Villains ➵ bill skarsgård a.u.

thirty two

He gives away some papers in front of me, mumbling quick words before the people left him to continue walking. Nonetheless; that didn't stop him. He kept on, shooting them warm smiles every now and then, his face the epitome of hope, something of which I was slowly but surely running out of. I try to imagine myself in his position; joining a group of depressed and pathetic outcasts to find a missing girl I didn't even know. I would never be comfortable staying in a table where everyone hated me. Why he was doing this, I still had no idea, but despite the utter hatred and disgust I'm supposed to feel towards him, especially after staying silent when all his friends stepped on us, I was feeling turmoil instead. Jumper's words play back in my head, "Don't tell me you're falling in love with him." it was an absurd statement and I myself know that. Of course that's an obvious joke, but I just can't help but wonder.

"You don't need to do this, you know?" I utter, his eyes darting back to me. "My friends and I can handle it."

"Of course I do," He mumbles, "You guys need all the help you can get. If you want I can get the entire football team to help out."

My ears ring, dreading the idea he was trying to plant in my head. "That won't be necessary.

"It's alright I was just kidding." He smiles, resuming to give away flyers.

"I still don't understand why you care so much about this, don't you have other things to do?"

"Is it bad to want to find a missing person?"

I stop. He was right. There was nothing wrong with helping to find a missing person. If I was confident enough, I would've joined the hordes of people last month trying to find Pamela. The only thing I didn't understand was; why? It's beyond obvious now that every single one of my friends hate him, there was no reason to stay. "Sarah's not even your friend, you didn't even know her."

"Yeah, but you are my friend."

My eyebrows furrow, slightly taken aback by his response. "Since when did we become friends, Arthur?

"Since now." A grin ghosts over his lips, glancing at me before turning away to hand out papers. I try to hide the guffaw rising from my throat, not because what he said was funny, but because of the insanity further eating up my head. I didn't know when we got to this point or how, but I was so lost. Completely lost. The last time I checked, we weren't even supposed to be talking, but there we were anyways, and Georgie keeps drifting in and out of my thoughts. Just the very thought of being friends Arthur Michigan was a privilege for pretty much everyone who knows him, but that wasn't the case for me or any of my friends. I didn't want to be friends with him, or Pamela, or anyone who worshipped him. If anything, I did everything in my power to avoid him despite the four years we've had some kind of class connecting us.

"I'm sorry about what I told you the other day at the woods." I addressed, decreasing the boulder weighing down on my chest for a week now, "That was really dickish."

"Which part are you sorry about? Ignoring me or leaving me there?

"What I said about--" I stop myself, I haven't really ever said her name out loud, mainly because we avoid talking about anyone who belongs on the top of the triangle. "Pamela."

"Ah, it's alright." He cranes his neck, "I would understand why you'd get that kind of impression. Almost everyone surrounding me tend to think I'm doing everything with meaning nowadays because she's gone. I'm not. I'm exactly what I am when she was alive. Maybe a bit more depressed, but other than that."

My eyes gravitate to his face. Only then did I notice the dark circles under his eyes and the exhaustion hiding underneath all his motivation. For days he's been invisible to me, perhaps because of my desperation to make Georgie feel better that I've forgotten what kind of shit he must have went through when he found out his girlfriend was dead. When I first look at him, he's just this insufferably clean cut boy who couldn't hurt a fly even if he wanted to; however deep within is a young man struggling to go on, just like everybody else. I have never been in love, or been with someone that way, but I could just imagine. "Must've been hard."