I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 21: I hope you feel the shame I do

        The bell rings. I jolt like in an aerial strike. My eyes fly open.

I'm on the floor. The crick in my neck informs me that I've been lying here a while.

Please don't say anybody walked in. It's unlikely: everybody knows not to use the math block toilets. Like the rest of the pupils, I was implicitly informed of this rule on my first day here seven years ago but the reason has long since been forgotten. Rumours of asbestos, probably. The only people who venture in are bullies who want the liberty to antagonise their victims without onlookers.

And in any case, if someone did find me passed out on the floor, head under the basin, this is my last day of lessons. After exams, I'll never come here again, so what damage can it really do to my already trashed reputation?

My eyes find a clock as soon as I'm in the corridor. It's 15:41, which means the bell marked the end of lessons. Well, at least I can say I had an exciting final hour of school.

For a brief moment, I imagine a scene at freshers' week where my faceless university peers recall what their last day of school was like — cake and movies, tearful goodbyes with teachers, maybe even pranks if they're American enough — until they inevitably turn to me and I explain that I spent it passed out on the floor of an asbestos toilet. Solid way to make friends.

I won't tell them that, of course. I'll lie. And I'm probably too much of a freak to ever make friends anyway.

I turn without looking away from the clock and nearly walk into someone. Sonia.

'What is it with you always appearin out of nowhere?' My throat is stuffed with sandpaper and my voice is coarse. I should've drunk water before leaving the toilets. Idiot.

She shrugs the best she can, carrying two backpacks. 'I think people just don't notice me.' Per usual, she doesn't realise how uncomfortably blunt the sentence is. 'I got your things.'

My thanks come out as a mumble, partly due to my shrivelled vocal cords and partly due to shame which constricts my throat even further. I take my Slowpoke plush bag from her and hook it over my own shoulder.

'Are you okay? Why did you leave?'

'It... it was boring.'

My attention shifts to the door of the maths room, outside which Miles toys with the strap of his bag where it crosses his chest. His face is twisted into a scowl as he listens to Lysander rant.

As if he feels my gaze, Miles looks up to meet it. The disgust in his expression morphs into remorse. I'm possessed by the urge to stride across the corridor and comfort him.

Until Lysander follows his line of sight and calls through the crowd, 'Avert your puff eyes, Leech.'

I snap back to Sonia, doing my best to ignore the sniggering. My hands curl into fists around my bag's adjustment tabs. Why do I care? He chose his own friends. 'Miles isn't comin today, he's got football. We should go.'

She follows me as I stride past them. I can't get through the mass of other pupils very fast and Miles's voice still finds me. 'With the amount of time you spend talking about him, someone could think you're gay.'

'Fuck you.'

'What even is your problem with him?'

'He doesn't fucking belong here,' Lysander spits. 'Like what the fuck, he gets to go to Oxford and I have to pay for it with my taxes? He can pay for his own education like everyone else. And he's fucking crazy too, you know. Like, literally.'

'What fucking taxes have you paid? You've not got a job.'

I can't help but glance over my shoulder. Miles is already looking. His eyes seize mine and he shoves his apologies into my lap as if I have any use for them. "I don't care", I try to telepathically yell at him. "I don't care what you do. You were insignificant to me first!"

His index and thumb slip into a frayed packet of liquorice Fisherman's Friends to scoop one out and slip into his mouth. Then, washing his guilt down with menthol, he turns and remembers me only in the clangour of the pastel against his molars.