Sure to Shine

The only way to get over a fear is to face it.

The sentence ran around in Eric’s mind as he stood in the senior common room at school. He was the only one in there at the moment, and he was standing in the kitchen area. Glancing around him, he picked up the kettle, and without pausing to think things through, poured what was still in it over his left hand.

The pain was excruciating, but Eric resisted the temptation to put his hand under the cold tap. He gripped the side of the counter, gritting his teeth, forcing himself to focus on the pain instead of trying to drive it away. The more he got used to it, the less he would fear it. This was what he had to remember.

His hand had gone a bright red and was beginning to blister by the time the common room door opened, and Eric quickly put his hand under the cold tap. He didn’t want the scald to be too obvious, nor did he want people to know he had done it on purpose.
The cold water was a comfort, but it just made his hand sting even more when he brought it back out into the normal air.

"Holy crap," Adam’s voice said from behind him. "How did you manage that?"

Eric looked at him with what he hoped was a convincingly annoyed expression.

"Slipped out of my hand," he muttered. Adam raised an eyebrow.

"What have you been up to, Eric?" he asked. "Have you seen the state of yourself?"

Eric hadn’t. He had gotten back so late from running around with Skylar and had been too hyped up to realise what a state he was in. He looked down at himself. His jeans and Converse were filthy, and Eric guessed that his jacket would be, too. The hand which hadn’t been covered in boiling water was clean, but the other one was dirty, and of course, still had a trail of dried blood disappearing up his sleeve. Eric reached up and touched the back of his head. He could feel dried blood there, too.

Adam was watching him suspiciously.

"You get attacked or something?" he asked. Eric leapt on it. After all, it wasn’t exactly a lie.

"Yeah," he said. "In the park, on the way in."

"You should report that, Eric," Adam told him. "You know you have to report shit like that."

"I’m fine," Eric said. "Really, I am."

Eric felt more than fine. Skylar was right, he felt enlightened. Like he knew more than any of the idiots in this place. Sure, they knew their facts and their books and their classic works, but did any of them know what it felt like to kill someone? To think they were about to die? Did any of them spend the night living like they were in some sort of video game, running around an abandoned asylum firing off a shotgun? Eric didn’t think so, and he knew which he would rather prefer.

"I’m getting a little worried about you, Eric," Adam told him. "You’re acting really weird."

"Am I?" Eric asked, trying to play innocent. However, he didn’t really care much what people thought of him. He almost wished he could show them what he knew. Then, perhaps, they would be less judgemental.

"Yeah, you have," Adam told him, beginning to sound as though he were getting annoyed with his best friend. "Ever since you found out you looked like that Ben guy. Now you strut around like you own the place."

"I really wasn’t aware of that," Eric said. "Perhaps I’m just having a sort of private epiphany?"

Adam looked at Eric’s battered appearance and snorted.

"Is that the one where you go off and live in the woods with wolves or something, until trees start talking to you?" he asked sarcastically. Eric rolled his eyes.

"Don’t be a moron, Adam," he said. "I’m just finding out a few things, that’s all."

"Oh? Like what? Enlighten me, guru."

"Well, like I worry about too much that shouldn’t be worried about," Eric shrugged. "And that there’s more to life than just school and work and families. And that some feelings are absolutely useless, whereas others will make you feel like you could take over the fucking world."

Adam raised an eyebrow.

"Are you on drugs, Eric?" he then asked, seriously. "Because, if you are, you know you can get help, right?"

"I’m not on fucking drugs," Eric said, before laughing slightly hysterically. He knew that wouldn’t help his case. "What? When someone states that their life isn’t just school, they’re on drugs?"

"You used to just be so average, though," Adam said, visibly confused. "I mean, you used to get good grades and care about what you were doing. Now you seem to only be here because you feel obligated."

"Yeah, I guess that’s why I am here," Eric said. "Perhaps I’ll just head home now, hey?"

"Come off it, Eric," Adam muttered. "I think you’re fucking drunk or something."

"I promise you I’m totally sober," Eric said, his voice adopting a more serious tone. "Look, Adam, don’t get freaked out, all right? People change. For a while, I haven’t been happy at school. The only reason I’ve stayed on is, you’re right, because I feel obligated. I feel that I have to. Even though I don’t want to, I feel that’s what society expects of me, therefore I must do it."

"But you’re so close to graduating," Adam said. "Why not just stay on until then?"

"Because then what?" Eric demanded. "I’ll probably be jollied into applying to college, and then I’ve have three or four years of that to do. I don’t even know what I want to do, Adam. I want to travel, that’s all I want to do. I want to just drift, wherever I like. I don’t want to be tied down in some boring nine-to-five office job, licking some guy’s ass just to get a pay rise. I want to see the real world."

"You need your education, Eric," Adam told him firmly. "No one will look twice at you if you don’t have an education."

"I know what’s best for me," Eric said firmly, and Adam rolled his eyes.

"Whatever," he muttered, and then he looked at Eric’s bloodstained hand. He grabbed it before Eric could try and draw less attention to it, holding his thumb away from his index finger and looking at the deep and messy cut that that was there.

"That needs stitches, Eric," Adam told him bluntly. "How did they manage to do that to you?"

"When I fell," Eric explained calmly. "My hand scraped across the ground. There was a broken bottle. You know what that park is like."

Adam raised his eyebrows, but said nothing more.

"I’ve got to get to class," he eventually said. He looked at Eric’s scalded hand suspiciously. "Try not to, err … accidentally spill anything else, all right?"

"All right," Eric said casually. "See you after school."

"Yeah, see you."

Eric didn’t have a class until the next period, so he decided to go outside and have a smoke. Why not? He fancied one, he would have one.

He went outside and dropped his bag onto the floor, leaning up against the wall as he lit up. It was chilly, and snow was threatening in the air, but for some reason Eric wasn’t feeling the cold. His hand still stung horribly, especially with the cold air biting at it, but he enjoyed the pain instead of trying to block it out. It made him feel alive. It made him feel more connected with everything around him.

He walked around the corner to put out his cigarette when he was done with it. The teachers had come to accept that students in the upper years would smoke, but they still didn’t like to have the fact rubbed in their face by cigarette ends being left everywhere. When he came back, he grabbed up his bag, threw it over his shoulder, and went back inside.

He stopped at his locker to pick up his textbook for his next class, and it was then that he realised that his bag felt unusually heavy. He dropped it to the floor and knelt down, opening it, knowing it was too heavy to have just paper and the Politics textbook in it, which was all he had brought.

The textbook that had belonged to Ben Murdoch never left him.

Now, the paper was there, the textbook was there, but there was also a sawn-off shotgun in Eric’s bag.

Eric let out a surprised half-yell before he frantically pulled his bag closed, looking around him wildly. His heart thumped madly as he thought about the fact he could be caught with this. In this school, he would probably be rugby-tackled to the floor and beaten while they waited for the cops to arrive.

He grabbed up his bag again, still glancing around wildly, before hurrying outside.

He wasn’t surprised to see Skylar leaning up against a tree opposite the student entrance, laughing hysterically.

Eric angrily threw his bag at him.

"Take it back," he hissed. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Skylar’s face changed then. He grabbed Eric by the front of his jacket, putting him up against the tree.

"I could take that thing right now," Skylar hissed angrily. "And walk in there, going from classroom to classroom, wasting them all as I went."

"The Hell you will," Eric hissed back, kicking out at Skylar’s shins. "Take it and go home. You’re not shooting anyone here."

Skylar didn’t react to the pain; he just gave his signature half-smirk, looking like he had stared at pictures of Eric Harris until he had got the look just right. He knelt down and pulled the shotgun out of the bag. Eric, his heart jolting, stepped in the way.

"Don’t let everyone fucking see it," he muttered.

Skylar only laughed and slipped the gun into the inside pocket of his trench coat.

"You’re such a pussy, Eric," he laughed. Eric glared.

"You can’t do that to me, Skylar," he muttered. "You can’t plant a fucking shotgun in my school bag. It’s not even funny, it doesn’t even teach me anything. What is wrong with you? Why are you trying to get me fucking arrested? You have any idea how badly my school would take that? I’d go to prison for forty fucking years!"

Eric shoved him again, but Skylar only laughed once more as he regained the area he had lost.

"Pathetic," he laughed. "You’re going to get a nasty shock one day soon, Eric."

"What do you mean?" Eric demanded. "I swear, Skylar, if you’re thinking about bringing those guns into that building, I’m calling the cops. I’m not having you do that. I won’t let you."

Skylar only gave a small smile.

"You won’t let me?" he repeated. "Fuck you, Eric. I’ll do whatever I want, and you know that. You won’t let me or not let me do anything. If I wanted to, I could blow you away now and walk in there. You’re only here because I’ve decided to let you live. I’ve had so many opportunities to waste you, but I haven’t."

Skylar stood up close to Eric, pulling the shotgun out. With it still concealed, he pressed it right into Eric’s stomach, and cocked it.

Eric didn’t even blink.

They stared at each other for a long while, before Skylar finally smiled properly.

"No fear," he said softly. "Good lad."

With that, he hid the weapon again, and turned away, walking in the direction of the park. His heart thumping furiously, Eric watched him leave, glad to see the back of him.

"Eric?" someone asked from behind him, and he turned to see Adam standing in the doorway of the school. "Who were you just talking to?"

Eric turned back around to see Skylar had vanished from his line of vision.

"No-one," Eric muttered. "Just some jerk."