Adam and David stayed in their seats, patiently waiting for the usual lunch mayhem to pass.

“It’s finally over!” Spice celebrated “Weekend here we come! Finally, free from this dump!”

“For now.” Adam reminded. 

“So, what’s on the menu for today’s lunch?” the boy asked, getting up from his chair and putting his beanie on, covering part of his spiky black hair that almost reached his shoulders.

“Burgers?” David suggested, a smile on his face as he thought about the double cheeseburger he had eaten two weeks ago. “Or maybe pizza? I don’t know. What do you want?” The dark-skinned boy got up and zipped up his tracksuit jacket.

“You shouldn’t eat that much junk food. You’re going to end up a fat fuck like Mark’s father,” she advised snarkily. 

“Pizza sounds good to me,” Adam said, ignoring the ghost’s advice.

David grabbed his backpack and followed Adam out of the classroom’s door, rushing to his side.

The corridor was practically empty, almost all the kids had already flooded the cafeteria or gone to one of the many fast-food restaurants around the school.

As they walked toward the exit, they caught a glimpse of their lockers. Someone had retouched the homophobic and xenophobic slurs painted on them with a marker. They paid it no mind, the crude decor washing by them like white noise at that point.

Later down the hall, they came across another locker, this one with “foreign whore” and other things of the sort written all over it. 

It was Cassie’s locker.

“You go on ahead...” Adam took a pack of tissues out of his backpack and approached the girl’s locker.

“Nah, pizza can wait. Pass me a tissue,” David said, stretching out his hand.

The boys cleaned the locker the best they could with tissues and hand sanitizer, and in the end, the blue locker was but a bleached shadow of its former self.

“Fuck...” Adam said, slowly blinking with his big blue eyes.

“Did they put bleach in this?” David questioned, examining the small bottle.

“Maybe we could paint over it?” the dead woman suggested, internally thanking the universe for the school’s cameras only being for show. 

“I don’t have any paint,” Adam said “Just let me think for a second.” He looked around, looking for any possible teacher pets, and took a deep breath. They could go get paint thinner and paint at this one art supply store not that far from the school. But would they even have the proper type of paint? And what if someone saw this mess in the meantime? Would Cassie get in trouble for bleaching her locker? Would they get in trouble for destroying her locker? Would he get suspended? EXPELLED?! If that happened he would NEVER be able to look his mother in the ey-- Oh God, SHE WOULDN’T EVEN WANT TO LOOK AT HIM! SHE WOULD DISAVOW HIM! SHUN HIM-- No. He couldn’t panic. Panic sends the mind into a death spiral and doesn't solve anything. Just... think... If they couldn't paint the locker, then... “We need to destroy the other lockers too.”

“Ah... What? Why?” David questioned.

“It just makes sense in my head, ok?!” he yelled, making his voice crack and his friend jump with surprise.

“Ok! Fuck... Just calm down...” he mumbled.

“I AM CALM!” 

“No, you ain’t.” 

“...Just destroy the damn lockers, David.”

The orphans gave the lockers near Cassie’s the same treatment and then fled the scene, taking the tissues and hand sanitizer with them, not leaving any clues behind. They later disposed of them in a trash can outside the school.

The boys went to a “family-run” pizzeria and headed to the back of the line that was forming in front of the counter.

Adam felt a sharp pain in his guts and grabbed onto his belly.

“I’ll be right back.” He took a ten out of his wallet and gave it to his friend. “Remember, no olives.”

“Sure,” he said, turning his attention back to the counter.

Adam slipped between the restaurant’s remaining customers, muttering apologies while looking down and avoiding eye contact.

He entered the bathroom, locked the door, and dropped his backpack on the floor.

“Shit!” he said, struggling to open his bag.

The orphan opened his backpack’s fake bottom and took out a small glass bottle from under it. It was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand and was full of black pills.

“I must be developing immunity to these things or something. They barely do anything now…” he thought. Adam put a pill in his mouth and let it melt under his tongue.

“Like I’m going to crumple like a dry leaf.” He sat against the wall and took some deep breaths while waiting for the pill to do its job, his face cringing because of the taste.

“Yeah...” she sighed, a ghostly scaly hand materializing and patting him on his back.

Adam stored the bottle of pills away in his backpack and drank water from the tap, splattering it all over his black denim jacket and oversized hoodie. He looked at himself in the mirror and took his beanie off, no use having it on inside such a warm place... 

His skin was even more pale than usual, his pupils had shrunk to the size of grains of sand, his mane-like hair was a mess, and he was sweating buckets... He looked like a homeless man, but younger. He washed his face and dried it with some paper towels before taking a hairbrush out of his backpack and quickly fixing his hair. 

The teen looked at himself in the mirror one last time before leaving the bathroom.

“Much better,” he said with a proud smile.

He looked around and saw a boy with a scar on his lip, waving energetically in his direction. If it wasn’t for the noise of the pizzeria, Adam would have perfectly heard the enthusiastic way he was calling him.

Adam sat before him and grabbed one slice of the cheese, ham, and bacon pizza.

“What took you so long? Was it that hard to take a shit?” David asked, picking up a slice.

“I’m eating!” Adam said, sticking his tongue out and letting his friend see the pasty mixture that had once been part of the pizza.

“Stop, that’s disgusting!” said David, making a lousy imitation of Adam’s voice. “My name is Adam, and I can’t stand a poop joke because of my fragile tummy!”

“My voice isn’t that high-pitched!” he said, outraged by his friend’s joke.

“Bro, you sound like an eight-year-old on helium.” David taunted with a raised eyebrow.

“Stop that!” Adam tried to make a serious face, but couldn’t contain a little chuckle after hearing his own voice crack.

“Oh my God. I thought it wasn’t possible to reach such a high frequency!” exclaimed David, with a torn smile, while covering one of his ears dramatically.

“Shut up and eat before it gets cold,” he said, taking another bite.

“Don’t worry. Your voice will change, eventually.” The dead woman reassured.