My Best Friend's Brother | ✔

04. matthew

She was definitely right. We shouldn't tell Hailey. She's already mad at me and if I told her I kissed her best friend, I can't even imagine how she'll react. I'm going to tell her though. We just need some time.

I walk into Trigonometry class and see Kaitlyn. She looks at me and then immediately looks away. I guess she didn't want to see me in person anymore either. I always found that weird about relationships that didn't work out. Why couldn't we just be friends?

I grab my textbook and open it to the page we're on. I start to doodle random things instead of listening to the teacher. I always liked drawing different planets, it feels like a short escape from reality to me. Sadly, reality has to take over again.

"Matthew, do you know the answer to this?" My teacher asks.

I look up from my paper. Shoot .

"Uh, I'm sorry I don't understand the question." I say. What kind of excuse was that?

"You'd understand it if you weren't busy drawing on your book." He says.

I don't really care though. My grades are already super high and I can search up the explanation at lunch. I was too busy adding random lines to this planet.

"Matt, is something wrong?" My friend Ace asks me.

"No, I'm just bored, I guess." I say, not looking up at him.

"Look man, I heard what happened with Kaitlyn. I'm sorry."

"It's fine." It wasn't really fine, though. I thought Kaitlyn actually liked me. It really hurt me but I get not everything works out. My distractions from the lesson really had nothing to do with her, but probably had something to do with it.

"I heard she cheated on you. That's rough." He says.

I didn't hear about this.

"It's okay. We were never really a thing anyways."

I can't believe she cheated. Is that why she can't even look at me today?

When I head to the cafeteria for lunch, all eyes are on me. I could already tell what they were going to ask me.

"Is it true Kaitlyn cheated on you?" One girl asks.

"Apparently he cheated on her first with her best friend." Another guy responds with. This one was not true.

"I heard that he yelled at her when she broke up with him." Some girl says.

I can't deal with all of this.

I go to the bathroom and lock myself in a stall. I just sit there. I wasn't about to cry or anything, I just needed a break from all these kids who felt like they were reporters. I open my phone and scroll on Instagram for a while before I wash my hands and go to my next class.

When I entered the room, I saw a big group of people look at me and head my way. I try to avoid them as much as possible, but they end up catching up to me. They ask me questions like every other person in this school and I just ignore them. I put in my headphones and start listening to music.

I used to have really bad anger problems when I was in grade 9. I started getting into arguments or fights with anyone who pissed me off. Most of the fights were pretty bad, so my parents had to take me to Anger Management Therapy. My Therapist recommended I listen to calming music every time I feel like I'm going to yell at someone. This has really helped me, ever since then, whenever I'd be in a disagreement with someone and it would start to escalate, I would put in my headphones and listen to music. I usually listen to some Lofi music for about 10 minutes, and then I'd be feeling better after that.

I listened to my playlist for the rest of class before getting up, and going to my next class, and then the next one.

Today was kind of a blur. I don't really remember what happened other than Kaitlyn apparently cheated on me, and I kissed Morgan. When I was walking home, I saw more groups of kids that I recognized from school, I switches streets and managed to get home unnoticed.

I turn on my phone and notice I'm already the talk of my school's gossip account. I never payed attention to that kind of stuff because I thought it was stupid, but now that it's about me, I wanted to read what it said.

"Matthew Graham cheated on Kaitlyn first guys she told me."

What? This is obviously not true. I was so loyal to Kaitlyn, nothing and no-one could've made me cheat on her.

I go to see more on this account, and my name is printed on every post.

"Matthew Graham is sooo hot I am jealous of Kaitlyn."

"Idk about you guys, but I believe Matthew on this one."

Believe me about what? I haven't said anything.

"I heard Matthew hates Kaitlyn now. That's embarrassing for him."

"Matthew G is so obsessed with Kaitlyn. Someone told me he can't get over her."

"Matthew is now spreading all these rumours about Kaitlyn. I feel bad for her 💔"

I can't read any more of these. They're all fake and nobody has the right story. I read the page's bio.

DM me if you want anything taken down!

I open the message tab.

Message sent at 4:20 PM: Hey, I was just wondering if you could take down the recent posts about me and Kaitlyn. Most of them are not true and I don't want people to think either of us are bad people.

Message sent at 4:24 PM: Yeah, for sure! I'm sorry if any of the posts made you uncomfortable. These are just what were submitted.

The posts were taken down shortly after that.

I was happy that they were gone and nobody else had to see it. I was sick of all the rumours being spread.

About two hours later when I finish my homework, I see I was tagged in 13 posts.

Somebody reposted the submissions from the gossip account.

These ones were not any better though. New submissions were being added with worse things said about me and Kaitlyn. All of the stories were different and none of the stories added up.

People just believe anything these days.

I keep refreshing the page every minute or so, seeing the new and terrible things being posted. One in particular caught my eye.

"I saw Matthew Graham kissing a girl today. I got a photo of it. I'll DM it to you."

My body froze.

I slid to the next post and saw a photo of me and Morgan in the classroom, kissing. Below the user wrote,

"Keep this anonymous."