The Ending <BoyxBoy>

The Ending

I walked down the hall to my first class of high school. Nothing really in mind, not nervous or anxious but not brimming with anticipation either. It was a Global Studies/Sociology class that would last two periods. Which was alright because I enjoyed ancient history. The teacher was standing at the door of the room with a clipboard. Mr. Ehrlich.

I reached the door and was promptly met with, "Last name".

"Casarez", I replied back and waited.

He searched the clipboard for my name and then replied, "You're in seat 3".

I walked in hadn't really focused on much in the room until I was halfway to my seat, which was closest to the entrance of the classroom, and noticed who I would be sitting next to for at least a quarter of the semester long class. I froze mid-step for a split second which felt so much longer and felt the thoughts run in my mind to just leave and never come back and to keep going to the seat to keep from looking weird on my first day of class.

I sat down and focused on the prompt that was projected on the smart screen at the front of the room. I took out my journal for the class and proceeded with the journal prompt displayed. As I wrote it picked away at my focused. That thing being the thought that I hadn't really sat next to a guy since 5th grade, much less coming to the realization I liked guys and the guy I happened to sit next to was cute. But, I tried hard to not let it show and eventually sometimes it was not even a second thought.

Everyone had entered the room. Mr. Ehrlich coming into the room to start the class. He sat his clipboard down at the desk on the other side of the room from the door, looked through a few papers and then came to the front of the class to start the first day, the first class of school.

"Welcome to Global Studies. You can call me Coach Ehrlich or Mr. E or Coach because I also help coach the school's baseball team. We will be learning about ancient civilizations for the first period of the class and then we will switch to sociology for the second part of the class. You will be graded on homework, classwork, journals and participation. These will also be your assigned seats for the first half of the quarter and then we will switch throughout the semester."

"So, lets start the semester off by playing a game and getting to know everyone," He continued.

"Take the first letter of your first name and pick an action verb that matches, afterwards we will go from one end to the other and you'll try to remember everyone that came before you."

I despised these games, not only because I had shit memory for names let alone action verbs, but also because my first name started with a J which I always found difficult to find words for. I ended up picking "jiving Jaden" because it was the only thing I could come up with, which made me feel anxious and silly because everyone else probably had some cool ones and was sat here with "jiving Jaden."

Everyone figured out which words they would use and Coach Ehrlich came back to the front of the class. "Alright so let's start over here," pointing to the person 2 people down from me, which was a relief because I would only have two people to remember.

The first guy started to say his but was abruptly interrupted by Coach Ehrlich who interjected with "Okay, stand up and speak up a little bit," he said not in a mean or condescending way.

The dude stood up and continued, "Adventuring Alex."

The next person stood up and said theirs and then it was my turn.

I stood up anxious and shy and just said it, "jiving Jaden," sat down and then it was the cute guy's turn.

"Daring Derek," he said in a voice deeper than my high pitched one in a smooth and confident tone.