Beautiful Secrets (Cranksepticeye Fanfiction)

~12.19~ White Christmas

After the Disciplinary Committee meeting, I don't think anyone believed Jack would show up at school the next day. But he did, just like I knew he would. No one else knew he had given up the right to go to school once. He wasn't going to let anyone take it away from him again. To everyone else, school was prison. To Jack, it was freedom. Only it didn't matter, because that was the day Jack became a ghost at Jackson - nobody looked at him, spoke to him, sat near him at any table, bleacher, or desk. By Thursday, half the kids at school were wearing the Jackson Angels T-shirt, with those white wings on their backs. The way they looked at him, it seemed half the teachers wished they could wear them, too. On Friday, I turned in my basketball jersey. It just didn't feel like we were all on the same team anymore.
Coach was furious. After all the hollering died down, he just shook his head. "You're crazy, Nestor. Look at the season you're having, and you're throwing it away on some boy." I could hear it in his voice. Some boy. Old Man Ravenwood's nephew.
As I watched the numbers on Jack's wall and hand get smaller and smaller, the possibility became more real. What if we couldn't stop it? What if Jack had been right all along, and after his birthday the boy I knew disappeared? Like he had never been here at all.
All we had was The Book of Moons. And more and more, there was one thought I was trying to keep out of Jack's head and mine.
I wasn't sure the Book was enough.

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"Amongst personnes of powere, there being twinne forces from whyche spring all magick, the Darknesse & the Light."
"I think we've got the whole Darkness and Light thing worked out. You think we could get to the good part? The part called, Loopholes for Your Claiming Day? How to Reverse the Passage of Time?" I was frustrated, and Jack wasn't talking.
From where we sat on the bleachers, the school looked deserted. We were supposed to be at the science fair, watching Alice Milkhouse soak an egg in vinegar, listening to Jackson Freeman argue there was no such thing as global warming, and Annie Honeycutt counter with how to make Jackson a green school. Maybe the Angels were going to habe to start recycling their flyers.
I stared at the Algebra II book hanging out if my backpack. It didn't seem like there was anything worth learning at this place anymore. I'd learned enough in the past few months. Jack was a million miles away, still buried in the Book. I had started carrying it around in my backpack, out of fear Anna would find it if I left it in my room.
"Here's more about Cataclysts."
"The greatest of Darknesse being the powere closest to the wold & the underwold, the Cataclyste. The greatest of the Light being the powere closest to the wold & the underwold, the Natural. Where there is not onne there cannot be the othere, as withoute Darknesse there can be no Light."
"See? You're not going Dark. You're Light because you're the Natural."
Jack shook his head and pointed to the next paragraph. "Not necessarily. That's what my uncle thinks. But listen to this -
"At the tyme of claiming, the truthe will be made manifeste. What appears Darknesse maye be the greatest Light, with appears to be Light maye be the greatest Darknesse."
He was right, there was no way to be sure.
"Then it gets really complicated. I'm not even sure I understand the words.
"For the Darke mattere mayde the Darke fyre, & the Darke fyre made the poweres of all Lilum in the demon wold & Casters of Darknesse & Light. Without all powere tjere can be no powere. The Darke fyre mayde the great Darknesse & the great Light. All powere is Darke powere, as Darke powere is even the Light."
"Dark matter? Dark Fire? What is this, the Big Bang for Casters?"
"What about the Lilum? I've never heard of any of this, but then again, nobody tells me anything. I didn't even know my own mother was alive." He sounded so sarcastic, but K could hear the pain in his voice.
"Mayne the Lilum is an old word for Casters, or something."
"The more I find out, the less I understand."
And the less time we have.
Don't say that.
The bell rang and I stood up. "You coming?"
He shook his head. "I'm going to stay out here a while longer." Alone, in the cold. More and more, it was like that; he hadn't even looked.me in the eye since the Disciplinary Committee meeting, almost as if I were one of them. I couldn't really blame him, considering the whole school hand half the town had basically decided he was the institutionalized, bipolar child if a murderer.
"You better show up in class sooner or later. Don't give Principal Harper any more ammunition."
He looked back toward the building. "I don't see how it matters now."