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Everyone was talking at once.
Ashlyn hadn't been sleeping well recently (none of the Savannah Kids had been sleeping well recently) and it was definitely beginning to take a toll on her mental health. Because of this, she found her baseline level of stress already a bit higher than normal and this made her already sensitive ears all the more sensitive.
She was sitting in the lunch room with her new 'friends' that she'd acquired from that horrific trip to Savannah and they were all talking over each other, discussing their freaky, shared dreams and plotting potential courses of action. Ashlyn couldn't focus on any of that, though. No, her brain was too preoccupied with how damn loud it all was.
Aiden put a hand on her shoulder and she flinched away wildly, the touch feeling like she was being poked with a thousand needles. Aiden quickly retracted his hand and everyone looked over at her, finally noticing the state she was in.
"Ash, are you good?" Tyler asked. She didn't reply. No, she needed to get out of there as fast as possible. So, that's exactly what she did. She stumbled out of the seat and booked it out of the cafeteria. A lunch admin looked curiously but didn't care enough to chase after her.
Concerned, Aiden told everyone to stay where they were before he followed her. He knew she got overwhelmed easily (he'd also more or less figured out the reason behind it), so he knew she'd probably find somewhere dark and quiet to hide.
Sure enough, he eventually found her hiding out under the staircase in the main building of the school. When he found her, she was curled into a ball with her noise-canceling headphones on, lightly rocking back and forth. He made a small sound, just loud enough to get through the noise cancellation but not so loud as to worsen her state too much. She looked up at him and frowned. This was embarrassing.
He didn't say anything, instead opting to pull off his backpack and begin rummaging through it. She wasn't sure where this was headed exactly but she tried not to worry too much about it. Eventually, he pulled out some sort of twelve-sided fidget cube (or, she supposed it wasn't a cube because it had twelve sides, but it was the same principle) and handed it to her.
She cautiously played with the various fidgets on it and found herself beginning to calm down. She looked over at him again and he smiled.
"It helps me stay focused on stuff" he explained. She nodded. It didn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to know the boy had ADHD. "I thought it might help"
'Thank you' she signed, unable to form words due to her current state. They'd all taken ASL for a year or two for the language credit, and this turned out to be far more helpful than they ever realized, with Ben's muteness and Ash's tendency to go quiet when she got too overwhelmed.
"You're welcome"