[center][sup][h1][color=black] Dexter[/color]
[color=c2b280]Dexter[/color][/h1][/sup][/center]

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It had reached that awful tipping point, the moment when everyone else had already found something to do, and Dexter had not. The room had settled into a soft, industrious hum: paintbrushes tapping glass jars, pencils scratching, the occasional triumphant “look!” from someone who’d discovered a new technique or something. One kid, the younger one with the mop of hair and the perpetually runny nose, had found a stick so perfect it might as well have been placed there by a forest spirit. He was carving it with the kind of focus Dexter wished he could apply to literally anything.

Meanwhile, Dexter had been standing by the wall for… too long. Far too long to casually drift toward a table and pretend he’d been planning to join all along. No, that window had slammed shut ages ago. Now he was just the weird kid hovering near the display shelves, pretending to examine the same crooked popsicle‑stick birdhouse for the eleventh time.

He knew he was being ridiculous. He knew he could just walk over, sit down, and do… something. Anything. Glue macaroni to paper. Paint a rock. Whittle a stick of his own. But his feet stayed planted, heavy as sandbags.

[color=c2b280][i]‘Just go sit down. People won’t think you’re weird. Not more than they already do. Stop being an idiot and just...’[/i][/color] His inner voice shoved him forward, but his body refused to budge.

Dexter turned again, letting his eyes drift back to the younger kid’s project. And honestly? It was impressive. The stick was taking shape, not just a stick anymore, but something intentional. The kid had even started staining it a deep, dramatic red. Dexter found himself wondering when the kid had gotten up to grab the stainer. He hadn’t noticed. He missed everything important, apparently.

He was still puzzling over that when the kid suddenly lifted his hand. For a heartbeat, Dexter didn’t understand what he was seeing. Then the dark crimson running down the boy’s wrist registered, too thick, too glossy, too real to be stain. It dripped onto his shorts, his knee, his cheek. The kid’s face drained of color, and Dexter felt his own do the same in perfect sympathy.

He lurched forward on instinct, but his legs turned to warm gelatin halfway through the motion. The room tilted. His stomach swooped. His knees buckled. He hit the floor face‑first with a sharp, wooden thwack that echoed off the cabin walls. For a moment he lay there stunned, blinking at the boards inches from his nose. Then the pain arrived, hot, bright, immediate, and the blood followed, warm and metallic, spilling over his lip.

Well. At least the kid wasn’t the only one with a face full of blood now. Dexter rolled onto his back, eyes already stinging with tears he absolutely did not want to shed in front of anyone. He pressed a hand to his nose, a terrible idea, as it turned out, because the pressure only made the pain spike harder.

He squeezed his eyes shut, breath hitching, the world spinning in a nauseating carousel of embarrassment, panic, and the coppery taste of his own bad luck. The room spun above him, voices blurring into a distant hum, and Dexter wished the floor would just swallow him whole 
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