(On Hold) Pink Roses -or How I Learned That Toast Can Never Be Bread Again...

Chapter Two

   Walking up into the school felt like navigating a battlefield where everyone was out to spite you. Of course, Lauren knew she was being ridiculous, but she couldn't help feeling people would make fun of her if she just walked past them, and she would rather steer clear of that.
   She stuffed her pe kit into her locker, already dreading the kick in the teeth that was that lesson. Split from her friend, forced into a group of boys and humiliated through physical activity she couldn't do.
   Still lost in thought, Ruban Nielson's grater-like voice rasping in her earphones, Lauren jumped at a tap on her shoulder. Spinning around revealed that it was her best friend Gina, grinning like the Cheshire cat.
   "Hi... Nick..." Gina said, and Lauren could hear the discomfort in her voice when she said that name. Gina offered Lauren a comforting hug, "Hon, are you ok? You look miserable... Oh, shit. Pe today."
   "Nah, I'll be fine. Honestly! I can handle myself, its just one lesson. I need to grow up and stop being such a drama queen."
   "Well, it is what you do best..." Teased Gina.
   "Oh screw you, you dildo" Lauren very maturely retorted.
   As they hung around the lockers, they witnessed a group of boys kicking a bin and grunting like testosterone fueled monkeys. "How sad," Lauren muttered sarcastically.
   "Yeah," Gina sighed, "I guess this really is Trump's America."
   "Gina, we live in Englan-"
   "Shhhhhh"

   The rain pattered against the windows in form room, and Lauren hoped for some catastrophic thunderstorm to prevent pe. No luck. She soon ended up in the changing rooms, a bunch of boys laughing at her and whispering comments non discreetly. Clenching her jaw, she kept quiet. She'd got in trouble the other day for calling one of them a cunt, just as a teacher walked by.
   "Hey, Dick- I mean Nick," cue laughs from his friends, "are you bent or do you just enjoy looking like a sad prat?" One of the boys creatively enquired.
   "I'm not 'bent'," Lauren bit back sourly, "and I'm not the one who's a sad prat..." The boys laughed at her pathetic attempt at a comeback, and she couldn't help but agree. Sighing, she tugged on the rest of her kit and awkwardly stumbled into the sports hall.
   An obnoxious male pe teacher was taking the register, so Lauren quietly crept over to a bench and sat down, ignoring the usual whispers of "gay!" and "fag", and smiling to herself, thinking that if they actually knew her, they'd know she was gay because she liked girls, not guys like they thought.
   The boys were playing dodgeball, a last minute change due to the rain, and Lauren was of course hiding at the back, trying to avoid the volleyballs flying like missiles and pounding against the wall next to her. The focus of the air strike turned to the other end of the hall, and Lauren thought she was safe. So, it was at that moment that some one behind her kicked her legs out from under her and she crashed clumsily to the floor, earning the raucous laughter of everyone else there. Grimacing, she knew she had twisted her wrist.
    Sitting in the changing rooms with an ice pack on her arm, Lauren noted that, thinking about it, she knew this would happen. It was in her morning 'vision'. After all it happened every single pe lesson. She sighed. She sighed a lot these days, she thought. It  was like letting out that air was a way of attempting to expell the problems from her body. She sighed again.
And she sighed again.