Rooftop Refuge

‘I wonder what that was about…’ John thought, while looking in the direction Wentworth and Frank had left.

‘Could it be that she actually cares and the stuff in her barrier was an act?’ John hadn’t even fully formed the thought before every sliver of intuition and instinct protested. He had been in mortal danger in that barrier, even more so than when he fought the rat ogre.

While John couldn’t make sense of this turn of events, having made it out of that without having to experience the particulars of the ****’s door mechanic, that a tooltip had promised existed when he hit 0 HP, was nice.

He could worry about that later, though; right now he had a more pressing concern. He picked both himself and the white cane up from the floor, then went down the stairs. The gawker crowd was breaking up slowly, now that an end had been put to the fight. In the middle of it and looking like she was trying to sink into the floor was Christie.

“I think this is yours.” John held out the cane to her for about half a second before he realized he was being an idiot and softly tapped the side of it against her hand. She snatched it with a forceful urgency that stung John a little for a moment, before he pointed out to himself that it was probably a reaction to feeling **** without it rather than anything to do with him.

“Thank you…” Judging by the hint of apologetic undertone, she was aware of how that might have come across as well. “A- Are you okay?”

“Mostly, yeah. Nothing that won’t be gone in a couple of days.” That wasn’t an outright lie, though it was probably vague enough to count as deceptive. Still, he preferred that to lying to her outright, even though he couldn’t really tell her the truth.

“That’s good.” Christie breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

John had opened his mouth to tell her that she had already said that before his brain got involved in that decision and he decided not to.

“It’s okay, I’m just doing what any half decent person would.” He said that a bit louder than necessary. Hopefully, one or two of the onlookers would get a well deserved kick in the conscience that way.

Then something he mostly succeeded in not thinking about crawled its way out of his own, and brought a few unhappy realizations with it. “Actually… This might have all been my fault in the first place…”

“What?”

“It, uh, might not be smart for you to be seen spending time with me.” Christie’s dejected expression caused him to quickly add, “I mean, Frank and Vanessa have it out for me, for some reason. Being around me might make you a target too…”

“I already am…” she responded timidly, while John glanced at the RS value on her name plate, to make sure he hadn’t tanked it too hard just now. And then did a double take at it saying 45.

It took John a moment to mentally get back to the conversation, which probably seemed like awkward silence to her. “Still, I don’t want to make it worse… Look, before we carry on with the sad story of why, we should probably get food sorted and take it somewhere more discreet. If you’re fine with chicken tenders, I’ve got enough for both of us.”

Christie ‘looked’ away to the side and downward while her cheeks turned crimson. John had a hard time figuring out what part of that had come across wrong and how. After spending a good several seconds trying to puzzle that out, the answer turned out to not be something John had said at all, at least not directly.

While John was trying to figure it out, Christie stood still like that for a moment, muttering something beneath her breath that he couldn’t make out. Then she reached into the shoulder bag that Frank had thankfully left unmolested and took out two bento-style boxed lunches and held one towards him. “I- I brought one f- for you…”

Knowing what getting one from a girl tended to mean in anime, that made John feel a flutter of butterflies in his stomach for a moment. Then they collided with his resolution not to put pressure in that direction on her, the thought of the target it would put on her back and the risk of getting her tangled up with the Abyss and the butterflies turned to lead.

‘Still, I can’t consign her to the loneliness she had to deal with before, now that I’m aware of it. At least, not without her knowing why…’ John thought while responding, “Thank you, that’s very sweet…”

Worried about provoking more bullying onto her, he glanced around to see if anyone was paying attention to them. Thankfully, the last bits of the gawker crowd had moved on, and the people that were around seemed to have no interest in them.

Satisfied that there was nothing more he could do to keep this from reaching Vanessa’s ear, he accepted the lunch from Christie. “Let’s find somewhere discreet. If you’re okay with a few stairs, the roof is usually empty.”

“I thought the roof was locked?” Christie seemed happy to move on from the lunch boxes.

“Well, yeah, but one of the janitors told me where I could find a misplaced key…” John responded with a grin. Apparently, grandpa had patched the guy up after a bad car accident years ago.

—-----

The room was empty as expected, and while a table might have been nice, not having to worry about something making it back to the Bitch Queen was much nicer.

Having both eaten quietly for a little bit, John found it a little difficult to open with the bully issue right out the gate, so he tried to get the conversation going a bit more casually at first. Gesturing at the lunch, he said, “Thanks again for the lunch, it’s really good. Did you make it yourself?”

And she was back to blushing and half-hiding behind her hair. Which John really should have seen coming.

“...No.” She spoke in such a tiny voice John could barely make it out. “Aclysia did. She makes one every morning, and since I didn’t eat the one yesterday…” She paused for a bit, then hurriedly and a bit louder added, “I gave you the fresh one.”

Right. Christie’s foster father could afford a housekeeper and such. Easy to forget since she didn’t wear any status symbol accessories, and was the only social outcast at Ashcroft to not also be there on a scholarship.

“Well, thanks all the same.” The few moments of silence that followed felt a lot more awkward than the one when they first got up here, until John decided to just bite the bullet and get to the explanation he owed her.

“So, the thing about being seen with me. Basically, it invites getting targeted because Vanessa wants me to be a complete outcast. There’s a strong possibility that Frank’s bullshit with your cane was to be punishment for eating lunch with me yesterday, and I just derailed it before he got to the actual message. I didn’t think about that when I asked to buy you lunch, or I would have warned you.” ‘or more likely, just not asked’ “Sorry.”

John waited for a moment to give her a chance to respond, then continued, “Actually, not warning you isn’t the only thing I need to apologize for. It’s practically certain that me interfering today just made things worse in the long run, which I also only thought of after the fact. So… Sorry about that too.”

When she didn’t respond to that either for a few seconds, John figured he should explain. “I went to middle school with Frank, and got beat up by him around once a week or so. Most of those times, I brought it on myself by getting between him and someone else he was bullying. It didn’t make him stop being an asshole, but it did get whoever it was off the hook most of the time, which was the least bad outcome as far as I could see. I, uh, didn’t really care much about getting a beating myself, to be honest.

“All of middle school went by like that, but things changed when we hit high school and ended up in the same school as Vanessa. She added a brain to the operation, so to speak. When I provoked Frank off someone’s back, she’d see to it they got it worse later. And she’d make sure they knew they ended up getting it worse because I interfered.”

John sighed heavily. “Didn’t take more than two or three times before people I tried to stand up for got mad at me for interfering, so… I stopped. That wasn’t enough for the Queen Bitch, though, hence the ‘anyone who spends time with Newman will be made to suffer’ thing. Gotta make sure you really drive the message home when making an example of someone and all that. So yeah, sorry for bringing all that down upon you.”

Putting all of that to words made John feel heavy and weary. While waiting for Christie to digest what he had said, he half-heartedly shooed away a black cat that had seized upon his distracted state while he was talking, and stolen a piece of chicken from his food.

“No.” Christie still spoke quietly, but there was a firmness to her tone that didn’t match the uncertain shyness she had shown so far. Like a piece of polished marble hidden beneath the surface of her personality.

Unfortunately, none of that helped John understand what she meant. “What?”

“I don’t want your apology.” The firmness persisted as John’s heart sank. He had hoped to at least part on decent terms. “Because it’s not your fault. It’s Frank’s and Vanessa’s.”

That took a moment to sink in. It wasn’t really a new perspective to John, his mom had said the same thing and his grandparents as well. Coming from someone who had suffered because of his pariah status, however, made an immense difference to the impact it had.

“Thank you. That’s… thank you…” John was surprised by his voice sounding mostly normal when it felt like he was forcing the words out past a lump in his throat. He swallowed in an attempt to clear his throat, which didn’t really get rid of the feeling of a lump, and continued. “That doesn’t change that being seen spending time with me will make them punish you, though…”

They were both quiet for a long moment, during which John made another half-hearted attempt to shoo away the cat. It was as unsuccessful as the first one. Christie ‘looked’ down at her own, empty, lunch box. Then she said something too quietly for John to catch.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t hear what you said…”

“I don’t mind.” For a moment, John had thought she wasn’t going to repeat it, that maybe she had just muttered something to herself. When she did, it was still so quiet John could only barely make it out. The firmness from before was gone, too, but she didn’t sound uncertain either.

She paused for long enough that he was just about to ask what she meant when she elaborated on her own initiative, “I don’t mind what they say. To taunt me or behind my back. Even something like today… it’s frustrating, but it’s over soon. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The thing that matters, and hurts, is the isolation. The loneliness.”

Once again, she paused just long enough that John was about to say something before she continued, “If we can be… friends, then I won’t feel alone at school, and then the rest doesn’t matter…”

“Well, if you don’t mind risking whatever the Bitch Queen comes up with as ‘punishment’, then I’d be happy to be your friend.”

It took a moment before she reacted to that, as if it was an unexpected result she had to first make sense of. Then she released a bit of tension in her shoulders he hadn’t even noticed and raised her head to face mostly towards him.