We must be mistaken

 "Are you going to tell him?" Jared put Justin on the spot. This had gone on long enough. Randy needed to know like yesterday or even last week, but Justin kept putting him off.

"Not now," Justin was rather overwhelmed. A lot was going on, and he still hadn't passed the class needed to work at the hospital. Actually, Jared thought he could be an X-Ray techie. He knew machines, but he was also in the Art Department and occasionally made extra money posing as a nude model. Not that he'd gloat, but it kept him afloat and out of the Vada and Kevin saga. 

"Randy needs to know," Jared spoke up for him. Why were they treating him like a baby? Wasn't he almost twenty-two?

"I know." 

Justin shot back. He was picking up the stray empty snacks that Kenny left while playing Guitar Hero with Randy. At the moment, Carmen took Kenny shopping at Walmart and then to Karate lessons.

Jared sighed and crossed his arms. "Why are you like this? You never wanted to achieve anything, now did you? Always had lessons in something, and you would make it to maybe three lessons, and you were out. You wanted to be a bum all your life."

Justin closed his eyes to put this to rest. "I will."

"Will what?" came a question from someone who wasn't so far away after all. Randy came back from taking out the trash.

"Oh, he's got news," Jared was thankful that he'd overheard when he did, because Randy might never know. In Jared's eyes, Justin didn't want Randy to know.

"Good news?" He looked at both of them blankly.

"Cassie and her mother went back to Shanghai," Justin said rather straight-lipped.

"What? Is it a lie? Is she-" even Randy couldn't say the words.

"Her mother took her home." Justin looked at Randy as if he was not supposed to think the worst. But Jared knew she'd left Justin all the drama, half-written novels that needed to be sent to the people who would pay them.

"But there's more?" Jared looked chipper about it as he gave Randy a pat on the back.

"More?" He scrunched a face that he didn't think would be pleasant.

Justin was mute.

"Randy, you're not as bad off as you think you are," Jared looked him in the eye. "Yes, sad news is, you're not exactly on the reading level you could be on, and you never got a chance to do much more than basic math. And you might have been overmedicated all this time. But you're fine. You're really fine. You're not an idiot after all."

"What am I supposed to do?" Randy looked at him as if he was supposed to sign off on something or at least take another test of some kind.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing," Justin told him and shot Jared a look that this was too soon to rip the band-aid off.

Of course, Randy didn't know how to respond, but Jared gave him a hug and Justin did too.