*currently editing*
Two boys. Two different schools. One game. One goal.
Life was easy when you were considered high school royalty but when you get rivalry on the field, things get a little interesting.
Connor Taylor went to Northshore. Dakota Ande...
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"say my name, 'cuz once I get my head above the cloudy skies, watch me rise"
watch me rise • mikky ekko
***
No one had ever hated me before. Sure, there were people who disliked me. I had an older cousin who found me annoying as a kid. My pen pal in the fourth grade thought my obsession with soccer was weird. This one lady at the grocery store had glared at my mum when I was six and claimed I was loud and disruptive. Up until recently, Dakota had held the record the longest for disliking me. But nobody had ever truly hated me before now.
It had taken me ten minutes after Dakota dropped me off this morning to even make it through the front gates. My palms were sweaty and I couldn't shake the air of foreboding hanging over me, like an anchor waiting to drop. If this kept up, Dakota's shirt was going to be soaked by noon.
I walked past the entrance to the courtyard and headed for my locker. The hallway was crowded this close to the first bell. Despite most of the seniors congregating outside before class started, it sucked to learn the hard way that I wasn't as prepared for this as I thought I was.
There was a mixed consensus online this morning that I'd been busy reading through before Dakota took my phone away. The people who did care were calling me a liar, a fraud, and an attention-seeking coward who couldn't face the consequences of his own actions. Anyone who didn't know me well were mostly talking about how I was secretly gay this whole time and what signs they should've recognized sooner. According to some Year 8, my cow-print boxers in ninth grade should've been a warning sign.
More than a dozen outdated and offensive terms were thrown around in the comments. Others had clapped back in support of queer people, not just myself, but the damage was done. Those words were all I saw behind my eyelids every time I blinked.
Only one pair of eyes could've been on me as I opened the doors and it still would've felt like the entire world. Judgment was cast upon me from every direction as my peers watched me move through the hall. A few offhanded comments were thrown my way and I tried my best not to appear hurt by them. I also pretended not to notice the way people shushed each other when I passed, as though they'd just been talking about me.
I still hadn't seen Trent and Scott or the rest of the team.
My first class of the day was biology. Any other time I would've been looking forward to my favourite subject but not today. Not when I could see people whispering behind my back and staring at me whenever they thought I wasn't looking.
This was ridiculous. Whom I slept with was nobody else's business. I knew on some level that people were surprised to find out I was involved with Dakota Anderson, but I suspected people were more concerned with my being gay. After all, once you knew someone wasn't straight, it was the first thing that came to mind when you looked at them. And people were looking at me that way now.
