After she’s checked and double checked that no one is in the bathroom, Jaslene pulls up her shirt and lets out a panicked, “Oh shit.”

Blood, thick and dark rolls down her waist slowly, almost as though it was turning into sludge. It looks like blood that’s had snake venom mixed into it, something she got to see during one of the experiment days in Bio. It’s already stained some of her shirt, too dark to be mistaken for anything else.

Jaslene swears again, with more feeling, and pulls out as many paper towels she can from the dispenser. It’s hard to wipe away, with how thick it is, so she grabs another wad of paper towels and runs them under the faucet for a moment, then tried again. The blood is wiped away easily. She scrubs her skin with the rough paper towels until it begins to burn. And then she does it all over again to dry off the water.

Almost as soon as she throws everything away, blood comes rolling out of the wound again, sliding under the damp sports tape, too bloody to be of any use now. She rips it off all the wounds and balls it up, throwing it into the trash can with a curse.

“Are you kidding me?” Jaslene hisses to her reflection, then grabs even more paper towels to hold against the open wound, hoping it would stem to blood flow. She doesn’t have any bandages big enough to cover the wound, and she can’t ask the nurse for any either, not when the nurse will definitely want to know why she needs them. So Jaslene crouches down and rummages through her backpack with one hand until she pulls out a tape dispenser.

It’s not her best idea, but it’s all she’s got right then.

It takes some fumbling and swearing, in both English and Filipino, but Jaslene manages to tape the paper towels onto her skin, large strips of tape holding everything down to put pressure on the wound. The tape holds, thankfully, because the bell starts ringing a moment later and the halls flood with noise as students leave their classes for lunch.

Just as Jaslene stands and swings her backpack onto her shoulder, the door to the bathroom opens and a group of girls enters, discussing a test that only two of them understood. Jaslene pushes past them, careful not to look at any of them, and merges into the crowded hallways.

Habit makes it easy for her to join the flow of movement and ride it to her locker. Her gayness makes it absurdly difficult to open her locker with Aya standing besides it, bento in one hand as she waits for Jaslene.

It takes three tries for her to open her locker, hands clumsy under Aya’s gaze. Somehow she manages - muscle memory, most likely - and switches out a few notebooks for the two classes she has after lunch, then slams her locker shut and turns to Aya with a smile.

“Did I miss anything important in those last few minutes of English?” she asks as they begin walking down the hallway to go outside to their usual lunch spot.

“Just a bunch of existential questions. Oh, and we have an essay about our life or values looked at through a postmodernist lens.” Aya rolls her eyes, and sighs, and familiar sign of how much she hates writing essays.

“So we’ll go through the usual thing of pulling absolute BS out of our asses?”

“Oh, of course. There’s no other way to get a passing grade in that class.”

Aya pushes open the door and holds is for Jaslene. As soon as their outside, the sun shines down on them, a welcome respite from the weeks of clouds and rain. Aya tilted her head back, looking into the sky and basking in the warm.

She sighs a content sound, and says, “Man, I’ve missed the sun so much.”

Jaslene would agree, in any other circumstance; she thrived in the sunlight, the bright and the warmth, the summer, the heat. But it didn’t feel warm. It didn’t feel like anything at all. The sunlight just made things brighter, but there wasn’t anything that Jaslene could feel.

She’s lost the sunlight.

Something about that thought is painful, pulling on her heart with a heavy feeling of loss.

“Jaslene?”

Blinking herself out of the daze she was in, Jaslene turns to face Aya. Though she can’t see her mouth, she can tell that Aya is frowning by the way her eyebrows furrow and her eyes narrow just the slightest bit.

‘Shit,’ Jaslene thinks, ‘Guuuuh…. Aight I gotta play it off as a joke.’

“What?”

Aya tilts her head a bit, like a confused puppy, and Jaslene kinda wants to cry, it’s just so cute. “You’re being weirdly quiet,” she says.

“Um, excuse you, but I was enjoying the sun. Trying to photosynthesize and drink in that sunlight.” Jaslene pulls a ‘duh’ face and rolls her eyes. It takes a lot of effort to keep her face in that expression, especially with her lips twitching, trying to curl into a smile at Aya’s breathy laugh.

“Slurp,” she says, and they’re both gone, laughing at the stupid jokes that make up 90% of their humor.

Jaslene grabs Aya’s wrist and pulls her towards the table under a tree, the one they’ve claimed since freshman year. Their other friends already sit, eating as they chat away. Deija waves at them, and the other follow in turn, with Jake beckoning them over.

“Hey guys,” Jaslene greets as she drops her backpack and sits down. The tape pulls at the movement, and she finds herself holding her breath as she waits to see if the tape will hold. It does, and she relaxes as the others pull her and Aya into their conversation.

Jake slaps his hand on the table and leans forwards. “Have you guys seen the news today?” he asks, staring at Jaslene and Aya with enough intensity to make them fidget. Without waiting for an answer, he continues on, saying, “Well, they found Matthew’s phone. Apparently it was thrown away, and forcefully too, so their reconsidering his ‘run away’ status and are probably going to change it to kidnapped.”

“Have they found anything else?” Aya asks, leaning closer as she speaks. She’s completely focused on the conversation, and Jake grins at her interest.

“Not yet,” he answer, “But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before more things show up that’ll help the police figure out what’s happened.”

Tomàs nudges Jake back with a frown. “Listen, I get that your super into journalism and love keeping up with things, but can you hold off on the conspiracy theories until after we’ve eaten?”

Jake pouts, but relents.

Aya leans back and ducks her head as she pulls out her bento. As she unpacks everything, she glaces over.

“No lunch today?” she asks, voice low so only Jaslene can hear it.

“Nah,” Jaslene says. “Not hungry.”

Aya pushes her bento over so it sits between them. “Eat something, at least.”

It’s hard to say no to Aya, so she doesn’t. Just picks up something brown and breaded (“Tonkatsu,” Aya says) and bites into it.

It doesn’t taste like much of anything at all.

“Thanks,” Jaslene smiles at Aya, who just shrugs and keeps eating.

They don’t talk much that lunch, but they don’t need to. Jake keeps control of the conversation, discussing the topic that’s shocked the school: Matthew Wilson’s disappearance. Though it seems that now, it’s not just another high school runaway, but a kidnapping, and a possible murder.

Jaslene pressed a hand to her wound under the table.

She misses Aya’s frown, but it’s hard to focus when the only thing running through her mind is: ‘That could have been me. That could be me.’