[Niall's POV]
"Gayyyyy!" Stephen Clark yells.
Stephen is one of the most popular guys in school. He's also my biggest hater. See, everyone at school now knows that I am, in fact, gay. Him screaming "gay" at me really doesn't offend me anymore. He's just telling me what everyone already knows. The thing that really gets to me is the constant whispers and snickering. That really hurts.
I'm the most awkward kid in my school, due to me being a selective mute. Nobody knows why I don't talk. They just know that I don't. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Why doesn't he talk? What happened to him that was so bad that he chooses not to talk?" Well, I'm going to tell you. When I was 4 years old, my aunt was dating this guy. My mom would always have him look after me from the time I got out of daycare to the time she got home. I got home from daycare at 12:30 p.m. and she got home from work at 5:00 p.m. He was super nice the first few weeks of this going on. A month went by and he start to change. He would kiss me and touch me inappropriately. He told me that this was the stuff you did when you loved someone. This went on for about six months. He told me that if I told anyone, I would be in huge trouble. This was our little secret. My aunt eventually left him and he stopped coming over to babysit me. I got a new babysitter and got out of the situation. I never told anyone and I never saw him again. To this day, my mother still has no idea what he did to me and we have no idea why my aunt left him. Now, I just choose not to actually talk because I'm afraid I'll end up telling someone and he'll come back to hurt me. To this day, I use this voice app on my phone to talk to people. I have to keep it open at all times or I become paranoid.
Next thing I know, I get pushed into a locker and Stephen and his friends start laughing loudly. I've never really understood what I did to them to make them hate me so much. But, they do. I'm going to assume it's because I'm gay and they don't like that. I only have one friend and that's Savannah Justice. She's been there for me since kindergarten when I got pushed down on the playground. We've been inseperable ever since.
"I really hate gay people. They always hit on me," I hear one of Stephen's friends say. Skyler, I think his name is. Skyler Vanhouser. He's never liked me. Ever since everyone found out that I was gay, he's accused me of hitting on him and sexually assaulting him. He's far from my type. I keep telling him that. He doesn't believe me.
"Trust me," I tell him, day after day. "If you're so worried that someone is going to hit on you, nine times out of ten, you're not their type."
"Niall," I hear a comfortable, familiar voice say from behind me. It's Savannah. "You know you don't have to take that from them, right? You can stand up for yourself. They're not that scary, I promise."
"Yes, they are," I type into my phone. "They've been my bullies since kindergarten. I'm not good enough or strong enough to defeat them and that's never going to change. You know this."
"You are good enough, Niall James Horan. I don't ever want you to believe you're not because you are."
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Author's Note
I would just like to point out that I do not promote violence, sexual abuse, or anything negative that shows up in this story. All characters in this story, excluding Niall Horan and Harry Styles, are purely fiction and are not based off of any single person in particular.
