Two months after the new kid arrives, he leaves, as suddenly and silently as he came. Kevin wouldn’t necessarily say he’s happy or proud– because he’d have had to have cared for the guy in order to feel anything and that goes against the nonchalantly apathetic vibe he’s rocking–but inwardly he’s pretty damn pleased by the abrupt departure. It’s not like anything the new kid did would have dethroned Bellwood High School’s unofficial king, but Kevin did not appreciate being paired with him in chemistry and constantly corrected by him during labs.
That high follows him for a few days, coasts him through the weekend and even the first few classes of the following Monday. Until they show up.
The usual long lunch break for seniors is halved by an assembly. Ostensibly, they are supplementary counselors from the school district to help the senior class prepare for graduation and the transition to college and adulthood. But unlike Bellwood High’s own set of counselors–a pair of enthusiastic twenty-somethings who have yet to be worn down into cynical thirty-somethings–they are stoic and true examples of apathy. And they both wear black suits. It’s not that big of a deal, really, since the principle is a big proponent of somber pantsuits, but Bellwood’s counselors try to wear bright colors.
Kevin’s last name starts with an S, so they don’t get to him until most of the other seniors have already been in to meet with them. What he hears is suspicious. In that, he doesn’t hear much about what the meetings are about. Which is ludicrous because this is a high school–why is the rumor mill failing him.
Rebecca, who isn’t exactly Bellwood High’s unofficial queen but is on the shortlist for it, is the only one to tell him anything on what to expect. “It’s not about fucking colleges,” she mutters to him, sitting down in the desk behind him for Calc class, just barely audible above the ringing bell. It’s nearly useless, but confirms what he already guessed. And adds yet one more suspicion. Her timing, right when the bell rang, as if she was afraid she’d be overheard otherwise.
No one talks because they’re scared to. If it were boring, there’d be complaints about how it was a waste of time. There hasn’t been any of that. Kevin’s not sure what to expect, but at least he knows to expect something.
Bellwood is a small school, each grade is maybe only 150 students, 200 max. They get to the S’s by Thursday.
—-
To be honest, Kevin didn’t think they were at all related to the new kid. Which, in hindsight, was pretty dumb of him considering the timing. New kid leaves, they show up. Not exactly a stretch to connect the two incidents.
Kevin goes into the meeting thinking that, because he’s expecting something, he won’t be completely caught off-guard. That is not the case.
“What do you know about Gregory Lauson?” Asks the one who introduced herself as Ms Camilo, but would probably react more to Agent Camilo.
“I heard his dad was some kind of drug lord,” Kevin responds automatically, because the previous five minutes had been a rapid-fire back and forth that all he could do was blurt out the first thing that came into his head.
“Who did you hear that from?” Mr Sheridan, more like Agent Sheridan, replies immediately. While Camilo sat across the table from him imposingly, stare never wavering from Kevin’s own fearful gaze, Sheridan had spent the time circling casually around them, only speaking when not in Kevin’s line of sight. It was, frankly, unnerving.
“I–” he started, then choked, the first time since this interrogation began that he didn’t answer immediately. I made it up, he doesn’t say.
They don’t need him to say it. Camilo’s stare somehow becomes even more piercing, as if she could drill straight into his brain via eye contact.
“What do you know about Gregory Lauson?” Sheridan parrots his partner, one hand leaning on the table just barely within Kevin’s peripheral vision.
“He got kicked out of his old school for killing someone,” Kevin blurts out another of the rumors that had been passed around. This one, at least, hadn’t originated from him.
“What do you know about Gregory Lauson?” Camilo repeats. It is the only question that the two agents will ask for the remainder of the meeting.
Kevin answers. He answers and answers and answers. Not all of the rumors were made by him, but a good number of them were. None of them were positive.
At the very end, when the excruciating fifteen minute appointment is up, Sheridan says to him, “We’ll speak with your parents.” It’s not a question or a request or even a demand. Just a statement of fact.
Kevin nods, barely able to tear his gaze away from Camilo, before fleeing on shaky legs.
He slides into Lit class silently, Mrs. Palmer hardly batting an eye at his entrance. Across the classroom, Rebecca looks away in sympathy; not having eye contact is a kindness, after what just happened.
—-
The agents do, in fact, speak with Kevin’s parents. Of the entire senior class, the agents speak to six sets of guardians, his and Rebecca’s included.
Then they just… disappear.
None of involved students are grounded which should be good, except Kevin’s parents look at him with thinly veiled horror and sorrow instead, which is somehow worse. Rebecca reports the same thing with her parents, as do his other four classmates.
It’s hard to think that there are any consequences when they’re not concrete. But there are repercussions, and they linger.
Most notably, all of them have a red flag attached to their names. It’s not quite a criminal record because beyond having the agents speak to their parents, nothing happened, but it might as well be.
Rebecca, who had been volunteering at the police station for three years, is strongly suggested to stop and ‘enjoy her final year in high school’. The number of colleges scouting Victor for their swim team decreased dramatically, and certainly not of the same quality. Elijah, proud recipient of an early admission from Yale, thankfully is still on track to be a Yale student but had his full-ride scholarship rescinded. And so on and so forth.
Kevin personally doesn’t get affected quite so tangibly but there is an influence. He gets accepted into Annapolis, no problem–a combination of near-perfect grades and fantastic extra curricular activities–but it’s not easy actually being there. For the first few months he attributes it to no longer being the big fish in a little pond and now being a little fish in the ocean. But it’s not quite that.
His fellow midshipmen aren’t necessarily reacting to him so much as they are following their instructors’ leads. They don’t sabotage him, don’t pick on him especially, they just look at him, sometimes. Even when he scores the best they look at him as if he somehow disappointed them. Kevin realizes that none of the instructors like him. None of them. And in turn, his fellow midshipmen steer clear.
Despite all that, when they graduate, Kevin is in the top tenth of his class. It’s pretty impressive. Nonetheless, his commission… well, a lot of midshipmen lower ranked than he are becoming ensigns on ships he had been hoping to serve on. Some are becoming Marines, even the ones he consistently beat out in pretty much all aspects of education. In comparison, his commission is lackluster, to put it nicely.
Something is going on, and he is highly confused as to what.
Which explains why he is completely thrown when he sees Agents Camilo and Sheridan at his graduation. They’re a little older looking, not that he remembers the exact details of their appearances, but almost five years have passed. They’re not as frightening–maybe due to age or his training or the situation–but they still carry a weight of dominance. As if he were still a kid mindlessly answering their questions, ruining his own future in the process, while they watched, uncaring. Even now as he stands in his dress uniform, just another body in rows and rows of white, they still watch him, uncaring.
For the first time in years, he contacts the others. Technology has made keeping in touch easy, but high school friends still drift apart regardless. Rebecca is the first to confirm that they were at her graduation, followed by Elijah. Vincent and Amy’s graduations aren’t until a few weeks later, but they know to keep an eye out. Drew didn’t go to college, but he’ll keep an eye out too.
Kevin regrets not knowing anything real about Gregory Lauson, because at least then, maybe, he’d know what the fuck is going on.
~
A/N: Missed the midnight deadline, but only because this thing was so long that I excuse myself 😛
To be honest, I’m a little surprised, proud, and confused by this piece. Because… well… I guess this is anti-bullying but I didn’t start with that intention. It was going to be about how a bunch of teenagers accidentally blow a WITSEC cover by being a bunch of douchebags and spreading rumors that hit a little too close to the truth. And then how their own lives got ruined in turn because they possibly endangered another kid by being assholes. Unsure if I want Gregory Lauson (by the way, I apologize if your name is Gregory Lauson. I mean no disrespect. The events in this drabble are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental) to have been killed or just relocated with a different name.
Uh… don’t know if I’ll continue this story, which is why I left it kind of open-ended. So, maybe…
JackSGreyson Says 