Inhale

13.

"Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving." -William Shakespeare, Othello.

(A/N: panic attack, disorientation, negative thoughts )

"Well, what do you think I did? I told him to piss off...That man doesn't know when to mind his business. I was only walking down the corridor and he just...assaulted me!"

Ezekiel gestured wildly to demonstrate exactly what occurred. Though he was lying...straight to his friends faces. They were either all too dense, or didn't care enough to stop him. Ezekiel was prone to exaggeration, a habit I had noticed in Josiah for some time before it was stamped out by Evette. There was something...depressing, about it all, regardless of which scenario was playing out. Ezekiel's exaggerations saddened me, his boorish friends saddened me, and it saddened me most of all that he and I were sat at the same table but kilometres of winds were roaring between us.

A spiteful desire to blurt everything I had seen these past few days overwhelmed me. I was beyond curious to see what he would say and how he could explain himself. But perhaps he didn't know he was 'under supervision'. He had to, who else would know to pull the files? There was a little knot of hope in my body, one that defied all logic, which continued to throb like a splinter. It told me that Ezekiel hadn't done anything at all, that it was a mixup. Yeah, that was it. Somebody had gone in looking for a different file and muddled it up. Forget the glasses, forget the lying. Mrs Griffin was old, after all. I have a wonderful skill for blinding myself. 

Jordan and Remus lingered on the outskirts of the bubble. Remus was ever the actor, as trained as his sister but lacking the grace. He laughed in all the right places and bellowed discontent when Ezekiel expressed particular distress. His smile appeared to have too many teeth, which gave him the perpetual look of someone in excruciating pain. It's not that he was unpleasant; he was fairly 'good-looking'. Remus had a sort of gleam, not unlike his sister's pearlescent shine. However, he was shiny all over and blank over the eyes. They flickered unnaturally, delayed and much too slow, towards each thing around him.

Jordan wore a persistent grimace as he listened. Though, I could never really tell if he was listening. His headphones were still on his head, slightly shifted back on one side to give the illusion of involvement. It was evident he wasn't really there. His head bopped irregularly as he listened, and his reactions were always just a second too late. A straggling laugh, or a half-hearted cry of irritation. In the moments I was in my book I felt his eyes shift to Evette and I.

She and I both knew that he had heard of Josiah's...inebriation. It had happened almost too conveniently close to his altercation beforehand; Jordan felt responsible. I didn't blame him but I also desperately wished there was someone else to blame and so, very selfishly, I never told him that it wasn't his fault.

Killian would have told me to talk to Jordan, too. He had been around Diana, who more than likely told him a wide array of information. But he was good friends with Killian, and it would be difficult to ask questions without coming off suspicious. There was too much to sift through before I could even hit the surface of what I was looking for. It would be like separating salt from sugar - perhaps you could see the difference, but how would you ever sort them?

Presently, Evette muttered under her breath. She was trying to complete her homework at the table, but couldn't over the commotion beside us. We had decided to have our lunch in the hall together, in a half-hearted attempt to reconcile with our friendship. I wasn't angry anymore, but Evette wasn't any less sorry and this left an indescribable discomfort neither of us was willing to address. Evette made five minutes of chatter with me before retreating into a dense textbook. Words bubbled up momentarily to keep the conversation going, but it was futile. We were running on fumes.