Tempest (Royce/Winston)

013

"Can you come to mine after school?" I asked curiously, "my parents want to meet you".

"Why?"

"It's my mom really, she's just noticed that I've been hanging out with you a lot and I guess she just needs to know who she needs to go to if something happens to me. She didn't do it with Axel and had no clue who to ask about his death, so that hurt her a lot".

Axel's death really messed my mom up, and it wasn't just because he was her son, it was the fact that we don't know what happened. I was the one who found him, the one who saw him covered in his own blood first. I didn't know what to think when I saw him, me, with blood stained clothes and lifeless eyes. After a while, I figured it was just some sick joke, he was playing around, Axel would blink any second now, and begin laughing about how priceless my face was. He didn't though, he just laid there... Because it wasn't a joke, he was dead.

The cops looked into Axel's death for a while, but the only evidence they had was the bullet that killed him. They had ruled his death as a suicide, that he was just some depressed kid who wanted to end his life by taking a bullet through the skull. It didn't make sense, how could Axel shoot himself? And where the hell was the supposed gun that he used? Axel wasn't depressed, or so I thought, he was perfectly fine. The police didn't care, Axel wasn't an important figure, he was just some kid who got himself into some deep shit. They didn't care about how he died, and who killed him.

They closed his case, and just like that, it was over. They weren't looking for his killer anymore, my mom tried to on her own, but she didn't even know where to start. Axel was fucking secretive, he didn't tell her anything. It was sad watching my mom work so damn hard to find who killed her son, and come up empty handed. I wanted to help her, at the time, I didn't care about who killed Axel, I just wanted my mom to have the answers that she was trying so hard to obtain.

"Jacob?" Chresanto nudged me, I hummed softly to let him know he had my attention. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah..." I stood up from the table, picking up my tray and looking over the lunch that I'd barely eaten. "I'll see you around, I just remembered I've got to talk to one of my teachers".

"Don't do that" Chres replied, I furrowed my eyebrows and looked at him, wondering what he was talking about. "Don't lie to me".

"I'm not lying".

He didn't seem to believe me, but I didn't know what else to tell him. What did it matter if I was lying to him anyway? I could lie to him if I wanted, right? Shrugging, I went to kiss his cheek but he turned his head away. The gesture didn't make me upset, it actually made me laugh a little because how could I forget that Chresanto's ego was stuck up his own ass? He didn't like to do any of the things that we did in private, in public. People knew he wasn't straight, they knew he had a boyfriend at once, yet, he still didn't like showing too much intimacy in public. I wasn't going to force him to kiss me or anything, if he didn't want to do it, he wasn't going to do it.

"Later" he stated, "we'll... Do that later..."

"Okay".

I left the cafeteria and walked to my third period class, I had to talk to my physics teacher about how the hell I was going to pass his class. After class yesterday, he tried talking to me about my grades but I wasn't in the mood to listen to him, not until he threatened to tell my parents about the failing grade. I wasn't afraid of my parents, but the two were just beginning to get back to how they used to be, I didn't want to stress them out with grades.

"What do I need to do to at least get a 'C' in your class?" I asked as I walked into Mr. Benson's room, he looked up from his computer, looking a bit surprised by my sudden appearance.