Charlotte was panting, disheveled, and red in the face when she got into her journalism class, looking for the blonde-haired menace that held the camera with the biggest story that the school would hopefully never hear.

“Lydia!” Charlotte ran to the girl’s desk when she spotted her, brushing her red hair out of her eyes before speaking again, “do you have my camera?”

“Mhmm,” the girl murmured, taking the CyberShot off of her desk and handing it to Charlotte, a big smile on her face, “thanks so much.”

“What pictures did you use, Lydia?” Charlotte asked in an instant, and Lydia looked taken aback.

“What do you mean?” She asked tentatively, “you said I could use whatever I wanted, remember?”

“Yeah, I lied,” Charlotte snapped, growing impatient, “which ones did you use?”

“I only used one,” Lydia said, “the one from the library incident yesterday. I wrote the story and everything because you said that you couldn’t, remember?”

Charlotte let her head fall on the desk, groaning as she slammed her fists on it and pulled herself up, “you can’t print that story. You just can’t, Lydia.”

“I already did,” Lydia said defensively, “Mr. Wat told me it was great, front page, even, but I put that you took the picture, don‘t worry,” Lydia’s eyes widened as Charlotte took her camera and burst out of the room. “Charlotte?”

“I might be late to class, Lydia!” She didn’t even turn around.

Twenty minutes after he’d missed the bus, Demi decided that yes, he really should go to school. He didn’t want to be at home with his parents for no reason, and missing his in-school suspension just meant more and more days piled up when he’d have to serve it. It was a lose-lose situation, but he got to decide which losses left less damage.

When Demi decided on showing up, however, he had no idea that when he walked through the door, everyone would be looking at him. Everyone had a school newspaper in their hands, everyone was talking to him or just pointing at him, some people were touching him. The amount of people focused right on him was too high for him to count, and too much for him to take.

“Hey, O’Malley! Way to show Miss Dean!”

“How’s your kitty-cat?”

“Vandalism is definitely your thing, Demitri!”

It took Demi a moment to realize that he couldn’t go anywhere -- no one was giving him any room to do so. He reached for one of the papers, tearing it out of its owners hands, and read the front page article. The entire front page was a bout him. Him and Abigail, looking very guilty in the destroyed library from the day before. Demi’s breath caught in his throat when he saw who took the picture.

The next few moments happened so quickly that the blurred together into one big cloud filling Demi’s head with panic and confusion. Charlotte--Charlotte was his friend, it had to be a lie, she wouldn’t do this! Why…?

Demi’s thoughts turned anxious, desperate, and nearly incoherent as everyone around him continued to overwhelmingly crowd him. They were yelling at him, touching him, pushing him, laughing! They were all laughing.

‘Get away from me leave me alone everybody just leave me alone escape escape escape NOW NOW NOW!’

He didn’t discover where he had run off to until a few girls shrieked at him to get out of the ladies’ room.

Demi was so sure he was going to vomit, he didn’t budge from his spot and instead let himself slide down the wall onto the floor, hugging his knees desperately and hiding his face in them..

Amidst the girls’ yelling at him to leave, he heard one female voice that he remembered that pierced through the loud noise surrounding him.

“Get away from him! Just leave him alone!”

He felt Charlotte kneel down next to him and he felt her hand rubbing his back in an attempt to soothe him.

Demi could hardly listen, he was scared and he felt sick, he didn’t want to hear anything she had to say. This was her fault anyway, he admitted silently.

“Demi?” Charlotte asked, sounding like she had been saying his name over and over for awhile, “Demi, I’m gonna take you to the nurse, okay? We’ll go to the nurse.”

Demi reluctantly gave in and complied to her attempts to get him to stand. It was only when a tear fell down his face did he realize he’d been crying, and he began to wipe his face with his sleeve.

Charlotte sat him down in the nurses’ office to wait, even though Demi didn’t see the point. They couldn’t do anything for him here to make him feel better.

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte whispered from beside him, “I’m sorry.”

That was all she said to him, that she was sorry. Demi knew she was sorry, but that didn’t make it better.

The nurse sent Demi home after his urge to vomit resurfaced so violently it was instantly acted on, and Demi, locked into his casual shell of ‘everything is okay’, silently laid down on the cot the nurses’ had assigned him to rest on until his mother arrived.

Nothing could make it better.

For the last few hours, ever since he’d gone to bed, Demi had been giving his body an order to which it refused to respond. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he began to sweat beneath the unbearable warmth of his sheets.

‘Go to sleep,’ he ordered himself once more, ‘just sleep…sleep is good.’

He couldn’t sleep--he was too tired to sleep. Demi could just feel the dark circles forming beneath his eyes as he struggled with his mind to just give in to his growing fatigue.

After another half hour of trying, Demi stood up from his bed and turned on his light. He needed to do something, he needed to busy himself with an idea, a project, anything.

Demi took out his tub of Lego blocks.

Maybe if he hurried, the people inside the castle he would make could see the sunrise. That would be nice, because they’d get to see it for the first time, right?

Demi wished he could sleep. Sleeping and waking up to tomorrow made everything feel clean and new.

When he just couldn’t sleep, he watched tomorrow come slowly and realized that nothing would be new, because everything that had gone wrong the day before was still fresh in his mind, biting and chewing and gnawing at everyone of his nerves until he wanted to just rip his skin off.

He silently built his castle, watching time go by. He wasn’t actually having fun, he was just busy. Just a few more hours and he could ‘wake up.’

It kind of felt new and fresh and clean when Demi watched the sunrise, dully thinking that he could forget every wrong thing he’d done yesterday.

After all, there were so many new and exciting things he could screw up today.