My Princess is a Prince

Against my Own Will

I get home cursing. Fuck school, fuck Arthur, fuck life!

"What happened?" asks my mother while she's preparing dinner.

"Nothing, I'm fine." I go up the stairs to my room before she can ask me any other questions I wasn't up to answering. I'm lucky I didn't find my father during my climb so I don't get to participate in the interrogation with my mother.

I enter my room huffing and throw my backpack against the nearest wall, throwing, right after, my body with everything on the bed without caring about anything, except for future classes that I would have to give to Damaged. If it's damning enough having to study my subjects by demand of school, it's even worse to consider that, from now on, a new discipline will be added in my life thanks to my stupid instinct of wanting to hurt the others.

Why the hell did I do that, bro? Why?

I think about the stupidity of this afternoon and almost pull my hair out, my face inexorable. Frustrated, I take out my 11th grade biology book and review the difficult and long content that I would have to learn by force and pass on to Arthur. Just the introduction of the opening chapter already makes me sleepy, however, in return for that, I struggle to read as much as my mind is able to bear, always pushing the subjects to consume a minimum of knowledge.

My mother knocks on my bedroom door after a while and tells me that food is ready, but I tell her I'm not hungry. Alone again, I skip a few pages of the book and review Mendel's laws, probabilities, recessive and dominant gene, nitrogenous bases - as well as the differentiation of DNA and RNA -, among other almost endless things. Calmly, I search for a way to start explaining the chapters clearly and cohesively, staying in this back and forth of questions and answers to myself for a period that is lost all around.

I breathe heavily, already feeling a headache. I notice by the digital clock above my dresser that two hours have passed since I entered the house - and, frankly speaking, I don't remember dedicating so much time to study, not even during exam weeks. I usually read a page or two before leaving the book, certain that I had studied enough.

Sometimes I surprise myself by passing subjects - and, okay, even if my grades were not the best, I still never failed.

Fill calls me next, and my deduction informs me that he obviously wants to know where my conversation with Jones her office.

"What's up, Fill?"

"Man, where did you got after class? Are you home already?"

I can hear an electronic music ripping through the other side of my phone.

"Yeah, I got home a little while ago" I lie, closing the book on my lap. "Where did the guys go?"

"They're here with me at the bar. What did the bossy one tell you?"

I was hoping he wouldn't ask me that, but at some point I'd have to say it.

"Um... she... made... made me... teach Damaged in a subject." I stammer, pulling the nonchalance out of my voice. "It was either that or let my parents know what happened, and you know how they are about these things."

"Wait a minute, what did you say?" Fill shouts from the other side. "Did I hear that right, or is someone going to become friends with the only gay boy in school?"

"What a friend, nothing!" I say, already angry. "It's just until the semester is over."

He laughs and says something I can't make out to anyone else near him, certainly mocking me.

"The end of the semester is in two months, man." he warns me, his voice playful.

"Yeah, make fun of me, but remember that the punishment would be for all of you, you idiot."