Dexter never went out by himself. His father, a bold, likeable man, got the notion into his head that his soon-to-be seventeen son needed to get shoved out of the nest, so when the homeschooled recluse was done with his schoolwork for the day, he tossed him his wallet and his car keys and shoved him out the front door.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck was his eloquent internal monologue as he stood outside the front door.

Now, many teenagers would love to be let loose on the town with no parental supervision, but this was utter torture for our true-crime obsessed social pariah.

"Coffee, I could get coffee? People do that. And then I can just...sit in the car and people watch," he reassured himself.

But by some awful stroke of luck, the Starbucks drive-through was shut down and he had already paid online for his coffee.

He was absolutely miserable as he flung his bag over his shoulder and got out of his car. Of course, he checked his reflection in the window of the Jeep- dark brown, almost black hair frizzy from the wind, hazel eyes that seemed too big on his pale face, and cheeks dotted with tiny, almost imperceptible freckles, ghosts of the spots that had plagued him during childhood. There was a tiny scar on the corner of his mouth from an unfortunate encounter with an unfriendly dog. No one ever noticed the scar, and he forgot about it sometimes, but whenever he remembered it, it was the only thing he could see on his face.

He swallowed roughly, palms sweating, as he entered the coffee shop, meekly asking the barista for his order and shuffling off to find a seat. The only one was beside you, and he really, really didn't want to initiate a conversation, so he sat down, as far away as possible and got out his laptop, typing away miserably on an assignment not due for another month because he wanted to look busy. It was decorated with dozens of stickers, from Grey's Anatomy paraphernalia to everything Matthew Gray Gubler and Paget Brewster.