Chapter Four: Downward Spiral
That summer was probably the worst of my life. My parents were splitting up and I didn't really have anyone to talk to about it. I started out my senior year feeling pretty much alone. It just got worse as time went on. If Buffy hadn't been around, it would have ended for me before the year was even over. I guess my wallowing in self pity made me kinda blind to what the others were going through. I still paid attention to Willow and Buffy and their whole little group, but I had all this other bad stuff I was dealing with. Well, it would probably help to explain my downward spiral if I started at the beginning.
Even though they didn't even really know that I existed, I felt this connection with Willow and her friends, because I seemed to be the only one who noticed what was going on with them. I was wrong, of course, but I'll get to that later.
The rumor going around school was that Buffy had killed some girl in the library. I heard it from tons of people, but I refused to believe it. Buffy was a fighter for good. She was in the Starfleet, not a Romulan, dammit. I held to my beliefs even after I found out she had been expelled. Snyder was an idiot. He would have expelled her just based on the rumor that she had been anywhere near the library when something bad happened there. He had it out for her ever since he became principal.
When I asked about Buffy in my best 'I was just wondering, I really don't care what's actually up with her' voice', he told me she had disappeared for a while but she'd be back. I was pretty relieved when I heard about her welcome home party.
Oh yeah, the party. That was a big eye-opener for a lot of people. Practically the whole senior class showed up at Buffy's house. A lot of them didn't really know who she was or even what the party was for, but it was a party not at the Bronze, so they went anyway. About an hour and a half into it, Buffy and her friends get into this huge argument about her leaving or whatever. I didn't really know what to do. A lot of people left, but I had been standing by the food table, so I would have had to go right past the argument to get out the door. It was pretty uncomfortable. I was a little relieved at the break in tension when some people literally crashed through the window and started attacking partygoers. The people who didn't know that things are a little off in Sunnydale before that soon learned. I'm not saying this couldn't happen anywhere, but I'm pretty sure the crashers were zombies. As in dead. As in cold dead flesh moving around, all Bruce Campbell-like. It was a crazy night. Rumors exploded around school, and by then pretty much all the seniors knew that Buffy was different. Sort of special.
Even though I had told people before that that something weird was up with Buffy, no one ever listens to me. They pretty much only noticed me if I was blocking their locker or something. And then they'd say something like "outta the way" and go right back to pretending I didn't exist. I'm not saying that high school was a breeze for everyone else, but at the time I felt like I was the loser of the school and I'd never be anything else. I was so caught up in my own stuff that I didn't realize that everyone was having trouble. And, mor importantly, after it's over, high school pretty much stops mattering. The people who seemed so great in high school pretty much fade into the woodwork later. Then there's Willow and Buffy and all them. They seemed kinda outside the high school scene and not really all that huge, but they were the most important people in Sunnydale, possibly in the world. Seriously. They are always saving it, after all.
Right about then this new girl showed up, Faith. She wasn't a student, but Buffy was always hanging around her. I heard some of the guys talking about her, and I got the impression that she was kinda slutty. I didn't ever really meet her, but there was definitely something up with her. You can't just break right into that little group without having something extra going on. I still don't know exactly how she fit into the group, but she was only there for a little while, then, one day, she was just gone. I guess she moved again or something, I don't really know. I wish I could have found out what was special about her. I would have liked to know how she was so easily accepted by such a close group of friends. It was odd.
So one night I was hanging out at home with my mom when she started acting kinda weird. She said she had to go out, and I, being the curious person that I am, followed her. It was the strangest thing. She ended up at the Bronze, and I'm pretty sure she'd never been there before in her life. She started drinking and flirting and doing some very un-momlike things. It took me a while to realize that most of the people at the Bronze that night were over 40 and acting like, well, I would say teenagers, but I definitely never acted like that. It was like a city-wide midlife crisis. And right in the middle of it was, of course, a perplexed looking Willow and Buffy. And Snyder. That was the part that freaked me out. As soon as I saw Snyder hanging around Buffy like they were the best of friends, I knew something apocalypsey was up, and I got out of there and left it to the professionals. That seriously messed with my head. Snyder. Weird.
Anyway, that was when things started going downhill for Buffy, Willow, Xander, and, well, me. Not that my problems had anything to do with theirs. Theirs were more of the relationship variety. According to the kids at school, Cordelia had found Xander and Willow in a compromising position. I like to think that Willow was still very Willow-like back then, and they were just kissing. I refuse to believe it was anything more. I know that she had a crush on Xander way back when we were still friends, so I wasn't completely surprised.
Their relationships kinda fell apart.
They all got kinda quieter and depressed around school. Cordelia had been in the
hospital for some kinda stomach thing, a bug or something, I guess, and when she
got back to school she was just as depressed as the rest of them. Except, this
time, her former friends (Harmony and clones) didn't take her back. They were
the worst when it came to making fun of her. For the first time in my life, I
felt sorry for Cordelia, and that's probably what pushed me over the edge more
than anything else. I mean, if life couldn't be perfect for her, then what the
hell do the rest of us have to look forward to?