No Boundaries [Saulbert]

4. I was like you

CHAPTER FOUR

Adam:

When it was lunch time, Sauli and I sat in the classroom having our first session. I looked down at Sauli’s work and he really struggled.  I gave him just some easy tasks to warm up at the beginning, but he already failed. I sighed.

“No, look.” I said and showed him again. “See?” I asked and pointed on the calculation I just wrote down. “Try again.” I encouraged him.

He tried again.

 I thought about all the gay slurs that group insulted him with yesterday. I couldn’t forget how helpless he was. That reminded me of a similar situation I went through when I was in high school. I wondered if he really was gay. If he wasn’t, he would have just shrugged them off and laughed about it, but he really took it serious. If he was gay, I felt sorry for him going through this kind of stuff. High school wasn’t easy and nobody needs people to make it even worse. I don’t even know why I was so interested and curious about that. I shouldn’t care if he was gay or not, but I did care.

I watched him trying to calculate the task. It wasn’t easy for me to see how hard it was for him. Especially because he was so good in every other subject. But yeah, everybody is good in something others aren’t. But I just couldn’t ignore what I heard about him some days ago. ‘He is one of my best students’ … that sentence went through my head millions of times.

“Is it right now?” Sauli asked and ripped me out of my thoughts before I checked what he just calculated and I nodded with a big smile on my face.

“It is!” I said. “You made everything right!”

“Really?” His eyes brightened up. “Finally!” He yelled out in excitement. Seeing him so happy reminded me why I wanted to be a teacher in the first place. And really, I enjoyed seeing him so happy.

“See? You can do it.” I made eye-contact with him and we stared at each other for a little while. “Well…” I coughed and looked away. “Let’s do the next one!” Sauli just nodded, blushing a little.

It went on like this for a little while. He tried to calculate the other tasks and he indeed got two more tasks right. He was so happy, and so was I.

I was really proud of him after he left the room at the end of our session. It was the first time we did this and he already showed some progress. All he really needed was the right push I think. If he goes on like this, he will really pass this course easily.

That day passed by very quickly. I just stayed a little longer after school to get some work done for the next day. When it was finally time for me to go, I left the room and I was on my way to the front entrance of the school when I heard weird knocking noises from the janitor’s room. I frowned when I walked towards it and unlocked it with my universal key I got on the first day of school. Sauli stumbled out of the room, he probably leaned against the door before I opened it, and he moaned in pain.

“Sauli!” I yelled and he got up, looking at me. He had sores all over his face and upper arms. “What happened?” I asked in shock, not really knowing how to help him.

“Um, nothing.” He answered, avoiding eye-contact.

“Doesn’t seem like nothing. What did you do in there?”

Sauli seemed like he was thinking about something, thinking about what he could answer.

“Drake and his friends locked me in there after they beat me up.” He whispered, barely audible. Suddenly, he started sobbing.