Ajax was gone before Azame woke up, and he realized with a startling horror that he’d slept through his alarm once again. In fact, he had left his phone at his desk and the thing had died through the night without being charged. He remembered putting it on the charger before he’d started in on his homework. However, the charging cord had started to go bad. He didn’t have the money to get a new one at that current moment, so it left him with dodgy charges.

Azame groaned as he ran a hand through his messy brown hair before getting up and scrambling to find a clean uniform. He was remarkably terrible at remembering to do his laundry, not that it mattered. They never really got in trouble if their uniform was too wrinkled or carried an odd smell to it. It always felt like they got some kind of free pass. He glanced over at Ajax’s closet ruefully. Ajax’s brain and side of the room were incredibly organized. Even if it looked chaotic, he rarely ever had truly dirty clothes. However, where Ajax was just a style choice that would be important to their survival later on, Azame just sucked. At organization. At laundry. At life. Azame glared at Ajax’s closet once more with a curse on his tongue, he probably would never say.

Azame glanced over to Ajax’s bed and briefly worried if the boy had actually slept last night, or had he sat in his chair by the window and watched out across the school yards long into the night as he was prone to do. Protectors could function with little sleep, but it didn’t mean it was always a delight to deal with once the second or third day rolled around and they became increasingly more unbearable. Not that Ajax was bitchy when he was sleep-deprived, but he did have a sense of control he liked to keep over every aspect of their life. The less sleep he got, the more insufferable he became.

Azame knew, of course, that what Ajax did was vital. That in the end, it could truly save his own life when things came down to it. He wasn’t stupid, but he also couldn’t stand it most of the time. Azame shuffled forward to find his sneakers, which he’d shoved under his desk again. He had a bad habit of leaving them in the doorway and tripping over them like an idiot. He checked the little clock on his table and groaned as 9:00 neared and his first class had already started half an hour ago.

Late. Late. Late. Most of the time, Ajax was there to wake him up and get him moving. However, he hadn’t heard Ajax leave either. Azame glanced back towards the bed with a sigh. He hoped everything was ok.

He grabbed his bag and took off, dodging past boys who hadn’t even thought about rolling into class yet. Lazy idiots, he mumbled to himself as he took the steps by twos. He felt that he described himself best.

* * *

Of course, Azame had almost forgotten that someone more unbearable than his teachers had set up another meeting later that afternoon. He’d just gotten done with lunch, a disgusting meal of chili cheese dogs and applesauce, when he saw the balding Headmaster of BRAE. He seemed to look over the heads of boys heading to their next class for the afternoon, when he finally spotted Azame and gestured to him.

This time, Azame didn’t have anyone sitting at his table, so he got up and followed numbly. He tried not to be worried, now that Ajax was still missing and half the day had already gone by. It wasn’t anything Azame could bring up, though, because no one would understand. Azame pressed a hand to his chest, right over his heart. Surely, he would feel something if Ajax suddenly ended up dead. After all, Protectors were often overcome with extreme agony when their Sirens died or were grievously injured. He hoped it went both ways so that Azame would at least know.

Ajax was prone to disappearing for long hours in the day, and had always come back relatively unharmed. Sometimes, he’d drug himself in through the window with bruises blooming along his face or blood caked to his skin of wounds that had already begun to heal. Protectors were unique like that. He always returned though, and that felt like reassurance enough.

“Right in through here, Azame,” Headmaster Lange said, as he guided Azame through the office, past a few boys that had already gotten in trouble earlier in the morning.

Azame was no stranger to Headmaster Lange’s office. In fact, he was quite a regular when he was struggling. He couldn’t exactly hate Headmaster Lange, because the man genuinely seemed interested in the boys’ success. The way he always came off to them… felt forced. Azame hated it with a passion.

He stepped inside and plopped down on the plastic chair that sat opposite of Headmaster Lange’s desk. Immediately, he picked at the rough material instead of looking up at the man.

The other man stepped inside and shut the door behind Azame before he sat down across from him and set some folders down.

“You were doing exceptional in classes at the beginning of the year, Azame, except for these two classes here. Math and Chemistry. It’s so early in the school year, how could you be falling behind already? I know that math and chemistry are very hard, but you’ve fallen behind in English, Personal Finance, well… everything,” Headmaster Lange said as he leaned back in his chair. His thinning black hair had been slicked back, but his eyes remained wary. He refused to meet Azame’s eyes. “I can pull some strings and have you drop chemistry if need be. If it seems to be too much.”

Azame held his tongue. The same thing had happened last year, when he’d tried to take chemistry. Azame prided himself in his intelligence, but for some reason, his brain couldn’t see formulas or numbers and he always struggled. If it wasn’t for Grandmother, he’d be taking three separate math classes this year alone. He’d barely got through his freshman year of math and then suddenly, there were letters inside those numbers and his brain couldn’t keep up.

It’d been the same way with chemistry, too. He chose to retry again this year, only to watch himself fall behind quickly. Why couldn’t it just be easy? Even right now, he had dozens of assignments he hadn’t turned in piled up on his desk in the dorm rooms, all of which he didn’t understand and had briefly entertained the thought of torching. Was he really that stupid to need special attention again this year, just to graduate?

He couldn’t bear the thought of Grandmother trekking cross-country just to talk to the headmaster about what classes Azame should take, and which he should drop.

Azame nodded earnestly. “Thank you, sir, but I really want to try this year. I can do it, I know it.”

The headmaster eyed him warily. He knew it wasn’t supposed to be judgmental, and that the headmaster had always been accommodating towards Ajax and Azame. In fact, Azame would group him in with the low number of staff that actually genuinely believed in them both. Most teachers looked at Ajax’s skin color and would take two steps back almost immediately. Ajax was of Latino descent, and he looked more like his father everyday instead of his mother, who’d been as white as snow. And Azame? He was odd. Odder than odd.

“I’ll wait until after the second quarter. If you can turn your grades around by then, you can stay in the class for second semester,” the headmaster finally said, and Azame could let out the breath he was holding. “But I have no choice but to pull you if you can’t. There are plenty of easier classes available. It’s ok, to not be cut out for a specific subject and chemistry isn’t mandatory, anyway. I can pull a few strings and get you into wood III, if that’s what you’d like. Shop classes have always been well suited to you.”

Sure, it didn’t give him much time. It seemed time had sped up, and the days were passing by a lot faster than Azame remembered. But it was enough time to prove the headmaster wrong. He wasn’t some stupid invalid the school picked up out of mercy. Azame worked better under hard conditions and deadlines, anyway. He was a major procrastinator, and had often written a paper with only two hours left to turn it in. His best work always came out of that ‘crunch time’, so he could do this. He could.

“Have you chosen any club activities this year… ah, with your condition though…” The headmaster said and scratched the back of his head. “Never mind.”

Azame could only hold his tongue bitterly, as yet again another lie that seemed to dominate his life came up. Most genuinely believed that Azame was touched in his head, that he had some form of a mental illness that caused him to stand and scream without control. As if the action itself wasn’t embarrassing enough, it was uncontrollable. He’d tried playing in baseball during his freshman year at BRAE, but he ended up getting hit square in the face with the ball when he had an episode in the middle of the field. Since then, he quit clubs.

“It’s ok. There’s an opening in the football club, but otherwise… it’s ok. You don’t have to be in one,” the headmaster said before pulling out his stamp pad.

He straightened the grade sheet before dipping the stamp into the blood red ink. With a final press, he stamped the sheet before tucking it into Azame Winter’s file before closing it. The name Azame had used for six long years. But that wasn’t his name, though, not his real one. He was born as Azame Jackson and he hoped that someday, when he died, he’d be buried as Azame Jackson. Not Azame Winters, not Azame Stephens. Jackson.

“I’ll inform your guardian once more.”

“Ah, thank you,” Azame said nonchalantly with a small smile.

“I expect more from you, Azame. I know there’s a lot more under there than meets the eye.”

“Thank you, sir,” the boy replied before looking back down at the desk.

Azame got up quickly and padded out through the door. He nodded once at the guidance counselor before entering the hall. He took a deep breath before he made his way back to his homeroom, where he stored his stuff. The other boys had long since picked up their own, leaving Azame’s sitting out on his own desk nearest the door. He glanced at Mrs. Reid, who was busy checking papers while picking at her lunch. She raised her eyes with a nod before returning her attention back to her desk.

Azame scooped up his stuff and headed out, making his way towards his government class. That one was always tiring, and it took everything in him to not fall asleep. He tried not to think. He really tried.