I'm a Gay Wizard (Wattpad Books Edition)

Chapter 3

48 HOURS UNTIL EXTRACTION

This isn't happening again.

I'm just going to walk in there, tell them all to go to hell, and hope they leave me alone.

Maybe if I pretend I'm someone different, they'll treat me better. Or, could I just maybe disappear? Okay, Johnny, let's just get this over with. That was me suffering through the five stages of grief every morning before school. No, no one died, just my soul. I went to Lincoln Park High School in Chicago.

High school was like a petting zoo, and all the other kids were cute little frolicking goats. Me? I was Black Phillip from that movie, The Witch. I had a reputation for being the weird gay kid. It didn't help that my best friend had been burning sage at her locker every morning since the start of sophomore year. That is, until Principal Welder told her it was against the rules. Alison declared it was against her religious freedom, threatened to go to the ACLU and make it into a big deal, but she never followed through. She lost interest and moved on to using a dowsing crystal to search campus for hidden gravesites.

I was sliding up the handle of my dingy red locker when Spencer Pruitt slammed his hand on the door. "Hey!" he said, putting his face right in mine. Spencer was a tower with a neck like a honey ham. He took out his phone and scrolled through it. "I saw this movie about you on Netflix last night." He chuckled and showed me the screen: Gayby. "Is that what they call baby fags when they're born?"

Spencer had started tormenting me in the ninth grade. I didn't even know why. Back in middle school, Spencer was a quiet D&D nerd. Then puberty hit, and he turned into a six-foot-tall gorilla-human hybrid with a thirst for blood.

I tuned him out, fidgeting with my locker until he slammed his hand against it again. "Hey, gayby, I'm talking to you."

"Hey, Spencer!" Alison called from down the hallway. Wedging herself between two sour-faced cheerleaders, she headed for my locker. Once she was beside me, she gave Spencer a curt smile. "You know, for someone with a micropenis, you sure do produce a lot of testosterone. Have you ever thought of submitting yourself to a scientific study?"

"You're both freaks. I should ruin you right here." 

Alison flipped him off as he walked away. "That guy is such a troglodyte." She leaned on the locker next to mine. "You see, J, if guys bottle up their gayness for too long, they become Spencer Pruitt."

"What?" I said, finally getting my locker open.

"He's got a huge crush on you. Duh. The only thing he wants to ruin is your—" She looked pointedly down at my butt.

"Gross. What're you even talking about?" I looked over at Spencer, still glaring at me from his group of equally boneheaded friends. "That guy hates my guts."

"Look at how he's staring at you. That's repressed longing. You remind him of what he can't have because of heteronormativity or whatever."

I closed my locker and we headed for homeroom. "Sure, that's what it is."

"What, you don't believe me? He's a wrestler, J. It's scientifically proven that's the most homoerotic sport in the world."

During English, Alison texted me memes while I watched the clock ticktock, ticktock, ticktock. My neck going slack, I laid my head on the desk and counted every tick. One. Two. Three. When I got bored, I turned my face to the side and stared at the classroom door, imagining a black mist filling the hallways. Some unknown force was invading, so while my classmates cowered, I darted to my feet, the only one fit to stand against the impending evil. The mist seeped in under the door and materialized into a giant talking troll, who then pointed a mechanical claw at me and said, "Johnny, you must be destroyed!"