Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

Part 2

 Iss can't stand his classmates. He never could. "He wasn't himself, I'm telling you!" Shouted Robert, Jean's ex-best friend. Jean of course, had stopped being Robert's friend months ago, and distanced himself from the other boy greatly. Robert just wasn't the kind of person Jean wanted to hang around anymore. Boys who like to smoke and cat girls on the street generally don't get along with quiet boys who have a bad habit of tugging at their hair when they're nervous.

"Jean stopped talking to me suddenly one day. He came to school looking all paranoid, I swear it's like his eyes wouldn't look at just one thing for more than a second. I could only watch him in class for the first two periods we had together since I sat all the way across the room, then come lunchtime I tried speaking to him again. He wouldn't budge."

One of the girls piped up, if Iss could recall, she was on the cheerleading team. "Maybe that's because he didn't wanna be known as the guy who's best friend is the biggest cheater in the school!" She joked. "He was in a pretty serious relationship at the time, Robert." At that everyone's eyes cautiously found themselves at the back of the classroom where Jean's ex-girlfriend Rachel sat. She was staring blankly at the blackboard of the classroom, her eyes vacant of any emotion. Jean had broken up with her months ago, which according to everyone else was also highly out of character for the dead boy.

Jean, of course, was everyone's best friend that day. He had spoken to Sarah once at a school dance, and told her she had a beautiful dress on. Lenny, known as the weirdo of their class, told everyone about the time Jean had complimented him on one of his drawings. Only, according to the cheerleader girl, he was making a sarcastic remark about the boy's art and actually found his drawings creepy.

* * *

Every school Iss had ever gone to had been the same, no matter what part of the country it was in. All the students always loomed over him, expecting more than what he could offer when it came to personality. All he could do was keep his head aimed towards his desk and tug on his hair. He was shaking rather violently as well, only one wouldn't realize it unless they were staring rather intently at him. And who wants to analyze the quiet boy with nothing of interest to offer?

One of his feet sat on top of the other under his desk in an attempt to hold himself down from shaking so much. He tried closing his eyes and breathing slower to calm himself down. What was it, four breaths in, four breaths out? His old psychiatrist had taught him these coping methods, but they wouldn't work with the whole classroom bustling about their dead friend.

Iss couldn't take it anymore, they were all pretending to know so much about Jean. They never knew who he really was when he died! Why he killed himself, and they'd never find out! Iss wouldn't tell them anything about it, but he knew. He knew the full story, and maybe his classmates wouldn't be pretending to as well, if he hadn't killed himself.

He stood up suddenly, and his chair shot out behind him and nearly toppled to the floor. "Holy shit, Caspian!" Shouted the boy in front of him. Iss didn't care, he had to get out of there. He started to make a beeline for the door that exited the classroom when the cheerleader girl jumped in his way.

"Where do you think you're going?" Her eyes stared deep into his, seemingly searching for hints of a lie. Iss wasn't exactly sure why she thought this was her business.

"J-just to the nurse's office." He mumbled.

"W-w-what for?" She questioned, mocking his stuttering.

"I have a stomach ache."

"You're going to the nurse for that? Whatever happened to the Caspian who didn't even let a broken finger stop him during the final game of the season?" She cackled loudly at her own joke, and Iss peeked a glance at his other classmates, who were also laughing. His anxiety was spiking even more and he had to leave.

"Please just.. Let me through." He requested quietly. She sighed and stood at the side of the doorway so that he could pass, but not without casting him a worried - and somewhat confused - glance while he walked out.

The hallways were just another nightmare. He could find his way around them safely, but Iss was more concerned with coming across random people on his way to the nurse's. It wasn't enough trouble being interviewed by the cheerleader girl, but plenty of people he happened upon would likely do the same. Especially since Caspian and Jean had been childhood friends however many years ago. Already, talk about a funeral was floating around the school, and Caspian would likely attend it. Only Iss wasn't sure if he wanted to.

* * *

Joyce Walters is a busy woman. Being a therapist for troubled youth is no easy job. In a larger city such as hers especially, with a population exceeding 500,000, she saw plenty of patients every day. She didn't think forgetting patients was something a proper therapist should do, but among so many cases of teenage depression and mild anxiety, one tends to lose track of some of the youths they've spoken with.

Joyce had forgotten plenty of patients over her 15 years of being a therapist. Some of the ones she'd lost memory of even included those she served within the past year or two. It's not that she wanted to forget them or that she found them boring, but with so many new patients coming in by the day, she'd gotten used to replacing old ones with the new.

One patient, however, had always stayed in Joyce's mind. She tried to get rid of the memories, but she just couldn't. If she could recall correctly, it had only been about two or three years ago that she'd seen him.

The boy was a seventeen year old boy by the name of Brookes. Joyce had begun seeing Brookes at the age of fifteen. He was something of a delinquent back then, always getting into fights at school and being suspended repeatedly. His parents had suspected something might've been going on inside his head, so they'd sent him to her office.

She knew the type, young troubled teenage boys whose parents had more than enough money to cover weekly appointments for their child when really all he probably needed was an ADHD medication or mood stabilizer of some sort. His mother and father of course, didn't think that chemicals could solve their teenage son's problems and that he needed an adult he could confide in that wasn't related to him.

Brookes's appointments were quite troublesome for Joyce. He tried to act bigger than he was, like plenty of teenage boys do. Every single day, he would sit down across the table from Joyce where her patients always sat, and rudely propped his feet up onto the table. Joyce always asked him to remove his feet from her coffee table, to which he would reply "what? It's not like you're going to be licking the table or anything."

Joyce slowly began to learn more about Brookes, about how his fights likely always began with him setting someone else off first. Only he'd attempt to spin the stories around in his favor. Eventually, when he was sixteen she began to see progress. She'd helped him find something to channel his anger into, when he joined the track team. Brookes really enjoyed it and the fights he got into were much less frequent. Until he changed drastically.

Joyce could remember that day rather clearly. Brookes walked into her office. His anger had begun to lessen, but he still always propped his feet up onto her table. She supposed it was some sort of tactic he used to attempt to assert his dominance in the room between them.

Today was different. It was foggy outside her office windows and Brookes entered the room. His entire demeanor was off. He held his head down and kept his feet near each other while walking. He walked in cautiously, and kept his hands near his chest, using one to tug slightly at his hair. He looked terrified and she couldn't pinpoint why, maybe something bad had happened to him?