the Secret Life of Damien Carmichael

1. the New Boy (part II)

Second period found Damien pondering his and Carrie's discussion. He wondered if he really could trust her despite Tyler. A part of him, a stronger part than even he realized, desperately wanted to. He craved having someone who could understand him, someone who could hear his problems, and not judge him for it. Somebody who was real, and in person. Sure, his online friends were great, and he adored them, but he didn't know them like he could know Carrie. They weren't in his life in that way. He longed for the ability to talk to someone, anyone about his secret stories. But Carrie was complicated; she came with baggage, dangerous baggage. Tyler still hadn't forgiven Damien for breaking up his relationship at the end of their Sophomore year. Their friendship had never recovered from that row, and neither had Damien's reputation.

The bell rang, signaling it was time for lunch, and Damien all but ran out of the classroom as fast as he could. Block days were always rough, especially at the beginning of the year. But this year promised to be considerably better, at least on Tuesdays and Fridays, during which time Damien would only have one ninety-minute class. Phys-Ed. Not his favorite of block classes, but at least this gave him a considerably longer weekend to play with.

Getting himself into the lunch queue, Damien noticed the Adam boy out of the corner of his eye walking across the cafeteria. Damien stared despite his better judgment. The auburn-haired boy took a seat at Tyler's table, along with Gavin, Carrie, and... oh bollocks. Damien groaned. Maddie, his girlfriend. He thought he had begged her to stop sitting with them.

Beside her sat Phi, Maddie's best friend, and Westlake's resident witch. Or at least, Damien was fairly convinced of this fact. Phi had long straight black hair, and piercing brown eyes, and she tended to wear a great deal of black in her free time, and leather chokers with long spikes on them. Technically they all wore uniforms, hideous navy blue slacks for the boys, with white button-downs, and a navy blue blazer with silver piping, and a blue and red striped tie with the Westlake crest emblazoned on its front. The girls only got a slightly improved version of this look, wearing instead a blue and red plaid skirt. Sans blazer but with a bowtie instead of a regular tie. Despite this, Phi always managed to make her uniform look just a little bit more rebellious than the rest of the students. Particularly Maddie who always managed to look so prim and proper. Her long blond hair always kept up in a meticulously neat pony-tail. Maddie was the antithesis of Phi, and yet they had been friends since they were small children.

This would have been fine, were it not for the fact that Phi hated his guts.

He might have assumed that it was because of the whole Tyler situation, and certainly, that hadn't helped. She had quickly taken Tyler's side when the fallout had occurred, leaving Maddie precariously trapped in the middle. But the truth was, Phi had hated him for far longer than the feud with Tyler, always making comments under her breath about him. Mostly to call him homophobic, or otherwise an idiot. She had never outright called him racist for the time he had accidentally referred to her as Korean (she was Vietnamese) but she had certainly implied it rightfully enough.

It hadn't really occurred to him, until the last year or so, thanks in large part to conversations that were being had throughout the Wisher fandom, but there were only a handful of students of color in the entire school and even fewer that he knew personally. Phi, Carrie, and as far as he could tell, the new boy, were really it, and of the three of them, only one of them had any interest in speaking to him.

Any hopes that he had that the new boy might want to speak to him had been dashed the moment he saw Phi leaning over to talk to him. It was just as well, he thought. He hadn't exactly given her a reason to like him, and the fact that, unbeknownst to all of his former friends, and especially to her, he was only dating Maddie so people wouldn't assume he was gay, a fact he knew wouldn't endear her to him any time soon.