Coming Home

Saying Goodbye: Part 1

To say Warren Graham was excited was an understatement. He had just aced all of his finals, and had ended the semester with a perfect 4.0 GPA. In fact, he did so well that Mrs. Grant said he didn't have to take the final to pass with an A!

Warren smiled. Any time he could pass a class without doing work was great to him.

In fact, recently, life had been looking up. He had recently just gotten a job at the Smoothie Shack in the strip mall downtown. And his parents had been more than happy with his grades, saying they had a surprise for him when he got home. He had finally been able to purchase that new PC he had been saving up these past few months and he couldn't wait to install and play Gary's Mod and finish Teen Titans (the original, not the horrendous Teen Titans Go!).

In speaking of Teen Titans, he had promised Max that he would finish the series with her. They both couldn't wait to watch Trouble in Tokyo together, even if they both had seen it.

Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, he worried about her. She had thankfully been opening up the past few weeks. Slowly but surely, she had been starting to smile and talk more, while crying and sulking less.

After the shooting in October, she had drastically reduced the amount of pictures she was taking. It didn't make any sense to him, and he learned not to ask her about it. It worried him, even more so when he saw she absolutely refused to take selfies.

However, he had recently spotted her taking more and more pictures with her camera, and not just for school work. Sometimes, although rare, she would ask Warren to take her to different places to get a photograph. He even saw her sneak in a selfie or two.

Also after the shooting, she was rarely seen leaving her dorm. Except for classes or food, he hypothesized that she only left her dorm a half a dozen times in the first month. (At least from what Kate and Brooke told him. He was afraid he was annoying them after all the times he asked about her).

Thankfully, in the last few weeks she had started socializing more. She had been talking to Dana, to Kate and to himself. She was still quiet, (although she was always a little quiet), and still a little shy, but it was good to hear her laugh again and be nerdy with him. He even let her break him down and watch Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. (Which although he protested throughout, he actually enjoyed).

He couldn't say much about whenever she hung out with Kate and Dana, but after a time when she was with him, she was breaking out of her shell more and more. She and him would crack jokes throughout the movies they watched, they would talk about the school and about upcoming movies and games and anime. It was just like nothing ever happened in October during those times.

It made him smile seeing she was making progress.

Hell, he especially knew she was progressing when she talked about Chloe. He admittedly didn't know much about Max's best friend. In fact, the only thing he did know was that she was a former student who had gotten expelled. Turns out, this was the only thing he knew that was true. All the other things he heard about Chloe were rumors that were most likely originated from one Nathan Prescott.

Max would share stories about the two of them when they were younger. He laughed at the stories where they played pirates. He "oh shit"ed on stories of them getting in trouble. And he awed and laughed at the story of Chloe's first childhood relationship. The fact that she was starting to open up and find closure really made him happy for her. It made him happy that she was getting better and was trusting him to help her.