If I asked him where he spent his breaks, what would he say? 

“What’s it to you?” Maybe.

“It’s none of your business.” Possible. 

Or he’d finally snap, and beat me up like the rumors promised. He didn’t spend his breaks with his friends, and I had checked multiple times, from a safe distance where his odd acquaintances couldn’t see me, all because I wanted to avoid another confrontation by them and have Oliver found out I had ignored his warning. 

Why didn’t he want me to go to those friends smoking behind the gym? If it was none of my business what he was up to, wasn’t it the same way around? 

“What a mess,” I sighed, scratching through my hair with the back-end of my pen. And before I knew, I realized I had said it out loud, with Oliver sitting beside me and his glare dropping onto me, eyebrows frowning all the deeper. 

“S-Sorry,” I stuttered. “I—I guess I’m just talking to myself. Silly me. Hahaha…” 

“…” Pitch-black, his eyes dug through me, shuddering me inside out. With a gulp, I tightened my lips, only for his ears to jerk before flipping around, forcing his head to stare out the window, and show me his back, instead.

In a completely exaggerated reaction, he even squeaked his chair across the floor, making it obvious for everyone to see that he avoided me. Tucked into the corner of our table, chair turned away from me, he hunched over on the table, hiding his face, his ears, and ruffling through his own hair. 

Was that a red shimmer I saw, on the tip of his ears, poking out beneath the shadows of his arms? 

All the time, he glared at me. Never apologized for hurting me that day during the volleyball game, and even when I talked and laughed with my friends, I’d feel his gaze piercing holes through my back, only to find anger-driven eyes staring right at me. 

What’s his problem? Every single time. At this point, I feared going home alone, and had Matt accompany me as far as possible, until our paths had to split. 

It was physics class, now, and the school-bell rang. Just in time, our teacher came rushing into the room, a stack of corrected tests in his hands. Two weeks, it had been, ever since we wrote that test. Ever since Oliver had been forced to sit elsewhere … 

“Let’s see,” Mr Roth sighed. “I was satisfied, for the most part. Most of you did well, and studied thoroughly. But, as always, there’s some students that should put more effort into it the next time.” 

Immediately, the teacher’s eyes wandered across the room, only to land on Oliver, who ignored his words and scribbled ink onto his paper, resting his head on his arm. As if he was used to it, he didn’t even react; as if he already knew he was meant, even without the teacher explicitly saying his name. 

Wasn’t it annoying? To be called out this way, almost in such a rude tone, just because the teacher didn’t like you?

Doesn’t it bother you, Oliver, knowing the teachers had long given up on you? It wasn’t fair to expose him, with eyes alone, and so obviously at that. Every single one of us saw Mr Roth staring right at Oliver, only to exhale in a loud, disappointed manner. 

As the teacher handed out the graded tests, Oliver’s leg rocked up and down, forcing the entire table to vibrate in response. He did often, I had already realized — he could never quite sit still, only when he napped. 

Most of the time, he had to do something; fiddle with paper, move his legs about endlessly, or tip his chair backwards and wobble back and forth until he was scolded by the teachers. His attention span was practically zero. 

I could feel Oliver staring at me when I received my test, a perfect 100 as my grade, encircled in red ink to make it all the more obvious. Somehow, it embarrassed me, especially to have him stare, and so, I was quick to hide it within my backpack. 

When Oliver received his grade, I couldn’t help but look just as he had looked at mine. But instead of staring at his grade, I caught myself staring at Oliver, instead, and his eyes that watched over all the red ink atop his paper, all the mistakes he’d made, and the low points he had achieved. 

There wasn’t much of a reaction on his face. Whether he was disappointed, or used to it — I couldn’t tell. I flinched when Oliver began crumpling his test into a ball, his hand turning into a fist, the test dying within his tense fingers.

“What are you staring at?” He didn’t even turn to ask me such a question, his voice quiet and threatening all the same. The corners of his mouth hung low, as if my staring alone was enough to bring his mood down into doom. 

“M-Me?” Am I an idiot? 

“Who else?” he hissed, only to begin playing with the ball that was once his physics test, grumbling in annoyance. The dark rasp in his voice terrified me. 

“Nothing, I—I just—“ I turned bright red. What to do? Every time, he caught me right in the act. And somehow, he was allowed to get angry at me for staring, but what was I supposed to do when I caught him doing the very same? 

What about me annoyed him this much? It wasn’t fair. 

With a sigh, I slouched forward, and for once, I found myself begging for class to end. 

Today, I wanted to know where he disappeared to. Today, my curiosity got the best of me. 

As much as he scared me, I watched past him as soon as he left the room in a hurry, right after class, having prepared his backpack before the class had even ended. In a flash, he disappeared, and I was worried I’d miss my chance once more. 

“Finn, let’s get something from the vending—“

“Sorry, I can’t,” I disrupted Matt, already pushing myself past him. “I’ve got somewhere to be.” 

I rushed out of the room, and down the stairs I’d seen him at, only to follow him, at a safe distance, down towards the ground floor of the school. At first, I thought he planned on leaving the school premises. Did he smoke elsewhere, in privacy, without his friends? Did he have other friends the rumors hadn’t covered?

But then, instead of pushing himself through the school’s entrance door, he turned the corner. With a racing heart, I followed, watching him walk past the storage room, the janitor’s room, and towards our rather abandoned, barely used library. 

“H-Huh?” 

Oliver entered the library, letting the door fall shut quietly behind him, and I blinked multiple times, too confused to understand. 

All these rumors orbiting around him, and he was yet to prove a single one of them. All this fear, I carried, when I had no reason to. He frightened me with his glares alone, but should I really be afraid? Was he really the Oliver everyone thought he was?

“Why are you hiding in the library?” I wondered. What was he doing in there? It’s not like our library had the best selection of books, and it wasn’t a popular hangout, either. It was too small, too cramped, too dusty, and only had a few chairs and a single couch to spare. 

I sneaked up to the closed door, staring at the letters glittering atop it: Library. Did anyone ever lend any books here? Hell, did this room even have books? Even I hadn’t entered this room once in my endless years of attending this school. 

A deep breath later, my fingers already clung to the shimmering door handle before me. 

“This is a terrible idea,” I thought, and pressed the handle down.