The One with the Rebel and the Nerd

Four

Troye is leaning into one of the sycamore trees in the park. When Marcus offers him a cigarette, he shakes his head lightly, refusing it. For a while, he just lazily gazes certain areas of the park—the rusty swings, the birds desperately pecking for tiny breadcrumbs, the once used to be clear path but now is covered with wild grasses.

"What's wrong with you, dude?" Marcus asks, finally. "Did you not hear what I just said?"

Troye immediately snaps back into reality. "Oh, yeah, sure, mate." Troye focuses his eyes back on Marcus, who is lying on the ground beside him, smoking the cigarette away. "I totally heard all about it."

"You sure?" Marcus props himself up to a sitting position. "Who's Niomi?"

"Your friend?" Troye takes a wild guess.

"Go on," says Marcus.

"Oh, okay, um, she's a good friend of yours, yes?"

Marcus throws away the cigarette he's been smoking for the past fifteen minutes or so. After seeing where it lands, he turns back to Troye. "I knew it, man," he spits out, "something happened. Spit it out."

"Well, I got called into Deyes' office again." Troye confesses.

"So what? Same old stuff." Marcus replies while shrugging.

"He almost expelled me!" Troye begins to raise his voice.

"Dude, don't get mad at me!" Marcus holds his hands up. "I ain't the one who's gonna kick you're a** out of school."

"Look, I'm sorry, okay, mate? It's just that now I have to spend time to actually study and well, to meet that friggin' nerd twice a week."

"Ah, I see. Look, what happened to not caring about school?" Marcus searches for a new cigarette and his lighter.

"Since I almost got expelled." Troye says a-matter-of-factly.

"Hey, I got kicked out a couple of years ago and I'm fine." Marcus says while lighting up his new cigarette. Marcus was once a student in Troye's current high school. He got in with his parents' money. He was also almost expelled a couple of times but a couple of new televisions and reference books for the library prevented it. However, once Mr. Deyes replaced the old principal, he got kicked out in no time.

"Cause your parents are rich and they own a lot of Taco Bells." Troye retorts.

"Well, it's true, but still." Marcus says while blowing puffs of smoke into the air.

"I can't afford to go back to Australia, okay, mate?" Troye squats and slowly assumes a sitting position. I hate skinny jeans, he complains inside his head.

"Yeah, whatever, you wanna roll up a joint or actually listen to me this time?" Marcus blows puffs of smoke again, to Troye's direction this time.

"Sorry. I'll just listen." Troye waves in front of his face, holding a cough in his throat.

"Your loss. So, this Niomi girl, man, she blew me away. Her vibe was so amazing, dude, she was chill and..."

Troye doesn't hear the rest of what Marcus is saying right now. His mind is filled with study arrangements and plans to catch up with his studies. He was the top of his class back in Perth. Now, he's basically at the bottom of the ranks. With senior year approaching, he'll need to cram every second of the day in order to not be enrolled in summer school again—even though he passed last year's summer school because of a fluke.

He was never a genius in math and science, but he studied hard for those subjects. However, his studying did not help him to make friends back home. He did have one friend, Kay, but he still thinks that she befriended him because she pitied him.

"You know what, Marcus? I just remembered that I promised Louise to prepare tonight's dinner." Troye lies through his teeth. Louise, his aunt, did ask him to prepare tonight's dinner yesterday but he refused because of his mood at the time.

"Yeah, whatever. Bye, kangaroo." Marcus replies and waves at Troye while smoking the last cigarette in the box.

Troye just walks away and turns around the corner. He feels horrible after lying to Marcus. Even after changing his image to be some sort of rebellious, he still had a hard time making friends. Marcus was the first one to approach him. They used to hang out with other guys until one started to spread a rumor that Troye was a fairy. He always knew that he was never attracted to girls, but only Kay and his family knew about that. At first, he was furious when the others left and started to torment him. However, Marcus still stood by him. He said, "Whatever, dude, he's still Troye". Later, some of the guys graduated and moved to different towns. The others dropped out and ended up working odd jobs.

However, he already sets in his mind that he doesn't want to let his family down. His parents have been boasting about him to their friends back in Australia. "My son, Troye," his mom once said to her friend and Troye overheard, "he's going to go to America this autumn!" His mother said it while grinning from ear to ear—it is rare to find her smiling. You gotta get your s*** together, Troye, Troye says in his head.