Floating Face Down (boyxboy)

Chapter Nine

In the past I'd always watched Victor from a distance, occasionally he had crossed that distance to talk to me, sit with me sometimes, talk to me out of pity. 

I'd always been attracted to him, and been worried that I made that obvious somehow, but Victor had always maintained the slightest wall between us, one that reminded me I probably couldn't call him a friend. Even when he protected me from the others it seemed to be more out of kindness than a personal closeness.

Every time in the past, when I saw him wink at me, smile a certain way, or nudge my shoulder and sit real close, when I got hopeful and started to freak out internally, he would suddenly get a call or text from his girlfriend, or bring her up out of the blue, or ask me what sort of girls I liked, or punctuate that feeling of mine by asking me why I was staring at him like that, sometimes looking genuinely discomforted.

I would always turn red with embarrassment, stammer through some kind of excuse and curl up emotionally. 

But I couldn't help feeling jealous of his girlfriend, she had it all, everything I didn't, the most handsome guy I would probably ever see, protective and bound to be successful, and most likely never saw her face swollen twice the size, or had someone piss on her head while her head was being smashed into the urinal.

If he saw how jealous I felt I could only hope he thought I was jealous of him, not his girlfriend.

As we headed back and stopped by the food hall to have dinner, with pretty much the same food options as for breakfast, I felt my hair stand on end as I walked ahead of most of the slow moving kids in our year, Patricks lot.

They were staring at me and it made my skin crawl.

They didn't do anything during dinner though, and the camp leaders took us back to our rooms and warned us not sneak out because there were a high number of snakes in the woods, adders especially, and let everyone know that a bite could leave you getting a limb amputated.

"The woods are no joke, okay guys?" She told us all as we walked. "There are nettles and hogweed and ticks, we want to be careful moving through there which is why we never go through it at night and only ever with adult supervision! Same goes for the rest of the camp after lights out!"

I wondered if this would only enthuse the other kids to sneak out though, even at risk of blisters and a snake bite.

But when I got back into the room and the others filed in after me and laughed about having brought back dinner to their room I remembered that I wasn't alone.

As long as I wasn't alone I was fine.

Colin laughed as he climbed down from one of the top bunks and accepted a fried egg from Hudson. "You're nasty man where did you put it?"

"In my pocket." He grinned. "Does anyone want sausages?"

There was some laughter as George stretched out his hand to accept it. "Rank, I bet you didn't even put it in your pocket."

"Well it ended up there, who cares what its journey was."

Even I ended up laughing as George entertained us by giving the sausage make shift eyes and making it dance around like a puppet with his hand under the bunk. People laughed so much, I didn't have the energy for it even when I did find things funny, but bubble of laughter that escaped me felt good.

That night passed seamlessly, albeit with the smell of breakfast in the room leaving a gnawing hunger in my stomach.

I looked forward to the next day. I'd try to stay close to my roommates even though they weren't in my group, and Victor as well.