Saints & Sinners

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven:

Being here, in this tiny little runt of a town, it was starting to be good for me, I think. I mean, before I'd been ditched here, I did had confidence. Not buckets of it, but enough to carry on. But since I'd been here, it felt like I had a place that I could literally just be myself, let go of all of the trouble and secrets shrivelled away in my head. I almost felt like I was free.

But there was a problem.

Ever since I'd came here, ever since I started letting my walls down and letting people in, letting them get to know the real me, it was at the same time that I was just building up another wall brick by bitter brick. And all of that started the day I decided to reinvent myself. I shouldn't have wanted that. I should have been happy with just being myself, but honestly, who is actually happy with who they are? Everyone keeps looking for flaws in themselves, improvements that they could make, and that was the only way that I could cope with being myself.

Honestly, I didn't know why I lied about my parents being gay. I must have felt like I'd be judged, and I'd be made an outcast, like I'd been my whole life. And I just wanted to fit in. Having two gay mums in a place like this was the exact kind of thing that would make you stand out like a black guy in Beijing. The last thing I wanted was to stand out. So I'd taken the opportunity as it dropped at my feet. I decided to reinvent myself, to hide away the bad parts, or the parts that people would judge me for.

That was just my mistake. Not just keeping old secrets, but making new ones, because we all knew that secrets just had this almost magical way of coming out. No matter what you did, your secrets were never safe. A real, real secret doesn't even exist, because at some point or another, it'll come out, and I hadn't even thought about that when it did.

This specific secret was about to come out big time, just as I was getting comfortable on a public bench in the central vein of the village. I was meeting Beau and Demmy, and maybe some other people, I wasn't sure, to go and see some lame movie. I never got to see the movie.

The sun, shining brightly down over Norway, through the mountains that towered over the village, became suddenly blocked. Shadowed by something.

I turned up to see, and heard someone whisper, "Devil-child."

That was the first word either of them said to me, the gang of teens that swept over from behind and surrounded me. It wasn't like I could do anything, either, because I was tiny compared to them, and I was outnumbered. Plus, I hadn't fought a day in my life. I was going to get eaten alive.

The one who spoke, I barely recognised his face from lunch earlier in the day. He'd been on a few tables across, and I'd been warned never to look him directly in the eye, or else I'd incur his wrath. Whoever he was, he sat down beside me on the bench, the wood creaking under his horridly muscled body. He was smiling a sinister kind of smile.

"We all heard Sister Genevieve in R.E. today, new-kid, and it made us wonder something, didn't it, comrades?" I recalled his name upon hearing the thick swell of Russian in his voice. Mikhail Medevik. I remember someone telling me, probably Beau, that he was one of the school's radical Chistians. He was apparently their "king," like we were suddenly no longer a democracy. And now he was sitting right next to me, smirking, with a knowing look on his face. A brutal look.

I didn't know what to expect. I'd never actually encountered people like this before, I had no clue what they wanted or how to make them back the fuck up. So I let it play out before me, helpless, like I could actually do anything to stop what was coming.

"We did," his friends echoed.

He continued. "Why are you, above those dirty homosexuals, the jezebels, the thieves, the non-believers and the foreigners and the scum of the earth, the biggest sinner in the school? How can you be worse, Sebastian Ängsbacka?" He nudged me hard with his shoulder. He was a well-built boy for his age, and not only did he tower over me, but the defined Slavic features of his body only intensified his cruelty. Like he was about to bite my head off just for looking his way.