Fall Again (a Michael Jackson fanfiction)

14. James returns to school

Hopes POV 🥀

It was 1994, I was 13 years old. James had just started coming back to our school after his suicide attempt.
He was scared, I could tell, though he pretended to be calm, I could see his fingers twitching.

"It'll be okay, Jamie." I whispered as we walked to the bus stop, we went to different schools now - but got the same bus as the schools were quite near one another.

"I know it will." Shrugged James. "I'm not really bothered."

I raised an eyebrow. "Your twitching hands and lip biting say otherwise."

James whacked me with his bag and I poked him in the side, then he tried to whack me again and I dodged , tripped, fell into him and knocked him over with me.
We ended up on the pavement giggling hysterically.

Juliette, who was lagging behind, rolled her eyes at us. There was a puddle on the ground and I flicked some muddy water at her and she squealed, then crossed the road to walk on the other side to us.

Jamie dragged me up and we carried on walking, discussing school gossip and all that. I tried to think of some stories to tell him to distract him, but not much goes on in my class so I just made some up.

As we got closer his twitching fingers got faster and he started biting his lip so hard a blob of blood appeared.
"Stop." I pulled his hand away from his face and looked around for something to distract him.

There was a bin next to the bus stop and I ran over to it, clambered onto the bin, then pulled myself up onto the top of the bus shelter.

"What the hell!" Juliette yelled. "You're going to get us all in trouble, get down!"

James was laughing hysterically now. "Get down, crazy lady!"

A group of kids were looking at me weirdly so I gave them the finger. Juliette glared at me. "I'm certain you have ADHD!" She yelled.

I stuck my middle finger up at her as well, then slipped and shrieked, trying not to fall off the roof of the bus shelter. "Shit! Get down, Hope!" Jamie yelled, but I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

He shared the same ridiculous sense of humour as me. Then I realised, how WAS I going to get down? If I tried to get onto the bin it would probably fall over. Getting up there was a whole lot easier than getting down!

Juliette stalked off to the next bus stop, clearly not wanting people to know we were her siblings. "You're not funny, either of you!" She called back, then disappeared round the corner.

James came over to bus shelter and stood below me, holding his arms out. "Jump into my arms, Rapunzel!" He declared dramatically.

I started laughing.

By the time I got to school, I was late because I had insisted on making sure Jamie got to class safely. I then waited for 5 minutes after he went in to make sure he didn't do a runner.

Juliette was at her middle school, and I was at secondary. I hurried in, grabbed the stuff I'd need for class, chucked my bag in my locker and then basically ran to my classroom, hoping I wasn't too late.

I was. Mr Winters looked up at me with disapproval, and said "Sit down, Hope."

I went to my desk, which I shared with my friend Michelle Dunn, who we called "Shell". She grinned at me, showing her braces. Autumn Lodge, who was behind us and in the future would end up living with me, poked me playfully in the back.

We always teased Autumn because her name sounded like a hotel. I'm sure theres a hotel called "Autumn Lodge" somewhere in the world.

My glasses had fogged up from the rain, and I took them off and wiped them with my jumper. But my mind was on James, worrying and worrying.

What if he had a meltdown? What if he ran off? Or what if, the worst possible thing, he tried to kill himself again?
And what if he succeeded?