It Started on Friday

Chapter Twelve - Descent

It'd been only a few hours since Jason was told about Emil's supposed passing, which he had finally forced himself to believe. The entire way walking home, he hadn't believed it; he'd figured that it was all a joke...but then again, why make a joke like that if you're a professional? A professional doctor, at that? He hadn't understood, but that's what his brain had decided to hook on until just ten minutes before the present.

Jason was laid down on his bed onto his side, faced purposely away from the door. He hadn't talked to his mother, and when she asked what was wrong, he said absolutely nothing and headed off to his bedroom. Sure, he might just be overdramatic about this whole situation; his lover being gone. He had his mother still, his father who was barely home... sometimes he wondered if he'd gone and cheated, but never asked about him. It has been nearly a year since he last saw him, is all. He still had Jessica, who was his closest friend who was female. No suspicions there about them dating; everyone at the school at this point knew he was fully gay...not even bisexual.

A few knocks were placed against Jason's door. He hadn't budged, neither did he say anything. He knew it was his mother, yet he didn't want to talk to anyone right now. He'd hope that she figured he was asleep, but he should have known better that she knew he was wide awake, somewhat, because she came into the room shortly after. Her soft voice echoed a bit into Jason's ears, but it sounded incoherent to him. He was trying to drown all the noise out, after all. He slowly sat up, eventually looking at his mother, and her voice sounded much more clear.

"Are you doing alright? I really don't know what happened, but I'm not going to pressurize you..."

Her voice was beginning to fade again. He was rather grateful that she was worried, and wasn't pressuring him to tell her. Even then, he had said nothing to her, and laid himself back down onto the bed. Hearing his mother let out a sad and long sigh, he knew she left by hearing the door shut. He checked again by sitting up and looking towards the door, not seeing his mother any more at all. He was sort of thankful that she understood how he was feeling, but he still felt bad by distancing himself from her. She was always an understanding mother, and was always there for him, unlike his father.

After a few hours of moping around, he sat up again. He looked out his window that was next to his bed, to see that it was getting quickly dark now. He stood up, his legs a bit shaky, which he figured it was because he hasn't stood for a while. He managed to get himself out of his bedroom, and downstairs, seeing his mother still up. It was around eight at night, and usually his mother would be in her room, reading a book or watching some television.

"Ma? What're you doing up?" His voice was soft, but he was too tired both physically and mentally to raise his voice any higher. To his relief, his mother heard him, and responded only with a shrug. He found it weird, since his mother would always respond in words to him; it was only very rarely that she responded using body language rather than language itself. He knew something was wrong, but like her, he wasn't going to pressure her. He figured why she wasn't okay though: it was because of his behaviors.

He sighed, walked over and gave her a hug, and once she had hugged back, Jason smiled a bit and then proceeded to head back up to his room again. He noticed that his room looked rather messy, and since he had nothing else to do, he had decided to at least get a start of cleaning and organizing it all over again. He walked over to his nightstand, where he found most of his senior textbooks. Organized from English, to science, then on the bottom were his math textbooks. He got down onto his knees, taking each and every one of the textbooks, heaving them onto the floor. He looked through them, not looking impressed, but then got to the last textbook and immediately felt his entire body freeze up as he stared at the title of it.

Senior Trigonometry. 12th grade. This wasn't his book; he knew he didn't have his senior textbook for trigonometry. Hesitating, once he was able to move, he opened the textbook to the very front. Ownership possessions. He read the words "This Book Belongs to" then, reading underneath that, he read "Emil Harbroken". He'd never closed a book so quickly before. When did he even leave it? He could have sworn their last tutoring session that was a little over a month ago, he grabbed it...then acted like he hadn't as an excuse to come back. Why was it here? Ironically, he hadn't noticed it until now.