smiling critters

chapter 7 - struggles

The days dragged on and on, two weeks felt like two decades for Neil. Elliot let him keep the old schedule he had back in Godfrey's house and that gave him some sense of normalcy. But other than that, it was all a blur. But today was good, because he got to meet up with his friends outside of school for the first time in a while, and plus, it was the first full day of summer break. They were going to meet at a skatepark, they could all at least roller skate, so the skate park was a nice option to get some exercise. But for some reason, Neil just wasn't feeling it. He was gonna go, so he could at least be in his friends' company, but he was too tired to join in on the activity. He watched as his friends skated around, Kai showed off all the skateboarding tricks he knew, and everyone looked like they were having fun. Neil found himself slowly losing his vision and tried shaking his head to get it back, which ended up being a mistake because he just got a killer dizzy spell. He wanted to go home, but he didn't want to leave his friends or make them worry, they didn't need that. Eventually, Dylan came up to him and sat down.

"How ya doin' nini? You look sick," he smiled and put a paw on his shoulder. He felt sick, he just wanted to tell his friend what had happened, how he was kicked out of Godfrey's house and had to live on the streets for two months, how he was taken in by Elliot and forced to take some kind of weird medicine that was supposed to help, but it felt like it was making him worse. Neil was surprised by Dylan suddenly hugging him.

"Hey hey hey, don't cry! What happened, what's wrong?" the cocker spaniel asked, his arms still wrapped around the feline, who separated from the hug to talk.

"Nothing, just been having a ruff past few days," he joked, getting a laugh out of his friend.

"If you say so, just please tell me if something's going on, I don't want you hurt."

Neil nodded back and Dylan decided to stay there instead of rejoining his other friends.

bryson POV:

As Bryson skated, he noticed Dylan and Neil sitting on a bench together in complete silence. Neil had been acting strange the past few weeks, but whenever anyone asked he just got really weird about it and dodged the question. It was far from his normal behavior, since he was usually pretty honest and transparent about whatever was bothering him. That summer, Bryson had decided to get to the bottom of why his friend was acting so strange! Would it include crime? Sure, if he felt like doing that. Was there going to be lots of cold, hard calculations? of fucking course, or his name wasn't Bryson Foster. he stopped at another bench to start his research. Neil started acting weird about 2.5 months ago, when Penny noticed he didn't have a lunch the entire week. Usually, he'd be missing a lunch once or twice a week, but even that was pretty rare. His lack of a lunch continued for basically the rest of the year. Once he started bringing a lunch again, Bryson noticed his snout getting a little tint of red, and it got darker and darker as the days went on. Neil's odd behavior reached a climax when people started asking if something was wrong; he'd get this sort of teary-eyed look on his face. Bryson decided to stop for now and go back to skating. When the group had gone home, he did some extra research on Neil's condition, which got him nowhere at first. He thought over his behavior and appearance. He looked tired, wasn't eating, barely drank anything anymore at least from what Bryson saw, was super dodgy about his condition, and his snout was slowly turning red. They didn't seem consistent, at least without context. He tried looking up the symptoms again. For most of the symptoms, his research led him to either some kind of illness or stress, but for the snout thing, he was pulling up blanks. He kept scrolling down until he got to something that seemed remotely useful. He read a bit of the article before clicking the link. It read that a red snout is a telltale sign of frequent popine use. Bryson searched up what popine was, and his search was nothing short of concerning. Apparently, popine was a gas, primarily made from poppies, used in the late 18 and early 1900s before the government cracked down on poppy products in 1912. Once more research was done on the gas, it was revealed to be more dangerous than the other poppy products on the market at the time. it could make you completely numb, extremely weak, permanently drowsy but unable to sleep. it could cause lung diseases, breathing problems, and could make you temporarily or permanently lose multiple senses and/ or memories, and in the worst cases, can cause death. but on the other end of the scale, it could make you feel super energized and healthy. Bryson was a little concerned now; was Neil being poisoned? He hoped not. He decided to stop researching for now and go spend time with his pop-pop and sister. He shut off his computer and went downstairs to see his family doing whatever down stairs.

"Oh, perfect timing, dinner is ready! Be careful, though, it's still hot," his pop-pop smiled. He smiled back so as to not seem rude as he went to serve himself some food and sat beside his sister. The family ate and talked about random topics before cleaning the dishes and going back to doing whatever. Bryson went back to his room and pondered who he could tell about what he learned. Georgia was a nurse, maybe he could go to her? But then again, what if he was wrong in his initial assumption that it was popine? then he'd never be able to recover from that embarrassment. One of his friends? But what could they do, tell their families? Maybe he would, just to get it off his chest. He unlocked his phone and tapped the most recent contact, which just so happened to be Camila, and told her about what he learned and now was worried Neil was going through, but asked her not to tell in case he was wrong. She didn't reply. After waiting for what felt like hours, he decided to plug his phone in and go to sleep for the night.

1116 words

next part in 2 days (also i'm sorry to those of you who saved this in their library if you were getting a bunch of notifications on me updating the last chapter. my perfectionist ass had so much to fix and didn't bother proofreading it before fixing it. so learn from me and don't try to rush and fix something, yes fix it as soon as possible, but don't be sloppy and make dumb mistakes ok bye <3)