After You

Max

Dear Alfie,

That went well.

No, I shouldn't be this flippant. I could have been killed on Thursday, and I'm not entirely convinced I wouldn't have deserved it.

Jesus, Alfie, I'm sorry. Everything has gone to shit this week, and it's all my fault. I messed up massively, and I don't know what's going to happen now. This is much bigger than a little playground spat, and I'm to blame.

Your poor parents. Not only have they got the inquest coming up next week, now they're dealing with the implications of Jacob being suspended from school. Apparently he's lucky that it isn't a permanent exclusion; they took his bereavement into consideration. I'm glad they did; I couldn't cope with the guilt if he'd been expelled. The police told me I could press charges if I want, and they'd take it very seriously. It's classed as a homophobic hate crime.

I absolutely didn't want that. I don't think what Jacob did came from a place of hating gay people; it just came from hating me, and what I did to him.

I didn't want to hand my letter over to be peer-marked, especially not to Jacob. I asked Mrs Newton if she could mark it for me, or if I could give it to someone else, but she didn't hear me. She was busy on the other side of the class, so Jacob flopped into the seat next to me, grabbed my letter and handed his to me, and started to read.

I froze. I couldn't even act casual; I just sat and stared as he read about us. About the conversations we had, and that last conversation, and the kiss. Everything, in painful detail. If Mrs Newton had read that, she wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. She would have marked it based on the content and the spelling and the grammar, and probably told me that her door was always open if I needed to talk.

There was no way I could expect Jacob to gloss over the content of the letter to grade it. I watched his expression contort as he realised what the letter was about. It's like he went through the five stages of grief all over again as he read, and I had to watch each stage play out in painstaking detail on his face. His hands started shaking before he'd even finished it, and when he reached the last sentence, he scrunched it up and threw it at the wall before storming out of the room.

Everyone turned and stared, and I was finally able to move again. I grabbed the letter and shoved it into my bag. I didn't want anyone else to see it. I had no doubt it would spread around the school soon enough, especially if Jacob decided to tell Willow or Finn why he'd left class early. I ignored everyone else who just sat there, gaping, and followed Jacob out of the class.

I tried to catch up with him, but I couldn't find him. Stupidly, I believed that was the end of it. I thought he'd go home and cool off and then we just wouldn't speak again. I wasn't stupid enough to think we could ever be friends again, but I hoped that maybe he'd manage civility eventually. He blanked me all through the next morning's classes, and I didn't bother trying to talk to him. It was too soon for apologies, I knew that much.

I didn't expect him to come over at lunchtime, but I let him rant. I didn't exactly have any comeback; as far as he knew, I'd made up some creepy gay fantasy about his dead twin brother. I think I'd be angry in that situation. It didn't bother me when he was calling me all those names; God knows I probably deserved them.

It only really hurt when he called me the f-word. I've never been quiet about my sexuality, which is probably why I didn't fit in at previous schools. They called me names like that all the time. At Steergate, with you five as my friends, I felt untouchable. If anyone dared call me that, you'd all deal with them in a heartbeat, and I could trust that none of you would ever use a homophobic slur against me. Even if we argued, you all knew that was a step too far.

When Jacob called me a fag, it felt like a knife through my chest. It was like the final nail in the coffin of our friendship; confirmation that everything really has fallen apart. I didn't stand a chance of defending myself when he was beating me to a pulp on the floor; I was so blindsided by the language he'd used. I just lay there and took it, like a pathetic idiot, until everything went black.

"Pulp" is an understatement for how I look. I chanced a look in the mirror this morning and immediately regretted it. It's been three days, and I seem to be getting worse rather than better. What started as a bit of a purple haze to my skin is now a massively swollen black eye. If there are spelling mistakes in this letter, I can only apologise. I can't open my right eye, thanks to a fractured orbital. My cheek bone is fractured too, so eating is nearly impossible. I'm surviving on yoghurt and soup and anything I can eat through a straw. The concussion is apparently minor, and I was lucky to avoid surgery to fix my eye socket. I'd say it all sounds a lot worse than it is, but even strong painkillers aren't taking the edge off it right now.

Still, it's nothing compared to how I feel emotionally. Not only have I been humiliated by someone I thought was one of my best friends, but everyone knows about the content of the letter, and everyone thinks I'm a creep. I think they've got it in their heads that I've been writing some kind of gay fanfiction about me and you since you died, and deliberately put it in front of Jacob. I didn't want him to read it, and I only told the truth.

Apparently, you couldn't be gay. You had a girlfriend, so how could you like boys? How could my letter be anything but a pack of lies designed to slander the memory of a dead person? How could Alfie Rees be gay?

I mean, technically you weren't, but that doesn't mean we didn't kiss. That doesn't mean you didn't tell me that you liked me.

I suppose the good thing about people not believing the letter is that Willow hasn't launched into some kind of self-pitying rant about how you were cheating on her with me. Either she doesn't believe the letter, or she knows that she did it first. Either way, I doubt she'll speak to me again either. Finn came to the hospital with me, which was good of him, but his attitude made it perfectly clear that he thinks I'm an idiot too. As for Jess... well, who the hell knows where Jess is?

I can't exactly see Jacob wanting to be my friend ever again, either. I don't think he's homophobic. At least, I didn't. Having heard him call me the f-word, though, it does make me wonder. You used to tell me you were scared to leave Willow and be with me, because of what people would say. I assumed you were worried about random people in the street, or maybe people from school thinking that you'd been cruel to Willow in dumping her for a boy. It strikes me now that maybe you were worried about family.

We never spoke about your family's attitude to people like us. Are they homophobic? Is it their reactions that you were so worried about?

Is that why you did it?

Max