Getting a Clue | ✓

Chapter 2

I was so fucking bored. It was the second Friday in February and my first day getting back into the swing of routine around seeing my psychiatrist after the summer holidays.

On the second Friday of every month my dad took me to see my psychiatrist and then brought me into work with him because he didn't want to miss work to drive me to school afterwards and I didn't want to catch the bus, so it was a whole thing. I was downright refusing to take part in public transport after fucking it up twice and getting lost. They'd probably pressure me into it eventually, but for now I just skipped a day of school a month.

Which was fine. It wasn't like I was missing anything important. I was pretty sure they hadn't taught me a single thing I couldn't do without since I learnt reading and writing and basic math. It felt like everything we were being taught now was shit maybe 5% of us would ever actually use, and probably then we could have done just as well with half an hour on Google. I doubted any of us would even remember most of this shit even if we did need it anyway.

But I couldn't just drop out. Mostly because my parents would never let me, but also because I didn't want to deal with feeling like even more of a useless piece of shit than I already did.

I wasn't even actually bad at school. Or, like, I absolutely was in the same way I was bad at everything that involved interacting with people or doing things that were simple and easy for everyone else. But I got good grades and that was the only measure that seemed to matter to anyone.

Though to be fair, that was the only measure they really had. I sure as fuck wasn't about to let anyone see me cry or talk about my feelings or whatever the fuck. People kept telling me that doing those things would help, but I still thought that was just one hell of a neurotypical assumption. Most of my problems were that interacting with people sucked, and you expect me to solve that by interacting with an additional person? Yeah, thanks, very helpful.

So anyway, by lunch time I was bored out of my mind. I'd already finished all my homework and I didn't even have any assignments to work on this early in the year. There was nothing more awkward than sitting around with people you hardly knew when you had nothing to do. Well, okay, there were probably plenty of things more awkward than that but it was definitely up there. I'd even finished my book of Sudoku puzzles.

At least I had the little waiting area/reading nook to myself.

And then suddenly I didn't because the worst thing had happened. Someone had approached me.

"Hey, Casper!"

It took me a few seconds to figure out how the fuck this dude knew my name, which was ridiculous because that hair.

Though to be fair he did have it half tied back, so it looked a bit different, plus I was a bit faceblind and tended to completely forget what people looked like pretty much immediately if I didn't expect to see them again. I suppose that's just more of an explanation of how my brain sucked rather than a justification, though.

"Jethro," the guy said, which was good because I had forgotten his name. "We met at that Christmas party."

"Oh, yeah. Hey." My fingers automatically went to tangle in the necklace he'd given me, which had become a nervous habit of mine.

"Oh, hey, you're still wearing the necklace I gave you!" Jethro said, his face lighting up. He was wearing eyeliner, which drew even my eye contact aversive ass to notice what pretty blue eyes he had. The fucker. "You know, when I was thinking about it later I wondered if maybe you just said you liked it to be polite, so I'm glad to see you actually wanted it. Wait, you're not just still wearing it because you can't get the clasp off, right?"