Amity slipped one of her books into her locker as her brain wandered on its own. It was the first time in about a week that she found her mind checking out like this, or, as best as her brain could. It had always been so hyper. As much energy that Luz showed off physically, Amity had mentally. It was never quiet. Never let things go. Never let her just sit for a moment.

But before Luz, she’d been able to focus. To keep it on track. To think about her path forward. About her homework. Or at least about dinner! She shut her eyes at the memories of her siblings mocking her when she burned dinner not once, not twice, but three nights in a row. And that was before she was actually on speaking terms with the idiot.

But then they’d been apart for two weeks. Two long weeks where things returned to normal. Sure, she was friends with Willow again and put up with Gus now, but she had felt herself closing in on herself again. Going back to what life had been when there wasn’t a crack in the roof of the tunnel she lived in. Before a beaked mask wasn’t all she had to look forward to. Was it really that easy? Was all it took was for her distraction to go away? If Luz went back home, would she be able to go back…

“Hey Amity!”

“Ack!” Amity leapt back at the shout and began to fall back. Good. The landing would reset her brain. That was way easier than the self electrocution system that she’d started practicing yesterday. Yes, that was a-

Chomp!

Amity swung hard to the side as her locker decided now was the time to close while her hand was still in its dumb maw. That was exactly what she needed. Of course! Why wou-

Crack!

Oh. There was the reset. Amity blinked a few times before reaching back and rubbing the back of her head as a face came down. Her cheeks instinctively turned red as she scrambled back and almost managed to lose her footing again from her soft soles slipping along the tile. For as much as Amity kept hoping that her methods of chilling out would help her, she kept forgetting that they hadn’t helped with her anger before all of this either.

No, she was able to calm down when Willow took off her glasses to defog them as they had reacted less than well to Amity’s head almost catching fire all of a sudden. “Are you okay?”

Amity looked away before with her free hand she reached up and yanked on another locker to get herself back to her feet. “I’m fine.” She then turned to Luz and snapped, “You know, you could try one of these days to not give me a heart attack when you say hi.”

Luz giggled at the statement, a sound which so often crashed through her tunnel until it became so loud it was painful. Or, well, that might be more due to how her heart rate spiked hard enough to make it almost impossible to hear anything. Anything other than her, especially when she popped those stupid finger, er, suns? No, that wasn’t right. What did Luz call them? Some dumb human thing she bet.

A dark skinned hand waved in front of her face and got another brief shriek from Amity before she glared down at Gus. “See, it’s stuff like that! Why can’t any of you, I dunno,” she sucked in her lips as she watched Luz lean in. The nervous girl then raised a leg and put a foot on the human’s head before pushing her back. “Give me some space. Not all of us want to be smothered all the time. To be wrapped up in you. To be squeezed until there’s no distance between us and we’re breathing the same air…”

The three other students blinked a few times before Luz went, “What?”

Amity didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe as she realized she’d said that last part. Her brain couldn’t even tell blood to rush to her face as it went on full alert. She needed a fix. Needed to not let the crack get worse.

“Bye!”

The other three watched as Amity booked it out of there, her sleeve getting torn off as she yanked her arm from her locker, before Luz laughed it off. To Amity’s brain, that was enough to go, ‘Nailed it.’ even if in her diary there’d be three pages of magically transcribed screams tonight. Again. Just like three nights in the same week that she’d met Luz, but she’d told herself it was for whole different reasons. Reasons that didn’t lead to the cool headed, top student to sprint at full tilt into the woods and thank Titan that she was a minute behind the treeline before she smacked into one of the large, firm, oaks.