Algid (#TronnorAU)

Chapter 13: Rain

For the remaining days of that week, Connor did everything in his power to become invisible.

He had been too affected by seeing Troye's family. He was perfectly aware of how stupid and irrational it was, but he couldn't help it. And even if he thought it was horrible, the truth was that he was being too hard on himself. He would've known that, of course, if he hadn't isolated himself from all his new friends.

But yes, in the three days that passed Connor had gone back to being the cold, distant new kid nobody knew. He didn't talk to anyone in class anymore, not even Lilly, who seemed extremely concerned all the time, and who kept looking for him during lunch. But Connor kept having lunch in secret places, where he knew nobody could find him. It was even tougher given that she had Caspar, Joe and Oli looking for him constantly. He had found one on top of the roof of the school's main classroom building. There was a set of stairs, and on top of it there was a never-used basketball court and some benches where he had all the loneliness he wanted so that he could eat in peace. Or eat at all, which he wasn't at Grace's house. He skipped the three meals of every day, and although Grace didn't seem to find the correct words to ask him what was wrong, she never stopped worrying and offering him different things to eat to see if there was anything he'd have. He even stopped talking to Mikey and Alexis. Alexis felt extremely hurt from it, and Mikey was just plain out confused, since he thought the two of them were starting to become friends. It was even worse because as soon as he had gotten back to the house after crying his way back from Troye's, Alexis asked him what was wrong, because she could tell he had been crying. And Connor pushed her aside instead.

But the last person Connor wanted to see, was Troye.

All the classes they shared together, Connor avoided his sight. When they were about to cross paths on the halls, he would turn around and go another way. When he received texts from him, he deleted them without reading them first.

However, the true trouble came when Connor skipped his meeting with Lisbug on Wednesday as he was meant to, and got sent a warning form to his locker instructing him to meet her in her office after class before the end of the week unless he wanted to get into more trouble with both the school and his parole.

So on Thursday afternoon, one day before the class road trip to the lake, Connor took off early from swimming so that he could go meet her instead. It wasn't too hard to convince Mr. Hartman, given he didn't really care that much, and so he got out of the pool, said bye to Shawn and went directly to get showered, changed and towards her office, set and ready to knock on her door.

Basically, that was the whole story on how Connor was after class sitting down in the room he'd learn to hate, in front of a rather silent and confused-looking counselor, who had her blonde hair tied down on a horsetail instead of her usual headband, and was wearing an oddly fancy dress and no glasses.

He didn't mean to stare at all, but Connor couldn't help to do so, because she looked like an entirely different person. This was definitely not her to-go look when it came to work, but there were most likely a set of circumstances he wasn't aware of. Eventually, she offered Connor a mug of hot coffee, which he accepted wordlessly, and gave him a sad grin.

-"Listen, Connor."—she said—"I know I was out of line the last time we saw each other."

Honestly, Connor had forgotten all about last time he had spoken with her. Now he did see why she might have thought that had been an issue, though, because he did storm out angrily, probably leaving the impression he didn't intend to come back. Though he had been angry at her then-and honestly was a little bit still-that wasn't an issue anymore, so perhaps it was time to cut her a break.

-"... If you're wondering if that's why I skipped"—he explained with several pauses—", it isn't."

Lisbug's eyes widened a bit, clearly not expecting what she had just heard.