Road To Happiness ✔

EIGHT

Assessments came and went, and Hugo was proud at the good scores he had on them. For once in his life, he hadn't been stressed about an assessment. He found it easy, simple, which came as a surprise to him, but he wasn't going to complain. Of all things not to make him anxious, it was his course. Maybe that was a sign that he was on the right track.

Renee, on the other hand, had been a whole different matter. She'd done a practice test and blanked on most of the questions the night before the test and begged Hugo to come to her apartment to help her out. Trying to teach her everything through sign language was hard, he couldn't find the right words for everything, but they'd eventually gotten there.

Stefan had cooked the food. He was an amazing cook, better than Hugo had expected. He hadn't been able to help Renee that much, but he brought bowls of pasta and glasses of water regularly. Unlike Hugo, Stefan was probably used to Renee stressing, he seemed to know exactly what to do.

He helped her as much as he could but when he looked at her during the test, she'd been panicking. Her face was covered with a thin sheen of sweat and she kept running her hand through the short crop of hair on her head. She'd told Hugo she wanted to shave it again that morning, but still hadn't done it by the time results came out.

"Damn, you did well," Renee said as she came up behind him. She grinned at him, nothing out of the ordinary. "I went about as well as expected." A pass, and a good one at that. Nothing to be disappointed about, but he could see it in her eyes.

"Is it not good?" he asked her, eyebrows crinkled in confusion.

She shrugged. "I'm used to higher scores," she said, and Hugo resisted rolling his eyes. "I just stress out a lot, you know?"

"I noticed," Hugo replied, a grin on his face. She punched him lightly in the arm and smiled at him. At least she'd done well. He remembered a lot of people in high school would stress out and then bomb their exams. He probably would have done that too if he'd cared enough to do them properly.

"I'll be right back," Renee said. "I'm busting for the loo." Hugo waved her away and watched her go with an amused smile.

Something caught his eye in the minutes he waited for her to come back: a flyer stuck to the notice board just outside the classroom. He frowned at it and moved closer so he could read the words printed in rainbow colours.

A gay/straight alliance club. He'd completely forgotten they existed. He knew of some schools that had them, but his high school hadn't had one for some reason. If he'd cared enough, he might have tried to start one, but it was too late now.

The flyer told him that a woman named Rose ran the group once a week on Wednesdays. He didn't work until late that night. He frowned at the thought. Was he considering going? It wasn't as though he could, none of them would understand sign language. It would be too hard for him to talk to them all properly.

And who knew how many people would be there. If he thought the dinner was too much, then there wasn't much hope for him to be able to handle a GSA. But there was a part of him that wanted to at least give it a go. It would be something new. If he couldn't handle it, he could just leave. It was no big deal. But he didn't want another panic attack.

His mind was still at war with itself when his lecturer came up next to him. He jumped back, startled and she held up her hands. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," she said in a soft voice. "You're Hugo Garland, yes?"

He nodded, biting his lip on confusion. His lecturer never really spoke face to face with any of the students, let alone him, a mute boy. Maybe something had gone wrong with his test. Had his score been wrong? Had he done worse than he thought? His teeth chewed on his bottom lip painfully, but he couldn't stop.