On the Fritz

Chapter 10 // End

After almost an entire year of seating plans, group tasks, and general micromanagement, Mr. Bird had given up.

Following the two week break where Rafael had not sent a single text to him, Fritz re-entered his physics class with apprehension, because he wanted to give Rafael one final chance. He wanted to gauge where he was at, and whether or not he should have practised his hand-to-hand combat skills over the past fortnight.

Unexpectedly, the answer to the combat question was no, because Mr. Bird decided they could have some space.

Instead of their usual adjacent positioning, Fritz ended up at the back of the class beside his alleged lover Will, who remained oblivious to their budding relationship. It was mortifying. He was practically borrowing Calum's boyfriend for clout, and none of them were acknowledging that this was actually really bizarre. Of course, Fritz was certain that nobody had bothered to let Will or Calum in on the rumours.

Pretty cringe.

While Will entertained himself by playing Minesweeper with Gigi sitting on his left, Fritz stared hard at the back of Rafael's head. Rafael didn't so much as glance behind him for the entire period. Two rows back, Fritz was starting to simmer. He was giving him an opportunity to apologise for being so cold, and he was half convinced that if Rafael even gave him so much as a smile, he would be back in. He tried to swallow his anxiety and moved his focus onto the whiteboard.

He just couldn't believe that they'd sporadically hooked up for so long, almost a year and a half, and after two weeks of silence, Rafael still wouldn't look at him. Fritz didn't know if Rafael was being naive or shy, if it was because he didn't know what to say or if he just didn't realise he had to say anything to begin with.

No matter the reason, it was frustrating. He hated that Rafael's social skills were so lacking, and he hated even more that he couldn't figure him out. Shouldn't he have been able to tell what Rafael was thinking after knowing him for so long? Shouldn't there be some sort of deeper connection, some sort of insight he could discern? It wasn't normal to be so cold.

"What do you think?" Will asked suddenly, and Fritz looked over to the screen.

"The one on the left," Fritz said.

Will tracked the mouse to the square, clicked. All the rest of the mine squares popped up on the screen in an animated explosion, Gigi let out an "aww", and Will frowned at the screen.

Fritz couldn't help but think that was just typical.

When the period ended, he quietly walked with Will to chemistry, him filling the silence with enthusiastic and irrelevant comments. Fritz's eyes were on Rafael the whole way like a sniper, the red dot trained on the back of his skull. He was starting to seethe, so much so that he practically slammed his bag on the linoleum floor of the classroom when he reached his table.

Even when Ingrid came over to persuade him into doing her experiment for her and they were stationed at their lab bench together, Fritz was trying not to detonate. Ingrid was leaning against the wall, watching on as Fritz tried to measure alkaline into the burette without squirting it into his eye.

Actually, the more he thought about it, that would be less painful than his reality.

Maybe he was considering it.

"That doesn't look like 40 millilitres," Ingrid said.

"You're reading it from the top," Fritz said. "Read it from the bottom upwards, where the liquid is. You're so dumb."

Ingrid did not have anything to add to this, and instead, continued to survey the room. It was loud, and everybody was chatty because the year was nearly over. Fritz didn't know how he felt about that. Fritz didn't know if he would ever know how he felt about anything.