colors ;; phan

-Chapter Three-

-Phil-

My fingers fumble with the rips in my jeans, slotting further into the crevice to come into contact with the skin of my knee as I tap my other hand along the tiled floor. It was Friday, yet it felt like any other day to me, any other day to be sat here on the hard floor in the corner of this quite disgusting bathroom. It had become apparent to my mother that my grades were dropping, quickly, might I add, so now as I sat in this familiar spot, I realized this was the last day I would be able to hide away in here.

A deep sigh escapes my lips and I nearly rise to my feet, but something stops me, that something just happens to be the sound of the door across the room bursting open. If it had been anyone else than the one person I had expected it to be, I would have continued and left the bathroom. But it was him, the same boy with the same sweater with the same tears. His arrival didn't surprise me, as for the past month since I transferred to this school it had been the same thing every morning. Every morning he had bursted in here, with puffy cheeks and the same baggy sweater thrown over his small frame, and every day he had rushed into the same stall and cried the same tears. I assumed those tears were caused by some kind of bullying act, my assumption backed up by the few days he had failed at covering up the quickly forming bruises on his body.

His dark eyes meet mine for a few seconds, and it's all stares and wide eyes until he averts his gaze, thickly swallowing as he rushes into the stall closest to him like I had expected him to. My eyes stay fixated on the door of the stall, flickering from the blue door to his feet that were barely visible under the edge. His soft cries don't go unnoticed as I hear him fumble with something, a few seconds later hearing the sound of pages flipping until it stops.

The next few minutes are spent with me simply staying frozen in place, not wanting to leave the room, the thought of possibly making him feel like no one cared about his problems wriggling its way into my mind. Of course I wasn't actually going to even attempt to initiate in conversation with him, I had gathered over the last few weeks that he was probably immensely guarded. That talking to him would most likely result in either no response or a bad one, so I stayed silent.

I'm snapped from my thoughts as I hear him stand up and stuff whatever he had taken out of his bag back into it, hearing him sniffle as I assumed he was collecting himself before the door of the stall click open. I could tell he was straining to not meet my gaze as he crosses the bathroom to the sinks, standing over one and staring at himself in the mirror. He stayed like that for a while, just looking over himself through the reflective surface, silent.

All of the sudden, he sniffles and looks down at his feet, a few seconds later allowing his gaze to travel back upwards to the mirror, his eyes flickering to meet with the reflection of me staring back at him from far behind him in the corner. I notice the way his adams apple bobs up and down slightly as he gulps before disconnecting our gaze. I watch intently as he turns away from the mirror, hesitating slightly before pulling open the door, disappearing out of it only a second later.

A huff of air puffs from my lips, my eyes closing momentarily before I pull myself to my feet. I smooth out the crinkles in my shirt as I stare at myself in the mirror, my gaze gravitating towards my eyes that looked dull and tired, which I undoubtedly was. Dull, tired, worn out. I was nothing like what I used to be. I blink slowly, shifting my thoughts to ones of a lighter subject as I press my eyelids tightly together before opening them again. The light overhead blinding me for a second before my eyes adjust, and with one more heavy sigh i'm out the door to my first class.

-

I sigh as I tap my fingers anxiously along the stone bench I was sat on, the cold stone feeling crisp beneath my fingertips. I look down at my shoes as I finally make the decision to head to class, I knew I was way past the bell and very obviously late, but I decided to let that slip from my mind as I rise from where I sat. My breath is visible through the air as I make my way across the courtyard towards the large front doors of the school I had quickly grown to hate. It was my fault though, as if I'd actually made an effort to befriend someone or make my experience here a memorable one, but that was unlike me. It was the old me, the me that had friends, the me that was happy, the me that everyone was fond of. Yet people change, and I was one of the few people that took that change and multiplied it by one hundred, changing myself so much to the point of being unrecognizable to the people who used to know me.