worldfire

indecisive

"love me, or love me not? does he love me, or does he love me not?" I typed onto my notes app whilst I was under my personal heating machine which was also known as 3 weighted blankets. 

In my half-awake state, my finger scrolled too far and my eyes had the displeasure of reading what I had wrote 8 months ago.

"fate is having a laugh with me why is my sexuality public knowledge. i've been having panic attack after panic attack trying to sort my life out but i can't. i've basiacaly lost all my guy friends beacsue theyy think i'm trying to hit on them."

And all of a sudden it felt like yesterday.

8 months ago ~ 5th April, 11:38, Norman Hill Academy, UK

The emotions in my head were disoriented as I was feeling almost every negative emotion possible. Trying to hold my breath in the red stall I was in, my friends walked into the bathroom, talking.

The first words I heard came from the group leader Matteo. He was your average attractive and known guy, and the one who introduced me to everyone else. Our friendship ignited after the 611 crashed into a house near the school, and Matteo was sitting in front of me. Apparently, in the direct aftermath of a traumatic event, humans are wired to become instantly acquaintanced with the person/people around them. I wished that I could remember more of my friendship with Matteo. 

"Guys you will never guess what I heard." Matteo said, excitingly.

The next words were uttered from Teo. Teo was the shortest in the group and was the funniest (objectively). Me and Teo met during Ms Deansgate's first week, when she made us sit together because I was speaking to Matteo too much. Teo always looked like he had 13 hours or 3 hours of sleep at the same time.

"I think I know what it's about." Teo laughed.

Laughing with him was Sylas. There's really not much to say about him because I only knew him as a result of my friendship with Matteo and Teo. But together, we made the perfect group. And I was the fourth person in the trio. Those three had a bond that was stronger than the one they had with me.

"Okay okay." Matteo said. You could've heard the smile in his voice. "You know Santiago is gay?"

I heard Teo erupt into laughter but Sylas didn't really react, as Sylas's movements didn't become sudden like Teo's and he didn't laugh or speak.

"I think we should sort him out." Matteo continued. I really hoped he wasn't referring to what I thought he was referring to.

"Why would we beat him up?" Sylas asked. "The other boys did enough when they made him leave class crying."

"Yes but... it'll make us look strong. Besides imagine the reputation we would get if we let a LTGB boy around us? We'd look stupid." Matteo responded. His voice echoed over the stall, which was my only indicator of what he was planning. 

"What are you doing now?" Sylas curiously stated. My head was pounding, I could barely make out what anybody was saying. My head was amber. I felt something that was a mix of pain and uncomfortableness and distress and depression and anxiety.

"I'm going to lure him to come here." Matteo said. "No homo obviously." Teo laughed at that remark, as the typing on Matteo's phone reached my ears. Luckily the service in the bathroom was shi-

"DING!" my phone went, sharing Matteo's fake kindness to me.

"What was that?" Matteo asked himself. "Guys, I think the batty boy is in here!" He cheerfully shared, trying to unlock the door of the stall I was in. I was so fucked. A few seconds of messing with the grey lock later, the door opened. "No way. Santiago in the flesh. You've been hearing me this whole time haven't you. Are you stalking me?" The amberness from before started going down from my brain to the rest of my body, before all I could remember was getting punched. Matteo landed 2 punches near my eye before I fell to the floor.

Present day.

I started feeling amber across my head again. Hoping that one day I'd forget all about my past, I plugged my phone in before putting my head down and going to bed.

That night, I didn't dream. I just saw black for 6 hours.

For an once again cold and rainy December day, my phone was overly cheerful, blasting it's tune across my house before I dismissed the alarm.

8:17, Norman Hill Academy, UK,

Arriving on time but with no sight of Hazel, I had no choice but to think about what I wrote last night. Does he love me, or does he love me not. Maybe in a few years time we could live our lives together. I pictured us walking through some sort of rich financial district to get to our date, littered with monotone skyscrapers and tourists. In my ideal life, I was rich. In my ideal life, I was pretty. In my ideal life, I was with Aidan.

Red trees, red leaves, and Aidan's red phone is what I observed around me. The clouds somehow seemed to make Aidan look really good, even when everything else was grey. His black curly hair looked so good on him, but that wasn't what I was focused on. It was who he was talking to. Matteo, Teo, Sylas, and Dhestini.

The only reason I haven't given Dhestini an introduction is because I fucking hate her. This is my story, and people like her don't deserve to be in it. 

If you asked everybody at Norman Hill Academy, they would say that Dhestini is a girl who is funny. To her credit she is known and is pretty, she always makes sure everything about her looks amazing, but her personality fucking reeks. I told her I thought I was gay and she ran with that to the whole school to fucking ruin my reputation. 

Literally almost everyone dropped me because of that. And by the time I was out of the school spotlight, I had 5 acquaintances left. 

"I don't know where I would be without Hazel" I thought, leaning against my school's red fence which bordered the perimeter of the school. Aidan walked over to me, standing around one foot away from me before speaking. His face stood out amongst the generic beige and light grey buildings nearby.

Matteo looked at Aidan, almost amusingly. Whatever Matteo told him, it clearly wasn't looking good for me.