D's POV

It's a lovely day, the sun is shining, I wake up to the most wonderful aroma of the coffee, a cup of that and I'll be good to go. This year is going to be the last year of school, finally! I go downstairs to find my dad already in front of his laptop frowning.

"Good morning Dad"

"Good morning kid, are you ready for school? Are the others going to come to pick you up?" he asked sipping some coffee.

"Well they probably are, but I'm dragging Kev out of his bed for sure."

"Good luck with that, because that kid hardly sleeps," he said, worried.

Well of course he was worried, Cavil being his godson and all. Cavil is my neighbour, best friend, and son my mother wished she had. He always had a hard time sleeping, but it had gotten worse of late and all of us partially knew why, but the full story he never told anyone, not even me and I have known him since the day he was born, literally.

I run back to my room, shower, get ready for school and run next door and I seemed to have entered at the wrong time because there was a terse silence when I entered, Aunt Sushi, Cavil's mom, looked like she was about to burst into tears, Uncle's jaw was bunched and his hands were fisted to the side, trembling slightly, Cavil's older brother Rishabh just looked sad. Amidst all this, the centre of the chaos, Cavil stood, his head bent.

Hearing me enter they all turned towards me, and uncle and aunty faked a smile and ushered me in. Cavil just dragged me by my hand and lead me outside, his bag was by the porch, he took that and pulled me towards the gate. Something was definitely wrong. I snatched my hand back and brought him to a stop.

"Kev, what's going on?

"It's nothing important D, forget it"

"I'm pretty damn sure that it's important, just tell me!"

"I told them that I wanted to go to Delhi."

"What's the problem with that? I mean, just to visit right?"

"No, I want to go there for college next year"

I looked at him for some kind of a sign that this was a joke, but his eyes were very serious.

"Why would you do that?"

"I have my reasons, just don't ask me anything more about this, OK? Let's just get the others and head to school, I don't want my last year of school to start this way."

I wanted to probe further but something told me that I should keep my mouth shut.

The rest of the group had agreed to meet near the park the previous day and the four of them were already there. Nick, Naira, Naina, Aadya, were the remaining members of our group and I and Kev have known them since we were four, and we have remained best friends ever since.

Nick short for Nicholas is the calm and observant type, he doesn't talk a lot but when he does it's all that British sarcasm coming in your direction. His parents moved here to India when he was around four. He's 5'10, blue-eyed and black-haired, I think some would describe him as the 'hot nerd' type.

Naira or Ne-Ne as we call her is a sweet and charming girl, that is, if you are on her good side, you would not wanna mess with this one. She's 5'3, green-eyed, amazing girl who does not lack attention givers, but weirdly enough she's in love with her arch-enemy Nick, I think they have a sort of love-hate going on. Whatever it is, it's gross but they look alright together, so that's fine.

Now the remaining two girls Naina and Ada are sort of the heart throbs of the entire school, they are very very different from each other, with Naina at 5'6, gorgeous and witty and Ada at 5 ft, adorable yet savage, they are a horrifying combo and they take no B.S.

Oh, and lastly, Cavil Sharma, he's probably the most complex one to describe, he's 6 ft tall, athletic, smart and probably the most silent person you'll meet. Well his silence is more recent, he used to be very cheery and smile a full dimpled smile, but now he doesn't smile as much. His morose outlook is enhanced furthermore by his eyes, he has multicoloured eyes predominantly blue and green with specks of gold in them. They change colour based on his mood and he's the youngest of the group while Nick is the oldest.

"So, shall we get going?", Nick asked walking ahead of us.

So, we all made our way to school to begin our first day of the last year of school.

Cavil's POV

The six of us make our way to school, the others are all chattering about how they want to join a new club this year or whatever, I have nothing to contribute and even if I did, my brain has other plans for me today. It keeps replaying what happened at home today. I woke up from another gruesome nightmare just like every day, but I must have screamed pretty loud because the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes, was my parents. They knew better than to touch me because I get violent when anyone touches me right after I have had one. So, they were standing, a foot away from my bed, my mother's eyes were filled with horror and my dad had that look of helplessness and guilt that I have begun to hate so much. When I had completely woken up, they gave me some water, didn't say much and just left.

But things got weird at breakfast. My older brother was also at the table and was excited about being selected at some fancy law school in the US. Dad was about to get up and hug him when suddenly he just looked at me and sat down like he was guilty of feeling happy, mom shared the same look too and my brother looked at me like this was all my fault.

I usually don't say anything at times like these and just move away from the scene but today, something inside me just snapped.

"OK, that's enough! I've had enough of this."

They all looked at me shocked, but I needed to get this out, now.

"I'm done with you all treating me like I'm damaged beyond repair like I'm some science experiment that you have tried and failed to solve and I'm done with those looks of pity that I wake up to every morning! You all treat me like I'm sucking away the happiness in the atmosphere like somehow your self inflicted guilt is all my doing. I know what happened to me was not your fault but it's not mine either, I didn't ask for this, I didn't ask to be abused, sexually assaulted or be so mentally broken. I am tired. I cannot stand being looked at like I'm the only thing that's wrong with this house."

"Wha-what did you just say? Sexually assaulted? Cavil wha- what are you talking about?" Dad asked ashen-faced.

Oh crap, maybe I told too much. So, pretending to not have heard him, I said

"So, I have come to a decision, I am going to move out next year, go somewhere far away and try to start fresh, that way you all can be content in knowing that I'm alive without having to see my  face and I can try and pretend like the past four years of my life have never happened."

I let out a long breath having removed some of the lingering anger and frustration out of my system and then realized the room around me had gone completely quiet. I did not want to look up, fearing what their reactions might be and that's when I heard Dushyanth come in.

I was horrified that he might have heard everything, so I snapped my head up, to see just normal Dushyanth, with that beautiful smile aimed in my direction and I needed him out of here before something bad happened. So, I didn't stop to see any of their faces, I just dragged him out, took my bag which I had kept on the porch and made a run for it.

But I know that this isn't the end of the discussion, I'll have to deal with this later.

But right now, I was brought back to reality with D aggressively poking my shoulder.

"Hey Kev, where are you lost? Is it about this morning? Are you OK?"

"Why? What happened this morning ?" Naina asked furrowing her brows.

"It's nothing important Naina," I said, trying desperately to end the conversation and Nick must have got the hint because he started talking about something else and my story was soon forgotten, I sent a silent thank you and he gave me a small nod in return.

I really have to dodge this subject as much as I can, because all I'll be doing by letting them know, is hurting them. D would probably be affected the most and I'd never wanna see that happen.

D's POV

I'll be honest with you, I've been having very weird thoughts since this morning, something's not right, even now as we reach the end of a pointless and boring first day at school, all that has been going through my mind is that some things have changed; not just with Cavil, but there's just so much of, how can I say, umm, raw tension between the six of us. I can't say that I understand what brought this about, but dynamics have changed, like between Nick and Naira, they seem fine but it's like they're having non-verbal arguments of accusations by just looking at each other. Ada, the most chirpy and happy type is throwing me off with fake smiles. Seriously, what the heck happened? Kev wants to move to Delhi, Nick and Naira look like they wanna stab each other, Ada is fidgety and covering up something, what the heck am I missing?

No, I'm not going to stand another minute of this pointless drama.

"Why are you being this way Ada? What happened? "

Ada looked like she wanted to shrink away but when she looked around to see all eyes on her,

"OK, fine, I have a confession."

She took a deep breath and said

"I'm bi and I kissed a girl this summer" she rambled quickly and put her head down.

"Was she hot?", Cavil asked teasingly.

All of us chuckled and Ada's shoulders relaxed and she smiled her first genuine smile of the day.

"Yup, she was hot and so was her boyfriend," she said, her eyes twinkling with mischief.

"Ada you sly dog you!" Naina said laughing.

"Well, since we are all spilling the beans, I'm Bi too," Cavil said, shrugging his shoulders.

This shocked me, not because he was Bi, but because he never mentioned this to me. Another damn secret. Did he think that I would judge him? Or did he just not trust me enough to let me know? Is it just me or was he putting some distance between us both literally and figuratively? All these thoughts are starting to give me a headache.

"So, what about you two? Spill?" Naina said pointing at Nick and Naira.

They shuffled on their feet awkwardly.

"We took a break at the beginning of summer, things were becoming strained and we wanted to cool it off before it became toxic, so we didn't see much of each other the whole summer.", Nick said.

" If this was mutually decided, then why the death glares?" Cavil asked.

Oh, so I was not the only one who noticed.

"That, well..", Nick fumbled

"Why don't I tell? Well, the thing is Nick and I, during the break decided to do our own things without consulting  the other, as one does..."Naira started

"Wait come on, when you.." Nick tried to interrupt.

"Let me complete it!" she all but screamed.

"And two weeks later, when I was at a cafe, I met a guy, our age and he asked me out for coffee and he seemed interesting so I said yes and cut to the day of our coffee date, Nick shows up with some girl and he saw me with this guy, grabbed him by the collar and created a scene in the Cafe and dragged me out of there."

"Oh please, tell them what you did next.", Nick said mockingly.

"Girl, what did you do?" Ada asked.

"I might have slapped him."

"Might have! She slapped me in front of like 50 people, my date and that stupid jerk she was with!" Nick yelled.

"Oh I'm sorry, so what it's OK for you to go on a date but it's not OK for me to go? What was I supposed to do, just stand there and take your patriarchal bullshit?"

"You didn't have to slap me in front of those people Naira! "

" I know I probably went too far with that and I'm sorry!"

" Yea, I'm sorry too!"

"OK!"

"OK!"

"Are you idiots done?" I ask.

"Yes," they said in unison.

And just like that, the fight was done. We were back to ease, except for the Delhi thing, but after everything that has happened today, I'm gonna let it slide. Moreover, what I see around me right now are my best friends, joking and teasing each other and I'm just going to let this moment be.