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"Do you think any of those bridges were better left unburned Aspen?" Riley said in a concerned voice. "Friends aren't something you should squander."
 
ASPEN ◊ CARSTAIRS
Aspen shook her head. "Bronwyn and Violet are bitches who talked about me behind my back anyway. Brooks basically owned me when we were dating anyway. None of them were good for me."


Aspen leaned her head against his arm as they walked.
 
"Do you have anyone whom you are friends with that you do value, or at least think they are worth keeping?"

Riley was worried that Aspen was cutting off ties faster than new ones were being cemented. And if and when he inevitably hurt her then she would have no one to turn to. He really did not want to be the cause of her isolation and later suffering.
 
"No one except my brother," she said. "Everyone else wants me to be something for them. No one really cares about me."

Aspen shrugged.
 
Riley waited until they had cleared the cafeteria and were in a quiet hallway, then stepped in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. He looked searchingly into her eyes. "Aspen..." he began, but instead he pulled her in close and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He wanted to change that. She was a wonderfully compassionate person and if what she said was true, Riley hated that she was stuck in such a place.

"I care about you." He said very seriously, but not without hints of surprise. He did not expect to care about much of anyone.

"And there are others who could as well, you just have to meet them as yourself and only yourself."
 
ASPEN ◊ CARSTAIRS
Aspen reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him on the cheek. "I'll do it, though I have no problem spending all my time with you. I care about you, too."


Aspen remembered something. "I spoke to my mom, about you."
 
"Oh fantastic."

Riley wasn't sure what Doctor Carstairs would have said. Although he was pretty sure that ASpen wouldn't actually listen to it, especially if it were in the negative. Although he doubted she would have talked about the dreams and visions he vaguely discussed with her
 
Aspen extracted her phone from her jacket pocket and played the voice recording of her conversation with Bethany.

"Riley Stonewright."

"Oh. Yes, Riley. What about him?"

"Well, he seems nice, but kind of distant. I was wondering ... from a psychological point of view ... "

"Aspen, I can't give you any major details," Bethany sighed. "But, well, let's just say that the doctors who had him before me misdiagnosed him. They decided he's a sociopath; I think he's a very damaged, upset boy, I don't know why. But this horrible misdiagnosis has affected his thinking. He actually thinks he's crazy. What the doctors have said may have made him think terrible things. It's sad, really."

"So he's not dangerous?"

"Of course not," said Bethany. "If he was, I'd have sent him to a psych ward, Aspen, you know me."

"Thanks, Mom, love you."


Aspen bit her lip and looked up at Riley.
 
Riley's ears rung

Riley backed away a few steps.

"Misdiagnosed?" Riley stammered, "After years of... How can that be true?.."

"The visions, the dreams, all of it? All equals a misdiagnosis?!" his voice was slowly rising

"I..." Riley stopped. I watch people die in my head.

And I like it.

He put his palms to his forehead and backed against the wall. In his head a steady ringing was getting louder the louder. Riley pressed his hands hard against his head, trying to push it out, trying to think. She couldn't have been totally honest with her, there's confidentiality and shit right? But she would have said something if her daughter asked about an actual sociopath

The ringing continued unabated, beating every other thought by constantly increasing in volume. Riley's mind was screaming at him. Louder. Louder! It was like an entire marching band was right next to his ear.

He opened his mouth and tried to say something but no sound escaped. He slid down the wall and onto the floor
 
Aspen gasped when Riley slid to the floor. The corridor was still deserted; she shoved her phone in her pocket and knelt down beside him. Aspen put her pale hands on the side of his face and gently turned his head, so he faced her.

"Riley," she whispered. "Riley, it's alright. Listen to me -- you have been misdiagnosed. Whoever had you before my mom made you think like this by influencing your mindset. I'm not trying to sound like an expert -- and I don't want to sound biased, but my mom is the best adolescent psychiatrist this side of Ohio, so there's no way she's wrong."

Aspen grazed her thumb against the side of his face gently, keeping careful eye contact.
 
Visions. Forehead to nose. Nose cracks. Blood.

SHIT no no no. Not her not her not her

Riley pushed Aspen back, frantically. He staggered to his feet and back away. "Aspen please I...Don't touch...I'm so sorry. I am so horribly sorry."

He ran.
 
She hurt.

Not physically, but to be abandoned by someone who you thought was the one ...

The rest of the day passed quickly. The popular kids shunned her when she used sarcasm and an extensive vocabulary, she raised her hand to answer every question and everyone was shocked. She made new friends when she struck up a conversation with a girl reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower in Physics; Aspen spent the lesson discussing how perfect Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller are with Delilah, Jace and Brittany.

Aspen walked into psychology and, to her delight, Riley was there, sitting in his seat like usual. She sat beside him. "Okay, I don't know what I did, or if I even did anything, but I just need to know you're okay. Please talk to me."
 
Riley stumbled through still dark hallways and finally ducked into a bathroom somewhere. He nearly fell onto a sink but righted himself, clutching the porcelain with a vice grip. He looked up and into the mirror. Eyes like a wild animal looked back at him. Darting. Livid. Wide. Everything Riley knew about himself, everything he knew about sociopathy, all pointed to a correlation between the two. Until he met Aspen he could not remember caring at all about the emotions, feelings, even lives of others. If he felt anything it was disgust. But now she was tearing him apart. He didn't know what he was anymore. At least when he was a monster he could understand that.

Hands shaking, Riley pulled out the single cigarette he kept and struggled to light it. Just as he got the flame on the lighter going, the bathroom door opened. Riley dropped the cigarette from his mouth into the sink and tucked the lighter away.

Generic Male #1 I should learn his name walked into the bathroom, at first not noticing Riley at the end of the line of sinks. But then his eyes found Riley and a strange smile crept over his face. "You know, Bronwyn just told me an interesting story. She said that you were sleeping on Aspen's shoulder, hand in hand." #1 began walking toward Riley. "Ain't that fuckin' cute. Although, If I remember right, didn't I tell you to um... stay off of her?"

Flashes. Visions. Graphic.

"So I guess you didn't hear me the first time. We better go ahead and make sure you hear me now." #1 suddenly sprinted to Riley, grabbing him around the middle like a football tackle, and slammed his back against the wall just behind them. Riley's head hit the wall and he was dazed. #1 dropped him, put a hand on Riley's shoulder with his left and punched at him with his right. Riley, in a near stupor, dropped down the wall just before the punch connected.

Ringing starting. Flashes of red.

#1's hand hit the wall with a crunching sound and he cried out. #1 took a step back, holding his hand, and Riley slowly stood up, using the wall as support. #1 looked at Riley with the deep rage of humiliation and ran at him, arms swinging.

Flashes.

When #1 was just in front of the sink, Riley stepped to the side and something came up from inside him. He hooked his foot around #1's leading leg, sweeping it out sideways. At the same time, Riley's right palm collided with the side of #1's head. #1 flew sideways, face first into the porcelain of the sink, breaking off a corner of it. A burst of blood splattered over the mirror, a few drops hitting Riley's chest. #1 moaned but didn't get up.

Riley looked at his hands. Then at the mirror. Riley's face was emotionless. A sheet of pressed steel. His eyes were grey, colorless, and dead.

Riley picked his cigarette out the broken sink and put it back in his jacket. He took one last look at #1, and feeling a nothing more black than space, he walked out of the bathroom.

When Aspen sat down and spoke to him in psych, Riley realized that the after he left the bathroom, he hadn't' thought about her at all. He had forgotten her. She slipped away along with every human expressible emotion, leaving only the dead steel that was Riley Stonewright.

It terrified him.

"Aspen," Riley could hear nothing in his voice, "I do not know what I am, or what is wrong with me. But something is." RIley was searching through his entire body, entire mind, entire soul, for some emotion to put into his words so that she would know that he still wants her. But all of his efforts came up short. Riley sounded as lifeless as he looked in the mirror that morning. "If I was misdiagnosed, fine. But if it isn't sociopathy, it is something else."
 
"If it isn't sociopathy -- which it isn't, because there is no way on this earth my mom is wrong -- then you just need to keep seeing my mom until she figures it out." Aspen sighed and put her head in one palm, leaving the other hand on the table. "I need my migraine tablets. Anyway," she said, turning back to Riley. "I don't want to sound too much like my mom, but I think therapy is the best option for you."

Aspen traced circles and letters with her finger on the wood of the table. "I don't think you're a monster. I think you just need to talk to someone. Ugh, I sound like Mom."

In truth, Aspen still wanted him. She wanted him more than anything; more than coffee, more than chocolate, more than a one-on-one conversation with Nietzsche. More than Fred Weasley to not be dead.

More than anything.
 
Seeing Aspen, who just early that day was proudly declaring her new self, now resigned and collapsed, it kick started a part of Riley's mind that had been thrown to the back.

"Aspen..." Riley whispered with a recognition of the intense pain the both of them felt, a rebuttal of Riley's own demons in favor of her smile, an acceptance of his affection for her, an intense desire for her company.
 
Aspen looked at him when he said her name. Her name, the name of a wood in Colorado, where her parents met ... it sounded like magic on his lips, in his voice. She looked at him with longing and desperation.

"Riley, I just need you to know that I care about you, so, so fucking much, and that I'm here for you," she said. The other students in the class had started working on some sheet Mrs Oliver had handed out, but she didn't care. "I'm here for you, if you ever need anything, I swear, absolutely any time, just talk to me. I don't care what I'm doing, I'll drop it and talk to you."

She ran her hand through her curly blonde ponytail. "I mean it."
 
Riley didn't understand why she cared about him so. He didn't know what she saw in him, or what would draw her to him after she had grown comfortable expressing herself. But he didn't care. He touched his hand just behind her knee and gently, reassuringly squeezed.

"I'm not good at talking about myself. A lot of what I feel and think I don't understand and it makes me want to run from it because I'm afraid I'll lose control of my actions." Riley looked into her eyes for a long time, holding a silence. Finally he whispered, "I want to be close to you. But more than that I don't want you to be hurt. Even more so I want you to be as happy as possible."

"But if you want me, in all my misdiagnosed, violent insanity, then you have me."
 
Aspen held his gaze. She nodded. "I want you. And that's what's making me happy."

She pressed her forehead onto his shoulder for a moment, smiled and turned to the worksheet sitting on the table. A word search. "Really?" she said. "Junior advanced psych, and we get a word search."
 
Psych passed uneventfully. Riley stopped pretending to try on his assignment when they asked him to find "brain" in a scattering of letters. So two minutes in. He instead spent the period napping and waking up occasionally and looking at Aspen, thinking about holding her in his arms. He would really liked to have kissed her after their discussion, but psych class was a bad time.
 
When the bell rang, Aspen slung her bag over her shoulder and gently took Riley's hand. They walked out of the classroom hand-in-hand. Aspen pointedly ignored the weird looks she received on her own, and the even more confused looks other students gave both her and Riley. She didn't care what they thought.

"What are you doing tonight?" Aspen asked Riley as she walked to her locker. It occurred to her that she didn't know where Riley's locker was. "It's Monday, are you seeing my mom tonight?"

Bronwyn and Violet walked past, followed by Brooks. Aspen gasped when she saw Brooks' face, and hand -- his skin was purplish, the tell-tale signs of new bruises.

Brooks ignored her and shot Riley the most hateful, seething, violent glare she had ever seen on a human being. "Aspen, watch this one, he'll probably stab you when your back is turned."
 
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