please, please. Continue." He takes a seat in the desk next to her, and he drops his bag to the linoleum floor.

Like he so desperately requested, Mr. Clarke continues on with the lesson. "Although it wasn't a crowbar, it was a rod, as I said."

Dustin turns in his seat, his blue eyes finding Violet and the others. "We have to meet. All of us." He whispers urgently, "At lunch. AV club."

Mike frowns, "Why?"

"I have something that you won't believe." Dustin insists, Violet can detect giddiness in his tone.