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Some people were bound to have it rough in life. Those people, outcasted and mocked, either lash out against one another, or latch onto one another.
Grian was a nerd and not the most sociable one either. When they were little he'd try and relate to others, but people tended not to be interested in what he was interested in. Or sometimes they just thought they were annoying.
"Do you ever stop talking?"
"No one cares."
"God, would you shut up about that?"
Their parents would tell him not to listen to them. That was hard given that they tended to do the same thing.
"Shh, I need some peace and quiet."
"Why don't you go tell your sister about that?"
"Tell me later." Then when he'd try and tell them later, they'd just be told the same thing over again.
So, since Pearl had her own friends whom she'd rather play with, Grian spent a lot of recesses alone.
Then he met Jimmy and Joel.
Jimmy was meek, a pushover really. He was agreeable and nice, maybe even a bit ditsy. I'm sure you can see how people took advantage of that.
"Come on Jimmy, it'll be fine. Just don't get caught."
"Come on Jim. You wanna be cool right?"
"Come on Jimmy. It's perfectly safe."
Joel was competitive and energetic. He just wanted people to like him. See him win something and give him praise. But other people didn't see it that way.
"Stop bragging, no one likes a sore winner."
"You think you're better than us, don't you?"
"No, we don't wanna play with you."
They were alone. After a while people would get bored of messing with Jimmy. Get tired of Grian's chattering. Get fed up with Joel's games. They were just kids. They just wanted friends.
But the only people willing to be around a reject are other rejects. So the three of them, put through the social shredder and out the other end, put each other's pieces back together. It wasn't the same as before, but at least they could stand on two feet again.
They managed to lead each other through elementary school, they had a few scars and cuts, but they were still walking.
Middle school was much worse. Their peers realized that there was more you could do to a person than ignore them.
Rumors are a thing that Grian thinks could have only been made by the devil himself. The way it spread and escalated over time was vicious. And the three of them were perfect targets.
According to the kids at their school: Joel was abused by his dad or something, Grian was emo and hurt himself, and Jimmy was gay (which in the middle school might've been a worse fate than Joel and Grian's). And those were just the big ones, there were tons of smaller ones.
Grian wasn't even sure how many people believed them, he kinda suspects that some people just wanted an excuse to make fun of them.
People didn't typically say or do anything to them directly, but that doesn't mean that nothing happened.
They'd talk shit online or when they knew they could hear them. They'd point and laugh, make off-handed comments about them. Speaking of "handed" things, Grian's least favorite of their tactics was backhanded compliments.
"You know we're here for you, right?" Said with sarcasm and a wry smile.
"Oh, you should ask him out, Jimmy. I'm sure he'd accept."
"Hey, look Grian it's your favorite song!" Queue My Chemical Romance.
Of course, some people didn't get the memo about being indirect. During lunch one day in the seventh grade, a kid came up to them. He started off relatively normal, but they knew it wouldn't last long. And sure enough, the guy ended up calling Jimmy a word Grian doesn't care to repeat.
They didn't usually retaliate, it would just make things worse, but something snapped in that moment, and before Grian could even process what he'd said, Joel had stood up. He punched him and broke his nose.
Joel got into a whole bunch of trouble. He got an in school suspension, while the guy who got punched just had detention one day. Joel's parents weren't upset, though. In their eyes, Joel had just been doing what was right.
A week later, a kid was making fun of Jimmy for not fighting his own battles. That time Jimmy got in a lot more than one punch. It was a huge thing in the school. "Did you hear? Little Jimmy got in a fight and won." It was pretty cathartic to watch Jim bash his face in.
Jimmy's older sister, Lizzie actually got in an argument with the school that the kid should've been punished for instigating. She also felt that the first kid should've been more harshly punished since he straight up called Jimmy a slur. But it didn't go very far. Lizzie was busy enough trying to take care of her younger siblings and just didn't have the means to change anything.
Grian was able to make it through the rest of seventh grade without getting in trouble, but early on in eighth grade, a girl thought it would be a good idea to go after his sister. She started a rumor that Pearl was trying to steal her boyfriend. It was really affecting her. Pearl started losing friends and getting cyberbullied. And wasn't it Grian's duty as her older brother (by four minutes) to defend her honor?
"Hey, you've been spreading lies about my sister?" He barked, trying to make himself seem as big as possible. He was 5'4.
It wasn't their plan to fight her. It really wasn't.
She squinted her eyes at him. "It's no lie, your sister's a whore."
It was instinct that made Grian move more than anything else. One second she was smiling meanly and the next she was holding her cheek and that grin was wiped from her face. The crowd which had gathered around them at some point gasped and Grian distantly heard Pearl's voice.
The rest was a blur. The girl lunged at him and they were on the ground, tussling. There was a lot of hair pulling and a lot of kicking from both sides. Grian wasn't the strongest teen, but neither was she, so they were pretty evenly matched. There was a lot more shrieking than Grian remembers there being during Joel and Jimmy's fights, though.
Eventually, they were separated by the staff and both had their parents called.
When they got home Grian's parents had a go at him. They don't think he'd ever been properly yelled at by them before. He tried to defend themself, but his parents didn't wanna hear it. The school decided to give him an out-of-school suspension. Their parents decided to ground him and take away their phone. Grian was okay with that. He wasn't in the mood to receive Snapchat death threats anyway.
The strangest thing about this whole situation was that it was kinda nice to have their parents' attention focused on him. I mean, getting yelled at isn't nice, but at least their yelling at him. They'd been brushed to the side for years, and suddenly he was his parents' main concern.
What was nice was their "conversation" with Pearl once she got home from school.
"You've ruined everything!" She screamed through tears. Grian couldn't even get a word out before she continued on. "Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was? Now everyone thinks that I asked you to fight her for me and anyone who didn't already know the rumor definitely does now!"
"Pearl-"
"Things were hard enough without you inserting yourself in my life! Why should I be surprised? You've always been jealous of me!"
No. That wasn't it at all. Well, Grian was jealous of Pearl but that wasn't why he confronted her. Is that really what Pearl thought of them? Did she really think that Grian would try and destroy her life because of something as stupid as that?
Grian was too stunned by the whole thing to respond. Pearl took their silence as an admission of guilt. "I hate you!" That's all she said before storming off.
Grian spent the next several our crying. He just wishes that they had never said anything. Grian would give up the world to have never seen Pearl like that. Eyeliner running down her red face and shaking like a leaf. He would rather die than have to hear her yell at them again.
The two of them hadn't been close in years, but Grian loved his sister. It was his sister! They don't think he could hate her if he tried.
Clearly Pearl doesn't think that way.
A sob tore through Grian, but it was interrupted by a knock on his window.
Oh, I'm gonna die. Great. I spent the last few hours of my final day on Earth getting yelled at and crying.
Warily Grian wiped off his face, grabbed a hefty book which they could probably clobber someone with, and pulled back his curtains expecting to see a creepy man with a knife, only to be met with the sight of their best friends.
He lowered his top-tier weapon and as quietly as possible opened their window. "What are you two doing here?" He whispered.
"Hey Grian! You didn't pick up the phone!" Jimmy did not whisper.
"Shhhh!" He insisted. "I'm grounded."
Jimmy mouthed back a "Sorry." Meanwhile, Joel just went, "Oh. Lame. You wanna get out of there?"
Was he suggesting that Grian sneak out? That'd be crazy. They'd get in so much trouble. But on the other hand, they were already in so much trouble.
Grian did the ultimate cliche of creating a fake Pillow Grian to hide under the covers. He also locked the door and turned off the light for good measure.
The park looked pretty spooky at night. You only ever see it during the day and it's kinda weird to see it so empty. But, it's better than their room which had never been so suffocating before.
The escape was nice for all of them, so they started sneaking out more and more. They got really good at it, too.
One day, Joel pushed his luck a bit and nabbed a few cigarettes from his parents. If they noticed, they didn't say anything.
None of them had ever smoked before, but they didn't have to be convinced to try it. It was a shock to the system at first, but it felt nice.
Grian's parents would probably pass out if they knew their son was doing any kind of drug, but strict parents raise sneaky kids. At a certain point, it became common for one of them to show up with smokes and vodka-filled water bottles.
Grian wasn't greedy. He didn't need a happy family or a large group of friends. They just needed to feel okay.
And they weren't stupid, at least not entirely. They knew it was bad for them. They knew it was a slippery slope, but they all just felt so helpless that they didn't think they had much to lose. Grian had a lot of anger in him and not a lot of outlets for it. The alcohol took the edge off of it. Made the urge to break something more bearable.
After that, the three of them made their outlets. When people are ostracized, they tend to lash out at one another. They started up a mean streak. Began acting rude to their relatives. Began back talking teachers. Began clapping back at the other kids.
Everyone already hated them, why not give em' something to hate? It felt good for about two seconds. Then they'd act aloof to disguise their dissatisfaction.
But, throughout it all, never once did they turn on each other. They lovingly teased, but they all knew that there was no real bite behind them. They were all they had, so they held on tight.
Except that isn't quite true anymore, is it? Grian and Pearl had reconnected and he has Scar now too. Grian doesn't have to resort to these methods. He could talk about it. But isn't talking the thing that got him to this point? All his life they'd been shown that his thoughts and feelings were annoying. Grian would like to think that they wouldn't do that to him, but does it really matter if Grian doesn't feel safe enough to do it?
Grian probably doesn't need to bottle it all up, but they're so used to it that he's scared to do anything else. It's too vulnerable. It's slowly killing them, but it’s all that they've got