^ Viggo Ryse
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E L I J A H
Elijah was wide awake now. He had walked back to his room rather shakily after witnessing Arius's manic episode. He would've never thought!
Despite how much Elijah prevented himself from making even minute judgements about people, this still came as a huge shock to him.
He stopped near the large window and looked outside. Everything was so eerily quiet under the moon that was shining, clouds moving through the sky.
A little movement near one of the trees caught his attention. He strained his eyes and caught two figures pushing each other playfully, pausing and then come together in an embrace. They broke after a few minutes and made their way toward the tower, stepping out of the shadows. Two girls, that much he was sure about, judging from the hair and their outlines. One of them had it tied into a bun while the other had let it loose. The last thing he noticed before they had disappeared behind the tall doors was that they had their hands linked. He swore one of the frames was familiar to him but he couldn't put his finger on who it might've been.
Interesting.
He lay down in his bed, after closing the door quietly so he wouldn't wake Ryder up. He forgot all about the two girls he had seen, realising that he had watched Arius have a panic attack.
What could've triggered it?
Elijah's thoughts drifted back to when he was barely 9 years old when he had found Abby curled up in her bed, shivering every now and then with her eyes wide open, her hair an absolute mess and the floor stained with vomit. He had rushed downstairs to the living room and told his mother. Liz was furious with Amanda, more than ever now. They'd somehow pacified Abby and gotten her to drink a glass of milk. The next day his mother had taken Abby to a therapist and also consulted a psychologist.
In the weeks to come, Abby would be diagnosed with clinical depression, anxiety and a terrible migraine. She would sit for hours in dark rooms and while her time away. Sometimes Elijah would hear her sobbing in the next room and banging the walls. She would punch the walls so hard her knuckles would be caked with dry blood the next day and Liz would have to bandage them everyday. One night, Elijah gathered up courage to go into her room. He went in and climbed her bed, staring at her with wide eyes and she struggled to calm down because a little child was in her room.
"Abby don't bang the walls. Your knuckles will bleed. I don't want to see you hurt." He had pouted and started crying.
"Elijah, c'mere". Abby had said and hugged him.
They both cried that night. Abby, because she had no will to live and Elijah, because his little heart was breaking everyday for his cousin.
Elijah had wiped his tears and gone back to his room, only to return to Abby with a pair of old, worn out boxing gloves in his tiny hands. He had wordlessly handed them to her and motioned for her to follow him.
He took her to the attic where his dad's equipment, suitcases and clothes were stored and pointed to the punching bag hanging from the ceiling.
"The gloves will protect you." He had said.
Abby had gone all out, she went on for hours.
Liz found them both in the attic the next morning.
In the following years, Abby started having nightmares and panic attacks at least twice a day. She wouldn't even talk most of the time because her brain was being paralyzed with fear. They found the root cause of the issue to be extremely low self worth. She was waiting for Liz to abandon her as well. Her own mother had, why would Liz love her?
But the boxing really helped and Liz enrolled her into a boxing program. Elijah was there for every panic attack except when he was in a game or something. He knew Abby's techniques like the back of his hand and started accompanying her to therapy sessions.
When Abby turned sixteen, the attacks reduced and she was beginning to actually make an effort to have fun, study, help a round the house. Liz and her had more in common than they'd imagined, and quickly struck up an odd friendship of sorts. She realised that she would do anything for these two people. Liz and EJ, they were her support system. She had gotten so much better these past years and now she was studying Criminal Psychology at a prestigious college in the city they lived in. Elijah thought her friends were simply amazing! So supportive, so loving and extremely caring. They were like an extended family to Liz and Elijah as well.
He tried to fall back asleep by counting sheep in his head but he kept getting distracted by thoughts of a certain brown haired boy.
It was getting really frustrating because Arius Johnson seemed to live in Elijah's head rent free and he couldn't even figure out what the fuck had set this unhealthy thought process into motion.
What the fuck was happening?
Ryder woke him up by throwing the clock at his head, AGAIN. He swore there was a lump on his forehead because of the impact of the clock.
"One of these days Ryder, one of these days, I'm going to get back at you. You're fucking crazy."
He grumbled as they stepped out of their dorms.
He had Math-I first so Ryder wouldn't be there to give him company. She could write her Math-I exams without attending classes as she was in the advanced class as well. He entered the class just in time as the teacher was beginning to start his explanation. Mr. Harold nodded his head toward the window seat and Elijah got the memo. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw who he would be sitting next to.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Just his luck.
"Kingston, you're greatly mistaken if you think we have all the time in the world for you to take your seat. Get in there unless you want to get kicked out of your very first class of the day." Mr Harold spoke in a deliberately slow, daunting fashion with an acidic smile on his face.
He audibly gulped and walked the rest of the way and sat down, all while Arius was giving him THE death stare, his grey eyes looking vicious.
In the light of what he had found on the floor in the middle of the night, Elijah had completely forgotten how he'd spilt his coffee on him and poked his eye so he could escape.
He had seen Arius Johnson from up close and had been as mesmerized as ever, if not more, until he came back to his senses and fucking poked his eye and ran the fuck out of there.
He was so dead.
For some reason, he thought it would be in his best interest if he apologized to him. So he went ahead and looked at Arius as he took notes steadily, paying attention to whatever the teacher was blabbering about Derivatives.
Yeah what a great idea, begin the year with fucking differential calculus.
Arius had made it obvious that he wasn't going to look at him whatsoever and Elijah was annoyed. Throwing caution to the wind, he nudged Arius. He kept doing it until Arius glared at him.
"You know, I'm sorry for po- fuck!"
He felt something sinking into his skin on his thigh through the fabric of his dress pants and then, pain. Arius had jammed his pencil into Elijah's thigh and pulled it out, smiling smugly.
Elijah retaliated by grabbing Arius's left arm to wrestle the pencil out of his grip and before they knew it, they were pushing and shoving each other and getting a few punches in between. Arius wrapped his left leg around Elijah's leg and diverted him to the floor. Elijah gripped Arius's shirt collar and the both of them fell down with a loud thud, chairs toppling over backward.
There was a pregnant pause with neither of them making a move to stand up. It was like someone had stunned them into place. Shiny, black shoes approached them and barked for them to stand up.
"Kingston, Johnson; you will meet the Headmistress during your lunch break to receive your punishments for the next two weeks. If this happens again, be assured that you will be terminated from this class. I hope detention will fix your childish behaviour. Out with your bookbags."
Neither of them moved again.
"Out, I said!" Mr. Harold yelled again, his teeth bared and eyebrows scrunched up, forefinger pointing toward the door.
Both boys packed their bags and hurried out of class, embarrassed and ashamed.
Once they were outside Arius turned to him and shoved him again.
"What the fuck is your problem arsehole?"
"Me? What's YOUR deal? You didn't have to jam the pencil into my thigh. That was uncalled for." Elijah retorted.
"What was fucking uncalled for was you poking me in the eye. You had it coming."
"Hell no. I was only trying to apologise for yesterday!"
"Yeah, by fucking distracting me in class by staring at me like the creep you are. And pushing me repeatedly."
"Listen I'm sorry. I'm sorry I dropped my coffee on you, but I was in a hurry. And as fo-"
"Shove your half-assed apologies up your rear end." Arius interrupted him.
"You're such a jerk! I can't believe I actually felt bad for whatever I did yesterday. Unintentionally, might I add."
"Fuck you." Arius exhaled and walked outside the building.
Elijah was sure he was red in the face by now. This guy was unbelievable! He had such an attitude and Elijah wanted to knock it right out of him.
He was appalled that Arius didn't even acknowledge what happened last night. He would've been lying on the floor all night if Elijah hadn't found him.
Ungrateful brat!
Now that Elijah had seen what a terrible attitude the boy had, he really disliked him, it was a shame someone as nice as Viggo had to deal with this uncouth lad.
He decided he was going to take a walk for the next thirty minutes and try to learn some calculus in the next period. He had a blank hour next. He consciously blocked out thoughts of they grey-eyed boy and walked briskly. He noticed that there was another building after the one in which they had their classes, apart from the tower, which Jake had told him was the seniors' dorm. What he did not want to see however, was a match of tonsil hockey going on in between two individuals with their backs to the wall of the building. The girl had strawberry blonde hair, tied into a high ponytail, but with the way they were going at it, he'd be surprised if she had any gair left by the end of this little escapade. The guy was tall and muscular, with shoulder length hair that shouldn't have looked that appealing. He was hot, the females would say. Elijah decided he'd seen enough and walked away.
On the left side of the building, was a large patch of green grass with markings on the field and Elijah knew in an instant that it was the soccer field.
If only they'd had basketball here, Elijah would have almost liked it.
Almost.
He was on the basketball team in his school back in town and was one heck of a talented player. He could play all the positions with ease, but he functioned as a power forward. He would have been the Captain of their team if not for his silly pranks and elaborate jokes that crossed the line one too many times. He was suddenly overcome with a deep sense of painful nostalgia and wondered why his teammates never bothered to check up on him. They were his only friends in school. He did get plenty of attention from the females in his school though. Elijah knew how attractive he was, but he'd only ever kissed a few girls here and there during parties and had slept with the head cheerleader who was his senior at the time. He'd done it to get it out of the way and also because of how persistent Nicole had been. He didn't understand the big deal. If he had to be completely honest, he wouldn't say he'd liked it.
Elijah couldn't shake off the feeling that he never really had friends in his old school. He hadn't tried making friends outside the team. So he considered the boys his friends. Yet, none of them had bothered to shoot him a text.
It just made him sad and he was really hurt.
He was pleasantly surprised when Ryder had walked into their room last night with a box of packed food in her hands muttering that she'd thought he ought to eat and not go to bed hungry. The gesture had touched him and made him emotional. He'd always been like that. The smallest things would excite him, the seemingly insignificant things would be a big deal to him. No one had done that for him except for his mum and Abby.
It had been only two days and he already considered Ryder his friend.
Was he being too naive?
He glanced at his watch and realised that the school would break for lunch in a few minutes and that he hadn't even touched his math book. He raced back to the building and found Arius sitting on one of the chairs near the reception. Contrary to what he had thought, the room in the dorm building wasn't the Principal's office. It was here, in this building with a gold plate plastered on the currently closed door signed 'HEADMISTRESS'.
The receptionist picked up the line and turned toward Arius, telling him something. He nodded and stood up to his full height, taking a deep breath and knocking on the door. Elijah reached the office, taking long strides before Arius could close it behind him and the both of them seated themselves on two of the chairs that had been placed in front of table, similar to the one in the other room.
"Now, would you like to explain to me what brought about this unacceptable occurrence on our school premises?" Mrs. Delavere said, voice oozing authority.
Oh God, they were so dead.
Neither of them said a word but looked at Mrs.Delavere, anticipating the verdict.
"Alright, since neither of you want to tell me, you will start by cleaning the equipments in the Music room to lessen the burden of the cleaning staff. If you finish before two weeks, you will be made to sit in an empty classroom after school hours. Classic detention."
It wasn't as bad as Elijah had expected, he was alright with this, whatever it was. He couldn't say the same for Arius though. The boy looked simply miserable and glared at Elijah, probably murdering him in his head.
"Eyes up here, Johnson." barked the Headmistress, gaining his attention.
"No more of this funny business, now run along and eat something before your classes resume." She said, shooing them out of the room.
Elijah grabbed his tray with chicken and rice and a can of distilled water and looked for Ryder and Jake.
They were in the same place as the previous day, but were talking seriously about something.
He reached the table and slammed his lunch down, still annoyed.
"Man that Arius guy is such a fucking dolt!" He exclaimed.
"What happened today?" Ryder said, looking alarmed.
"Wait wait, what do you mean today? Something happened yesterday?" Jake asked before Elijah could answer her.
Ryder grinned and told him whatever had happened. Jake snorted and guffawed, clearly finding the situation hilarious.
"I have detention for the next two weeks now. With that guy." Elijah groaned.
This just seemed to make things funnier for Jake.
"Two days in, and detention already? Elijah, my man." He laughed, slapping his back as Elijah caught sight of the couple he'd seen earlier make their way into the Hall as everyone looked on in awe. They were a power couple.
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A/N
I'm excited for y'all to read the next chapter!
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