if i think i can figure things out, is that curiosity or arrogance?

So lately? Topher had been getting a little bit better at getting people. He wasn't great at it or anything, wasn't even really good, and still needed to ask a lot of questions, but at least by now he knew what to ask. And who to ask, and how to ask, and just generally the right way to figure things out.

Which he thought he had, yesterday. Figured stuff out, that was. Because... Billy. There had been Ben's advice and everyone else ever's implications and he'd been pretty sure he was right. Because of, like, the scientific method, where Ben and Kenzi and Tony and Peter and Ender were all test subjects and they'd all given him data to suggest that: yes, Billy was okay, Billy was cleared, he should try this with Billy, because it wasn't like he was ever going to get anywhere with anyone else this kind of thing made people happy, and Billy made Topher happy and maybe it would be a good thing. To try it. And he'd thought he was right. Been pretty sure, as a scientist, that his data proved his hypothesis.

Except he definitely had not been right, because he'd tried to do what everyone else thought he should do and wound up getting laughed at.

So. Fuck that. Fuck talking to people. Fuck going outside, too. Today he was buried under all his blankets and reading a comic and wondering why it wasn't helping him feel better yet.

Any second now.

[[door closed, post open, emo within]]