Tempest (Royce/Winston)

085

Chresanto's P.O.V.

"Ray, are you sure you should be here right now?"

I turned my head and looked to see what Ray's answer would be to Elijah's question. It'd been three days since we found out about what happened to Ray. I personally think that he shouldn't be in school, I think he should stay home a bit longer, but Ray can ultimately do what he wants.

Nodding his head a little, Ray's eyes scanned the hallway that we were walking down. "I just want to go back to how things were".

Ray wanted to be in school because it felt normal to him. He was going to school before his aunt groped him, so now he wants to go back because he wants things to be how they were before he was violated.

I noticed the way he was tugging and popping off the tassels on the new purple Squigglet bracelet Elijah had bought him. The purple one was his third Squigglet, he had a second one, it was orange, but the same day Elijah had given it to him, Ray had tugged every single tassel off of it. He was pent up with nerves, he was extremely anxious, more so than usual.

"Things weren't great before..." Elijah said quietly.

"They were better than they are now".

Elijah didn't have anything to say, he just sighed. Ray began to walk down the hallway, Elijah trailing behind him.

I placed my hand on Elijah's shoulder so he would stop walking for a moment. "Keep an eye on him, alright?"

Elijah nodded before turning and catching up with Ray.

I shook my head a little and began to walk to my own class.

On the way, I saw Jacob and Winston. The two were walking side by side as they held each other's hand. Jacob looked tired and Winston looked concerned. I also noticed that Jacob no longer had a head full of hair, his afro wasn't there anymore. I wasn't expecting to see his hair so short, but I forced myself to not walk over to them and see what was going on.

I continued to walk to my class, and when I got there, I found a desk to sit at. I didn't pay much attention to what the teacher was talking about, so I was glad when the class was over and I could leave.

I could already tell that the day was going to go by fast because most of my classes felt like they didn't last very long. I didn't see Ray and Elijah at the football field because I didn't skip class to hang out there. Every once and a while I had to actually come to the class that I usually skipped so I wouldn't fail it completely.

I pulled out my phone so I could text Elijah.

Me: Is Ray okay?

I wasn't very surprised when I immediately received a response.

Elijah: He's alright, he's not speaking very much. I can tell that he's really caught up in his head because he's already dissociated twice.

I still didn't quite get the whole dissociation thing, but I wasn't going to judge Ray on it. It's something that he does now, so I was just going to be by his side and try to help him as best as I could.

Me: Okay, I'll see you guys at lunch then.

Elijah: Okay.

I wasn't expecting to run into Jacob on the way to lunch, but I did. He was walking with his head down, so he didn't see me approaching him. I pretended like I had casually bumped into him instead of actually doing so on purpose.

"My bad" I apologized, watching him as he looked up at me. "I didn't see you".

He didn't say anything to me, he just simply shrugged his shoulders.