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Stiles slid into a seat in the back corner of the classroom, hood up, arms crossed. Scott was sitting with Allison so they could pass notes and Jackson so that they could doodle lacrosse strategies on a paper between them. Scott wouldn’t notice him missing.
Who would? No one.
Lydia was engrossed in her nails as she slid in front of Allison, closer to the board and so she could ignore Allison’s note passing with Scott.
The bell rang, and Coach started to drone about econ.
“Stilinski, hood,” He caught Stiles’ attention for a moment as the teen uncovered his head. Everyone’s heads turned toward him for a moment. He gave Coach the best sarcastic smile he could with a thumbs-up before looking down at his blank notebook that should have been full of notes. He felt everyone’s eyes shift back from him, and then suddenly tears were welling in his eyes.
No, no, no.
This was not happening. Not in Coach’s class of all places.
He wiped his face quickly before raising his hand. “Can I go to the bathroom?” He choked out, trying to sound urgent but not upset.
“Wait a couple minutes. Jesus, Stilinski, is your bladder really that small?” Coach rolled his eyes before returning to the lesson.
Stiles stared back down at his paper and tried to stop them. He did.
The lines of his notebook paper were blurring and small splat noises drew little attention over Coach’s newest complaint about Greenberg getting the wrong answer.
He gave up on waiting for Coach to give him permission. His face was hot with embarrassment as he ran out the back door of the classroom, his wallet in one pocket with his phone and his keys in another.
He found himself climbing in his piece of shit and pulling out of the parking lot. He drove.
He didn’t know where he was going, but he was suddenly outside of town. He was in the parking lot of the nature reserve because he couldn’t drive further because of how bad his vision was now. All he saw was blurs of colors.
He let the tears roll out. He was ashamed. He made an ass of himself in front of a good number of the classmates he saw on a regular basis. Not only was he the kid who had panic attacks, the dorky best friend of Scott, the kid who harbored the biggest crush on Lydia Martin, and the kid of the Sheriff, he was an emotional wreck.
Somehow, he managed to fold himself into the driver’s seat, curled up into a ball. His head rested by the door handle, and his feet bumped the sticky gear shift. He shook as the sobs took over his body.
No one seemed to need him anymore.
Well, Scott didn’t.
He spent all his time with Allison. “Sorry, bro, I’m going over to Allison’s to do homework.” “Rain check on movie night, Allison’s dad wants me over for dinner.” “Date with Allison on Friday!”
He actually was playing on the lacrosse team, unlike Stiles. Stiles sat alone on the bench, trying to make witty comments to the other players and no one listened. No one gave a flying fuck what the skinny kid on the low end of the second line had to say.
Derek was mentoring Scott on the werewolf side of things too. Stiles would try to talk to Scott about anything cool he found online, and Scott’s immediate response was “Oh, yeah, Derek already told me that.”
A noise exploded from Stiles. The scream vibrated through him, and he lost his breath from how long he let it out.
Tears rolled down his cheeks more as he realized what he was saying. Of course Scott still liked him, they were best friends. How could he think that Scott didn’t want to be around him? But what if he was right? What if Scott really was just tolerating Stiles the whole time for a lack of a better friend?
It wasn’t until after lacrosse practice that Scott went and found Stiles. The pale teen had fallen asleep in the driver’s seat from the sheer exhaustion of bawling.
Economics was second period.