despite how it consumed his thoughts so fully and left him constantly turning his face away so no one would notice how he couldn’t stop blushing...
...it didn’t hold a candle to the burning question of what to do about Chris.
Rian had taken that Let me think to mean Give me space. Whether space from Rian after that kiss or space to sort out what was happening with Chris and figure out what to do, he didn’t know—but although Chris had had better days over the last week, days when he’d looked more rested, more alert, actually smiling while he talked to his friends in class, actually seeming engaged when he held court in the cafeteria...
The boy still looked just so...tired.
Like there was something drawing the energy out of his very soul, and it was devouring what it could from his flagging body just to try to sustain itself.
Rian paused in flipping through the daily sketchbook a student had been working on, reviewing progress as the underclassman tried to get used to drawing in short, merging, feathery sketch lines as Rian had shown him rather than insisting on trying to do everything in a single contour line; last period would be over in a few minutes, the restless energy in the room picking up a fresh new charge as the clock counted down closer and closer to the end. It was always more tense on Fridays, that crackle of freedom for the weekend waiting breathlessly until, sometimes, Rian felt like he was standing on the other side of a very fragile fence just barely containing a herd of cattle right on the verge of a stampede.
That invisible fence broke, as the bell rang—echoing over the school with a hollow bonging that made it sound like someone was going wild up in the old locked-off belfry tower, instead of the electronic recording that had replaced it. The entire room surged up like a tidal wave of restless, boyish energy, the silence breaking into raucous noise as the boys flooded toward the door, jostling and pushing and nearly trampling each other in their hurry to escape.
If Chris hadn’t been so tall, Rian might have missed it in the chaos.
The moment when that head of dark brown hair dipped beneath the rest.
Fell.
Disappeared.
And Rian’s heart turned over like a failing, sputtering engine as Chris dropped out of the middle of the throng and collapsed to the floor.
Rian jolted out of his chair, shoving it back so hard it rocked back on two feet, and flung himself around his desk, his pulse racing and his stomach jolting and his mouth so dry it felt like the swallowed scream in his throat had sucked all the moisture out of his skin.
“Move!” he cried, pushing past the swarm of shouting, chattering boys and shouldering his way to Chris.
Chris lay on the floor in an ungainly sprawl, and Rian only let himself feel half a second of chest-shattering relief that Chris’s backpack had apparently cushioned his head from impact before Rian dropped to his knees next to him, pressing his fingers to his throat, under his jaw; bending over his face, he turned his cheek to feel the exhalations from Chris’s nostrils, his parted lips. Breathing, pulse slow but there, skin ashen. The boy didn’t move even a fraction, eyelids firmly closed, body limp as Rian cradled his face, patting his cheeks gently to try to shock him to alertness.
“Chris,” he pleaded softly, while the golden light from above dimmed as the boys, suddenly quiet, gathered around, staring, their shadows falling across him. “Wake up. It’s Mr. Falwell. Please wake up.”
Chris didn’t wake up.
His head lolled between Rian’s palms, and Rian’s heart turned heavy.
Focus. Focus. Think.
Move.
He gently laid Chris’s head back down atop his backpack, then pushed himself to his feet. “Step back,” he said firmly, even as he backed away from Chris himself, toward the door. “Give him room to breathe.” Then he turned and quickly hit the emergency call button on the intercom next to the door, wired from every classroom to the school’s infirmary. “I need assistance in the art classroom, room one-one-six-A,” he said firmly. “A student has collapsed unconscious.”
A crackle came through the speaker, before the voice of Nurse Hadley barked over the room, sharp and clear and no-nonsense and seeming to promise that she’d take care of things; she’d make sure everything was all right. “I’m on my way.”
Yet that promise wasn’t enough to calm the sick, cold-shiver feeling in Rian; wasn’t enough