Imperfect

Chapter 12

When I walk into homeroom it goes strangely silent and nobody looks at me.

Maria set about making a conversation with whoever would listen to start make some noise. Here's the thing, Maria hates awkward silences and is always nervous, whilst I couldn't care less.

For the rest of the week my friends try to follow me everywhere, but it doesn't help. There have been three messages passed to me or stuck onto my locker and repetitive confrontations in the corridors. Toby almost got in a fight one time, because neither of them would back off. After that people outside of my group stopped making conversations with me; tried not to have to talk to me at all.

I'd have to talk about the work with someone and they'd talk to another person. Though usually Toby would be there for me to talk to. I've been thinking about what Stacy said about him liking me. But it doesn't make any sense really, he's a good friend and he's straight-therefore he cannot like me. Unless he's no longer straight.

Maria's picked me up and we're driving to the aquarium-without Stacy, thankfully.

"Have you told your parents?" She asks all of a sudden.

"About theman?" I specify.

"Yeah."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't be bothered by this sort of thing! It'll always come up in my life, and I've just got to get used to it sooner rather than later."

"But you shouldn't have to 'get used to it,' people shouldn't act like this. They should be more grown up!"

"Maria, grownups are worse than kids! They're more sceptical and they are way more opinionative. Kids will look confused for a second then just accept it (Maybe ask why but that doesn't bother me). Adults will judge me and gossip about me. They can affect my future more than a kid will."

"Oh, I never thought about it that way."

"No, neither does anyone else."

"Who do you think it is? THEMAN I mean." She asks.

"Someone from the football club."

"Why's that?"

"Because of theman's thoroughly rude message about Max. It only makes sense that it was someone there-playing."

"But the thing is, most of the team weren't even there that day."

"Why, where were they?"

"One of them has some sort of party for their one hundred year old great grandma or something. They invited pretty much everyone, except a few people."

"Who was left?"

"The guys, then Caleb Harris and Emily Beakers. Other than that no one else was there."

"Yeah and they could've asked almost anyone else to do the messages for them as well."

"No, you can only have one space person and it's up to you if you want to be anonymous or not. Other than that all you can do to change is to delete your profile-which gets rid of all the messages that you've sent."

"Why does it do that?"

"It's for an anti-bullying thing some teacher designed."

"Oh, well that's being put to good use!"

"I know. But the thing is, if it is out of the footballers then the only person who's not got a clear username that's not anonymous is Toby. But he would never have done anything like this."