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Jeremy woke up having a shitty day. He’d known it would be one of his bad days just from the time he woke up.
For Jeremy, his bad days meant cynical, distorted, and intrusive thoughts. Sure, his pessimistic thoughts and feelings often dissipated in a day or two, but he always felt drained afterwards and ended up feeling like a wrung-out sponge.
But Jeremy got out of bed and got ready for his day at school (a difficult task, might he add).
Another annoying thing about Jeremy’s bad days, is that he always woke up at stupidly early hours and never could go back to sleep. So Jeremy had to wait an hour and a half for sunlight to even began filtering in his room, and then another thirty minutes for Michael’s PT Cruiser to drive up and into his driveway.
When Michael’s car turned onto his street, Jeremy was already waiting on his front porch, a rarity and something that really only happened on his bad days.
Jeremy walked over to Michael’s now parked car and opened the passenger door. He clambered in and slumped over in his seat. He could see Michael look over to him in his peripheral vision and he turned to face Michael. Michael winced in sympathy, already knowing it was one of Jeremy’s ‘bad days’ without the need for it to be vocalized.
“Rough morning?” Michael asked, lowering the volume on You & I (Forever), by Jessie Ware (Michael’s current song obsession of the week, which had no doubt been playing on loop), so he could speak over it.
Jeremy nodded pitifully and picked at his nails. His nails were painted black, done by Michael, whose nails were matching Jeremy’s own.
Michael clucked his tongue, reaching for his phone to change the music for Jeremy. “What’re you feelin’ today, Jere?”
Jeremy bit his lip before saying, “Can we just have silence?”
Michael’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline, but he didn’t oppose. “Okay, whatever you want,” he shrugged, reaching for his phone again to pause it.
They sat in silence for a bit before Michael started the car again. Jeremy’s eyes flickered to the time on Michael’s digital clock in his car and despite the old clunker being five minutes fast, they still had plenty of time to get to school, something Jeremy would probably inevitably miss out on if his anxiety and depression got bad enough to warrant a trip to the nurse’s office.
Jeremy peered out the window, watching the objects and buildings pass by. He could see in the reflection of the glass that Michael kept glancing over at him but he ignored it.
They rode to school in silence, ten minutes spent sitting with each other without saying anything, something that only twelve years of friendship could achieve without it being awkward.
It was their system, really. If either one of them had a bad day, they’d get to choose what music they’d want to listen to (if any at all, like today) or what to do when they got back home.
Michael rarely had his bad days, but when he did, it was normally caused by something being too overwhelming for him, like a crowded hallway when he didn’t have his signature red hoodie and people kept touching him and brushing past him. It was a sensory overload type of deal for him and it was easily helped with his headphones playing soft music and Jeremy just sitting there in the car with him.
But for Jeremy, just waiting it all out and making sure he didn’t do anything rash was all they could do.
Jeremy got out of the car and walked over to Michael’s side of the car so that they could walk into school together. Luckily, their lockers were pretty close to each other’s, the exact opposite of last year’s locker deal (Michael’s had been on the bottom floor of the third hallway, close to his homeroom; Jeremy’s had been two stories up and away from Michael’s!).
They walked in through the school’s entrance and departed briefly to go to their individual lockers. Chloe Valentine was standing there, chatting and gossiping away to her group of cronies.
Jeremy ignored them because for once, almost as a silent blessing from an entity above, she wasn’t standing in front of his locker. It didn’t stop her taunts about him, but the fact that Jeremy wouldn’t be late to his first period because of Chloe standing in front of his locker made the comments a bit easier to ignore.
Avoiding eye contact with the three most popular girls in the school, Jeremy put in his locker combination, opened his locker, and robotically moved the books in his locker to his backpack. He zipped his backpack closed and shrugged said backpack onto his shoulders, making his way over to Michael’s locker so he could say goodbye before going to his homeroom.
Almost as if a higher power had decided that his day was going by too well for him, what with Chloe Valentine not standing in front of his locker for once, Jeremy just had to have run into Richard Goranksi, AKA, a fearsome gremlin the height of 5’4, who was also the personified version of yetzer hara.
“What the fuck d’you think you’re doing, Tall Ass?” Rich glowered, and of course, Jake Dillinger just had to be right by Rich’s side as Jeremy ran into him. So Jeremy cowered in fear as the two most popular boys in the school glared down at him, despite Rich being four inches shorter than Jeremy.
“I—s-shit—I-I’m s-s-sorry—“ Jeremy stuttered out as the two popular boys began laughing.
“Touch me again and I’ll break your neck, faggot!” Rich said over his shoulder as he and Jake advanced further down the hall, people automatically parting for the two boys.
Michael, who had seen the whole thing happen, scowled in Rich and Jake’s direction as he walked towards Jeremy.
“F-fuck,” Jeremy breathed out, his hands tightening over his backpack straps.
Michael pursed his lips and pat Jeremy on the back reassuringly. “Wanna just ditch school and go back to my place?”
As tempting as the offer was, Jeremy was a test grade away from failing his math class and could really use all the help he could get. “N-no, but th-thanks, M-Michael.” Jeremy let out a grimace. His stutter hadn’t been that bad in months. Must’ve been his near death experience.
Michael, though he undoubtedly noticed Jeremy’s prominent stutter, didn’t comment on it and only shrugged. “Okay, tell me how you’re feelin’ in fifth period, though. If you feel like shit we can just ditch it.”
Jeremy gave Michael a forced smile. “O-okay.”
The two exchanged their secret handshake before heading off in the direction of their homerooms.
Jeremy had one of the English teachers, Mrs. Purser, for his first period. Mrs. Purser was a cruel, tiny, wrinkled, little old lady who smelled like a mixture of dog piss and Febreze, two very contradictory things that only she managed.
She was a bad person, yes, but she made for a decent teacher. She taught her subject well enough despite her being fucking evil , but it still didn’t help that she also had a knack for making students read passages of the books they were reading in her class. Despite the fact that Jeremy had given her a doctor’s note on the first day of school that he had social anxiety and depression, she threw the note right into the trash can as she looked him in the eyes and told him in her old, crackly voice, “I don’t believe in mental illness,” and then had him sit down.
Not one of his best first days of school, that was for sure.
Anyways, the point was that Mrs. Purser was evil and made fragile and unsuspecting students like Jeremy randomly start reading an excerpt from the passage against their will.
Which was exactly what she’d decided she would do today.
Jeremy had been spacing out, staring outside the window when she’d cleared her throat.
“Jeremiah Heere? Read section three on page four hundred and twenty-seven, please.”
Jeremy blinked owlishly and looked to the woman. Mrs. Purser was staring at him expectantly, her gaze sharp and unimpressed.
“I, uh, w-what p-page, ma’am?” Jeremy blushed.
The silence in the room was deafening and the tension in the room made his skin crawl.
“Page four hundred and twenty-seven, section three,” the woman repeated. Jeremy rushed to find the page in his book as she continued. “Really, Jeremiah, you ought to pay more attention in class,” she tutted.
A few kids snickered at that and Jeremy felt his face heat up even more. He finally found where all of the class was in the book and cleared his throat. “Uh, r-right. Um, s-sorry. ‘S-section three... The architecture of th-the London B-Bridge is widely considered t-to b-b-be...’”
The rest of the period went by just like that, shitty as ever, and as were the next few periods up until lunch, which he spent in the nurse’s office.
Jeremy was considered to be a regular in there, due to his anxiety induced breakdowns, so when he entered the office and sat down in one of the chairs next to another junior named Stacy, a diabetic who ate her lunch in the nurse’s office, the nurse just finished up her typing and wordlessly opened the door to one of rooms with the cots in there.
Jeremy quietly stood up, ignoring Stacy’s glance up at him from her egg salad, and silently slid into the darkly lit room.
He sat down gingerly on the cot and breathed deeply, running his shaky hands through his tangled curly hair. He tried to evenly space out his breathing like the way his therapist had taught him, but nothing was working. He still felt like he was hyperventilating in the musky closet, the walls felt like they were closing in on him, the glaring presence of the intrusive thoughts in his brain were threatening to overtake him, the pressure was building inside of him, like a dam ready to burst—
When the lunchtime bell rang, signaling the passing time in between lunch and fifth period, Jeremy still wasn’t any less panicky by then. He grabbed his backpack that he’d laid by his feet and walked out of the office and to his fifth period.
He met Michael on the way there, making his goal all the more easier.
“Hey, I didn’t see you at lunch. Everything okay?” Michael asked, flipping his raised hoodie back down onto his shoulders.
Jeremy shook his head. “N-no. I went to the n-nurse’s office.”
”Feelin’ any better?”
Jeremy shook his head again.
Michael nodded in understanding. He began to search through his bag for his car keys. “Okay, we’ll head back to my place, if you want.”
The paler of the two nodded and they both left the building, walking side-by-side with one another as they got to Michael’s car.
They both climbed in, Jeremy letting out a deep breath as the familiar scenery comforted him.
Jeremy sighed and leaned his head onto Michael’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he murmured.
Michael smiled. “Hey, it’s no prob. This’s what best friends are for, right?”
They both sat there in the car, basking in each other’s presence until it was a few minutes into fifth period and they were sure they were safe to drive out of school.
Jeremy kept his head rested on Michael’s shoulder as the Filipino boy drove.
When they had arrived, neither of Michael’s moms’ cars were in the driveway, making it possible to enter the house without having to sneak in.
Michael opened the door for Jeremy and they both removed their shoes.
“So…” Michael said trailing off. He scratched the back of his neck. “Do you feel like gettin’ high right now? ‘Cause I just got a batch of fresh kush we could smoke—“
“Can we just…” Jeremy said hesitantly, causing Michael to stop. Jeremy crossed through the Mell’s foyer and sat down on the sofa.
“Yeah?” Michael said, trailing behind him, mimicking Jeremy’s action of sitting down, his hand only a few inches away from Jeremy’s thigh.
A thought, not intrusive, but definitely out of the ordinary for Jeremy, came into his mind. Close the distance between you two, the thought said. Jeremy fervently denied the thought in his mind, but it did make him think…
“Jere?” Michael said, tearing Jeremy away from his thoughts. Jeremy looked to Michael. “What do you wanna do?”
“Uhm,” Jeremy said. Michael was looking at him, and oh god. Sweet, kind, caring Michael was looking at him, the same Michael he’d known since they were both four. The same Michael who’d tearfully come out to Jeremy as gay because he’d thought Jeremy wouldn’t accept him. The same Michael who still thought Jeremy was straight…
“Documentary,” Jeremy said firmly, cutting off his string of borderline intrusive thoughts. “C-can we watch a documentary?”
“…A documentary?” Michael said slowly and Jeremy nodded. “Okay,” he said finally. “What do you wanna watch?”
“I don’t know… what have y-you watched recently?” Jeremy asked.
Michael’s eyes immediately lit up and Jeremy felt like smiling as he watched his best friend launch into one of his ‘Michael Rants’ as Jeremy had fondly named it. “Okay, so I was watching the Discovery channel, and this documentary came on and I was like, ‘huh, this seems interesting,’ because right off the bat, it was talking about philosophy and all that, and I knew that you’re all over that shit, so I kept watching, and it basically said that humanity has stopped evolving!” Michael said, all in one breath.
Jeremy felt his cheeks redden. God, this boy made him so weak. Only Michael could be excited about humanity stopping its evolutionary course. “That’s… good?”
Michael nodded. “Well, uh, yeah. You see, evolution is survival of the fittest, right?” Michael said, and Jeremy nodded along. “Well now, because of technology and shit, you don’t have to be strong to survive! Which means there has literally never been a better time in history to be a loser.”
Jeremy scrunched his brows. “I am s-so confused right n-now, let’s just watch the documentary.”
Michael smiled and went to grab his computer from his discarded backpack.
“Just to be clear, you said no to smoking weed, right?” Michael asked as he held his computer.
“Y-yeah. I don’t feel l-like explaining m-my red eyes to my dad.”
Michael snorted, sitting down on the couch beside Jeremy. Without hesitation, Jeremy scooted closer to Michael. Then he stiffened. This was weird, right? I mean, just because Michael was gay didn’t mean that he would like Jeremy of all people, right?
To Jeremy’s surprise, Michael almost immediately leaned into Jeremy’s touch. Jeremy glanced over to Michael, but Michael was focused on setting up the documentary.
Jeremy relaxed slightly and breathed heavily through his nose. Now that Jeremy was in a safer place to calm himself down, he decided to try his breathing exercise again.
Breathe in for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight.
Breathe in for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight.
Breathe in for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight.
Breathe in for five? six? Goddammit.
Jeremy breathed harshly through his nose and Michael glanced over at him, pausing his process in searching for the documentary. “You okay?”
Jeremy nodded on impulse and then shook his head.
Michael bit his lip. “Do you… wanna talk about it?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know,” Jeremy sighed.
Michael looked down at Jeremy’s clenched fist and then back up to look Jeremy in his eyes. Jeremy watched as Michael slowly and tentatively began to reach out his hand, opening his hand to face the ceiling.
Jeremy’s eyes trailed back up to Michael’s eyes, his breath catching when he caught Michael staring at him, a blush spreading on the other boy’s tan face.
Then, for the first time all day, a genuine smile blossomed across Jeremy’s face. It wasn’t very big, but dammit, Jeremy meant it.
He took Michael’s hand and held it in his own, squeezing it gently.
Maybe Jeremy had his bad days. Maybe there was nothing he could do to fix it. But with Michael by his side, those bad days could be a little bit brighter.