Shed this skin i've been tripping in

Chapter 9

“Mr. Horan, is everything alright?” Senorita Minogue asked from where she stood in the doorway of her classroom. Niall blinked wet eyelashes as he eased out of his reverie. He brought a hand up to his cheeks to find that he had started to cry sometime during his not so pleasant trip down memory lane. Wiping his face dry he cleared his throat before planting a huge, phony smile on his face as he turned to address his Spanish instructor.

“More than Senorita, I’ll just be off to my counseling session with Cher now.”  He assured her already moving toward the building’s exit.

XXX

Harry burst out the Academic’s Building like a bat out of hell, nearly knocking Louis on his arse in his wake. The slighter boy’s eyes widened as the two collided and he had just enough time to grab a hold of Harry’s broad shoulders in an effort to stay on his feet.

“Crikey Curls, where’s the bloody fire?” Harry composed himself, finally noticing Louis standing there.

“Erm nowhere? I’m just headed back to my room to relax a little before dinner.”

“Sounds like a plan, only I thought I could take ya round to fetch your textbooks and whatnot before?”

“Oh, yeah alright cheers mate.” Louis made a show of sighing, holding a hand to his chest.

“Ah, yes I’m such the selfless humanitarian I am, Mother Teresa ain’t got nothing on the Tommonator.” He took a humble bow before looping his arm through Harry’s which was becoming a familiar way for the two of them to get around it seemed and dragged the younger boy towards the administrator’s office.

After receiving all his required books the two boys headed for the boy’s dorms and parted ways to their respective rooms.  Using his key Harry entered his room, not surprised to see nary a hair of his roommate, the only evidence that he had even stopped by after classes was the discarded varsity jacket the darker boy had been sporting earlier strewn on the end of his bed. Harry quickly stacked his newly acquired texts neatly onto his desk and sat on his bed, powering up his laptop.

Harry typed his password in and double clicked the Google Chrome desktop icon, grinning when the three desired homepages automatically popped up. Yahoo!, his blog, and Pandora, he bopped his head without headphones for once as ‘Trojans’ by Atlas Genius started up, he grinned at the irony that this had literally been the last band they he’d hyped and recc’d on his indie blog: SobloodyHipster before he was sent up here and he was actually dying to know what his blogger friends and followers thought of them.

He clicked on the Yahoo! tab instead however and smiled at the twenty or so alerts that people had commented on his latest blog entry, he couldn’t wait to talk to them again, he may not have had any real life friends but he was sort of a big deal online and wasn’t the least bit ashamed to admit it. His eyes skimmed the familiar names of blog titles and even noticed a few new followers; he stopped on a new email sent just four minutes ago from an unfamiliar email address: LookafterLou@hotmail.com with the subject Boo :)

Harry immediately knew the email was from Louis after that and opened it curiously. Louis had asked for his email the night before at dinner after almost killing the taller boy by asking him to friend him on facebook. Harry had almost choked on a string bean before blushing and admitting that he didn’t have one.

“Don’t really need it.” He reminded quietly and the older boy at least had the decency to look embarrassed when he remembered. Ever the quick thinker Louis had thrown an arm over Harry’s shoulder grinning across at Liam.

“Oh that’s right our Hazza here was much too busy to bother with something as trivial as social media, but I’m afraid you’ll need one now since you’re pretty much stuck within the confines of this place and with us not being allowed a cellphone you might want to keep in touch with Mary or anyone else from back home. We’ll get it all sorted sooner or later.” Liam who had mostly  been sneaking glances at Ed through most of Louis’ little speech, simply nodded and made the shorter boy promise to make sure Harry friended him.