Author's Note: Aaaand we have come to the reign of Cam suicide fics in Degrassi fanfiction! Ahhh, the horrors. The fanfiction cliché horrors. But alas, gentle reader, I have done what Degrassi oft aspires to do – "go there" – and have gone there. Okay, well, "there" happens to be the desk chair in my bedroom that isn't very comfortable, but it's where I get most of my work done, and I hope you can trust me to not fuck it up. Because I don't want to fuck it up any more than you want to read a bad fic – believe me.

For those of you who bear with me through this, you are awesome. I have been writing in Degrassi fandom for over two years now, and while I do love to write and would probably do it for myself (let's all just ignore what that has to say about the state of my social life), the fun is writing for you guys. Any support is a great bonus. I'm proud of a lot of the recent work I've done, and hopefully this fic will continue that streak.

I PROMISE, you won't have to wait three months for an update every time…you know, like a certain fic I wrote about a certain pairing that went to a certain city of sin a few months ago...

Last (but CERTAINLY not least), the beautiful banner for this fic was made by the astronomically awesome sogoodatmending, who followed through on a strange and specific request. Please, praise her name on high.

I don't own Degrassi.

"You alone will have stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me... You will always be my friend."

– The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupery.

"When you see me fly away without you/ shadow all the things you know/ Feathers fall around you/ And show you the way to go/ Cause it's over"

– "Birds", Neil Young

"Oh, little prince! Bit by bit I come to understand the secrets of your sad little life…"

– The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupery

I.

For Maya, the best nights are the ones that no longer involve sleep. Sleep is a demon – it takes over her body, throws it into a dark chaos she can't escape from, and holds on no matter how hard she fights to claw herself free. Sleep is full dark, no stars, an endless screaming vortex hurling her through black nothing. Sleep drowns her, and at the same time refuses to let her sink.

No. The best nights, now, are the ones when the night is clear. When the moon hangs in the sky, reassuring in its full roundness, no parts of itself lost in the dark. When the pines stretch as far as they can towards the sky, trying to scratch the surface. When the creaking wind pushes against them, and they shake and swagger, boasting, look how high!

Nights like these are best for slipping out of her bedroom window. Tiptoeing down the block to meet the moon. No matter how far she goes, the moon always hovers in the same place, just beyond her grasp. It stares at her with patient silver eyes, watching her efforts to catch it.

The no-man's land of these early morning hours belong to her lately. They're supposed to be the start of a new day, but instead they just freeze the whole world until dawn. It seems funny to her, that the world keeps on moving when everyone doesn't watch. No one but her, and her moon.

By now, she's settled into a schedule. Lay in a half-conscious daze until 3 AM. Watch DVDs on laptop until 5. Pass out until her alarm goes off at 7:30. Ignore it. Wake up when Katie bangs on the door forty minutes later, saying they'll be late. Ignore her. Stay under the covers all day. Repeat cycle.

Mom and Dad haven't made her to go school, but tomorrow – or, really, today – they will. Tori texted her after dinner and said she'd be waiting right out front, so she and Tris could be there for her. Maya wonders what, exactly, that means – "be there for her". But never asked. She's been ignoring Tori for the past few days, refusing her many offers to come over and just spend time with her. What is she supposed to say to "if you ever need to talk, just know you can tell me anything. Or don't, if you're not ready. Whatever you need, I'm going to be there for you."

That phrase again; "be there for you". It's the same thing Tori said when she hugged her at the funeral last week, the same thing she hears her parents whispering to each other in the kitchen when they think Maya's sleeping. It's what Simpson said at the assembly they had the day before she quit going to school – bringing in grief counselors to Degrassi, letting anyone who wants to talk, talk. Simpson pulled her aside afterward and quietly suggested going, but Maya shuddered at the thought.

The stars are out tonight, numerous as wishes. She likes looking up at them, makes her wish she knew the constellations. Sirius. Orion. The smear of the Milky Way across the endlessness of space. Sheets and sheets of stars to wrap herself in. She learned in Grade 7 science that stars burned so brightly that we still see their glowing, blinding, unforgettable residue, years and years and years after they should have been forgotten.

The wind is blowing. Night air is scentless, she's noticed, compared to how sweet it smells during the day. Now that everything is coming back into bloom, bursting, growing, springing, living.

She turns away from a sky filled with the dead and the dying. Climbs back through the open window, like a mouth retracting a slip of the tongue. She's still cold, but that can be solved soon. Cold, it seems, is a permanent state of being for her lately, so while everyone else is shedding their winter layers and comparing puny tan lines, she finds that she needs to button up. Without at least a jacket, she feels completely exposed, all eyes on her. Wraps herself in three towels when she gets out of the shower. At night, she piles her bed with blankets, and wraps herself up so well that only her mouth peeks out beneath the folds, so she can breathe. Barely.

She tugs an old blue comforter of Katie's that's been in the closet for years over her head, wrapping herself in it like a burka, hiding herself from the silver knowing eyes of the moon that see everything. Still watching. Still knowing. Still there.

II.

The third night that the bird doesn't wake him up, Dallas is listening to the clock tick through the walls from the room next door. He can hear it like he can hear a pulse underwater, thrumming behind his eyes and in the palms of his hands. Its precision calms him; the steadiness of it, the non-negotiable tick-tick-tick of the minutes. No matter what he's doing, the minutes will always tick by. Another day, another night, another day again. Sunrise and sunset, night chased away by the day, then surrendered to the darkness again.

And all those songs say that time isn't guaranteed. Well, they lied. If there's one thing he's learned, it's that time is about the only thing guaranteed.

The bird that hasn't woken him up for the past few nights is still sitting on the branch outside his window. It hasn't woken him up because you have to be asleep in order to wake; these days, he's learned to live under a crow's-wing sky, and how to trade in a few hours of counterfeit sleep for the language of 3 AM. Dallas doesn't know what kind of bird it is, but he's pretty sure it's the same bird he's been hearing every night for almost a week now – there must be a nest in the live oak outside his bedroom. He keeps the window closed and the blinds pulled, but it doesn't do anything to stop the bird. It's nightsong has become as steady as the tick of time, for now.

He's found that avoiding sleep is getting easier; what better way to duck the fragments of dreams he'd rather not suffer. Closing his eyes is a workout; too much effort to keep them shut. Better to just leave them open, and save himself the trouble. These days, not a lot is worth the trouble – school, homework, remembering to eat. Returning Alli's calls, though Vanessa showing up the other day unceremoniously with Jayden has made that less of a problem than he thought; he can't not return a call she never sends.

The phone on his bedside table is glowing, the message light blinking on the screen with unread texts. He could go through them, but the idea of having to answer Vanessa is a lot less attractive than actually doing it; good thing right now happens to be one of those horrible nightmare hours for everyone else, who should be asleep. Somewhere across town, she's sleeping beside his son; doesn't want Dallas but wants him to return her calls. For now, he keeps the phone on silent and the messages unread, though there's only so long he can keep that up before she shows again.

The clock ticks through the walls, and the A/C clicks on, roaring the room to life. The cold air rushes down to him and he pulls the covers over himself. But then they start to feel too heavy, and they make him itch. He gives up, defeated, sprawling out on top of the bed. Lets the cold envelope him, the darkness wrap itself around him like barbed wire and tear at open wounds. His eyes don't shut, but the haze of sleep is settling over him, and soon he's struggling to row himself to shore through the swampy dimness of his own dreams. Except for the trilling of the bird, the world is closed to him, silent as a grave.

III.

She presses the snooze three times before her dad says he'll take her in late. Instead of taking a shower, she sits in her bathrobe and watches The Backyardigans while eating dry cereal out of a paper cup. It leaves sugary residue on her fingers, which she wipes on the arm of the couch. The windows to the bonus room are shut, and light flashes across the blank walls like symbols she doesn't care to try and figure out and thinks they're made up, anyway.

When her dad makes her get up and put some shoes on, she grabs her backpack and spends ten minutes looking for her calculator. She doesn't have algebra until tomorrow. When her dad has had enough sitting in the yard, he honks the horn twice, and Maya hears her mom calling from the bedroom to get moving before she misses another class.

Maya grabs her hat, forgets the gloves. She walks towards the car, stopping a minute to look at Katie's potted plants, sitting in the mudroom. They're on the windowsill, soaking in the glow of the morning, each rustle they make like a breath in the sweet spring air.

"I might not ever come back," she tries.

The flowers breathe at her. She goes back inside, grabs her coat, forgets her hat.

IV.

Vanessa has been trying to get a hold of him all morning, but he's kept his phone on silent. The little light blinks inside the pocket of his jeans, reminding him that he can only avoid her for so long.

In the hallway, Alli is talking to Clare Edwards. Clare looks over and sees him, throwing him her patented look of utter disgust – damn it, and just when he thought he'd won her back over. Alli gives him a quick, timid glance over her shoulder before she obeys Clare, who's yanking her down the hallway.

He watches her go. This isn't something he has a chance of fixing. If Jayden and Vanessa hadn't already set that record straight, then the last time he spoke to Alli – it was That Day – definitely sealed the deal.

Not that she's the only one who stopped giving him the time of day. A week ago, he was one of Degrassi's most talked-about, talked-to guys. These days, only the first half is true, but for completely different reasons. The team has stopped talking to him, or even near him; whenever he enters the locker room, what little conversation there is stops automatically. Entire classrooms stiffen when he walks in, like everyone's holding their breaths. No one will look him in the eye, not even teachers. People cross the halls to get away from him, scoot their desks away from his. Death is catching, you know.

By now, everyone knows he was There. The details vary from person to person, but the basic knowledge that he was There is out, and when he feels their eyes on him, it's like they're seeing someone shattered; he's a broken little body on the concrete.

For an instant, there's a memory of a solid weight at his side; a remarkable, alive reality. It almost throws him off balance, the knock it gives him in the chest. The empty space beside him throbs with the energy; it's a pulse in the air, pulling at the gravity, trying to form something from the nothing, from the need.

The blood was black. He wants to tell them, but he doesn't. The blood was black. You think it's red, but that's only when you cut your finger or skin your knee.

The blood was black, but when I looked, I could see the sky in it.

V.

The first day back is just like she imagined, only a thousand times worse: whispers crawling from every hidden crevice and dark space, like bugs or ghosts surrounding her. Conversations derail instantly; eyes stare at her in morbid fascination, or worse, accusation. Some have pity in their eyes, but that makes her the angriest of all.

Everyone, however, stares at her like she's drenched in blood. Like she's standing over a body, holding the knife that just went into its back.

Close enough.

Tori slips an arm around her shoulders. "Just look ahead," she says, and shoots some gawking Grade 11 boys a "what the hell are you looking at?" stare. They back off, and Maya almost laughs. Good old Tori. She's sorry she ignored her.

But even looking in front, with Tristan and Tori flanking either side, can't help. Teachers pass her by with an expression of hopeless wonder, like they want to comfort her but also want to know what happened. Obviously, they know she was dating Him. And they'd all been at that disastrous pep rally, the one That Day.

Then Tori falters, and Tristan goes, "uh-oh" under his breath.

Maya sees him before it registers with her who she's looking at – black jeans and a faded jacket, dark hair unbrushed and the greenish remnants of one hell of a beatdown still decorating one side of his face; a flag flying high in the faceless sea of backpacks and condemnation.

Maya doesn't realize she's come to a stop until someone runs into her back and yells, "watch out!". Tori pulls them all aside, then adjusts her backpack straps, as if adjusting her resolve.

"Give me a minute," she says.

"Tor, no," Maya tries, but Tori's already halfway down the hall.

Zig doesn't look up at his ex-girlfriend until Tori forces herself right in front of him, and even then he does his best to look away.

"Do you want to get going?" Tristan asks.

Maya watches them – Tori is trying to talk to him, but Zig just purses his lips and doesn't change the expression of blank intensity. Then he shifts, and his eyes find Maya's – one brown and the other still swollen and smeared with purple edges, right on hers.

Just like that, she can't breathe.

"Let's go," she says, and Tristan looks all too happy to bail. They leave what used to be the rest of their group behind, Tori still trying to get Zig's attention and Zig looking at Maya like she's all that's in the room.