𝚆𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴 𝙸𝚂 𝙼𝚈 𝙼𝙸𝙽𝙳? ⇢ ʙʏʟᴇʀ

cranial dissonance

It had only been a week and a half since they had argued and, hand in hand, a week and a half since the two of them had spoken. Blue had called, of course, and Will had stayed shrouded in his room, unable to face speaking to the boy without sinking into a puddle. He wasn't afraid, no, he had no reason to be. Not afraid of Blue. Afraid of what he might say to him. What he might admit.

And so, it had been a silent week and a half since Will had run out on Blue that day and since, Will had discovered via his own mother, Blue had called Joyce to tell her that Will had left the school and that he didn't know where the boy had gone that night. When Joyce had brought it up to him, after the dust had settled and they had endured a long, dizzying conversation about Will and what was going on inside his brain, she had mentioned to him that Blue had sounded extremely upset on the phone. When she had asked Will if something had happened between them, Will had simply shaken his head like a robot, too tired to explain the entire goings-on that had happened. Joyce had looked at him, given him a trying smile and nodded in acceptance.

"You don't have to tell me. I'm a mom, I can sense this stuff," she had begun simply, her eyes fixated on Will's face, "but if heart break had it's own voice, I think it would have sounded a lot like that."

Those words had kept Will awake that night.

As he had stared at the ceiling, Will wondered about the state of Blue's heart. He wondered how broken it was. He wondered, as the ceiling began to grow fuzzy and bleak underneath his tired eyes, if Blue worried about Will's heart, too.

When he caught himself thinking about Blue as he was supposed to be counting the cars outside, Will pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth, callous frustration creeping up on him. It was subconscious, a passing wonder that always seemed to catch against the edges of his train of thought. He had wanted to pretend that he didn't care, that he hadn't admitted to himself his feelings and that he could ignore them as much as he cared to. In truth, though, it didn't work like that. As he thought about Blue, a brief idea, a vibrant flashing word crossed the back of his mind, and Will had truly paused all his tasks, focusing for a moment to remember where he'd seen it before. It didn't take him too long, and as he nestled himself into the cushion of his seat a bit more, Will remembered the way the words had shimmered in cheap blue glittery paint against the soft brown banner paper that had been strung up in the cafeteria.

The Snow Ball.

"Can you put it in simpler terms, please?" Joyce had whispered, just a bit too loud to keep what she was saying to herself as Will sat just outside of the office door, back pressed to the thin white polished wall as he gazed out the window. He'd been counting the cars for almost as long as he had been sitting there, waiting patiently for them to finish, but ever so impatiently at the same time for his mother to say something in a different tone, in anything that was more than a barely audible mumble that he had to struggle to hear.

Will thought hard to himself, as he sat there and counted and counted and watched the traffic drift by as people hurried on through their days towards tasks and places that needed to be tended to. For the first time in a while, as he gazed down at the people trailing down the sidewalk like ants marching in a row, Will didn't feel so small.

He thought about the Snow Ball, and for some reason, the mere idea of it made him a bit ill. He knew exactly why, though he tried to shove the idea out of his mind as he aimed to put his focus elsewhere. He did no such thing, however, and he found himself dripping into a dreamy daze that he imagined the young girls at his school could all relate to. He dreamt about the sparling decorations, about the dazzling shades of blue and paper snowflakes dancing from above the gymnasium floor and streamers twisting back and forth across the ceiling. He dreamt about good music, his definition of good music, and he dreamt about feet shuffling across polished floors and glitter and the warmth of the gym heaters and dancing with Blue.