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Joey gets to school before anyone else. He’s in their usual corner when Chris and Paul arrive, pressed right up into it with his hood up.
Beyond the “hey”s they exchange, he’s not chatty like normal and stays curled up there, letting them chat. Paul gives him a longer look, but it’s easy enough to avoid his eyes. Paul’s too nice to ask in front of everyone. Even if he stays silent, he doesn’t miss the way Joey picks at his sleeves with fingers that are white at the ends from cold.
As the others traipse through the gates and join the gathering pack, the usual stupid debates fly between them, loud enough to cover Joey’s silence. He even offers a few tired opinions, just to get Shawn to rant for even longer.
The bell rings and Corey strolls through the gate two minutes later, joining the discussion like he’s been there the whole time. Chris and Mick have a chemistry test, so they actually leave near enough on time. When it looks like the rest of them are finally making moves, Paul starts looking at Joey again, so Joey hauls his bag on and darts away to English, putting his head down and getting lost in the late crowd.
He slouches his way through class, but Miss March either really likes him or really hates him because she calls on him too many times for him to actually drop off.
Biology is next, which he shares with Paul and Sid, but they don’t sit together (a very deliberate choice on the teacher’s part). Joey doesn’t even bother to disguise it, throwing his bag at his feet and putting his head in his arms on the desk. can feel Paul’s eyes on him, but can’t bring himself to care.
It had been a bad night in.
He’s hollow with tiredness, unbreaking pressure now sitting behind his eyes. Static fuzzes through his mind. But the exhaustion weighs on him too heavily to let him drift away, even as he stubbornly stares at his eyelids in the darkness between his forearms, which still sting.
He has no fucking idea how to tie a bandage, doesn’t even have proper bandages, but the blood has now crusted onto the torn-up fabric, pasting it in place well enough. If he shifts, he can feel it crack and pull. All it does it add to the nausea rolling around his empty stomach.
“If you’re dead by the time I get back, I’ll have myself a good time.”
He remembers the threat.
He remembers staying frozen on the kitchen floor for too long, terrified to close his eyes. Back against the hard cupboards, warm liquid under his nails.
Staying there even when his arms went numb. The dizziness of getting up. Fishing for a granola bar in the cupboard and feeling no better. Wiping the floor and trying not to puke on it as his own blood filled up the tissues. He flushed everything. Ripped up a t shirt he doesn’t care too much about and tried to tie it, but he didn’t know what he was doing
Packing his schoolbag with shaking hands and feeling so empty he floated out the door. His dad wasn’t back and he wanted out before he arrived. He wasn’t so sure his dad didn’t intend to make him dead when he got back, whether he already was or not.
His fists clench on the desk. Paul sees.