50 Shades of HA

Chapter 1

~CHORUS~

So, the story is, there's this large group of boys and they all go to this one giant, Christian, boarding school, St. Harrold's Academy for boys. Now it's easy to tell who's gay at this school because they have strict uniforms. Their options are a white or purple dress or polo shirt, an optional white or purple sweatervest, khaki pants, and a white handkerchief. If a person is gay he is required to have a red handkerchief sticking out of the chest pocket of whatever shirt he has on. There's a certain group of gay boys at this school that consists of Connor Red, Marcus Downs, A.J. Tall (but everybody calls him Peach, thanks to Mr. Spring), A.J. Mayo, Ian Mackintosh, Garrett South, and Morgan Greenwood. These boys are all captivatingly cute and, what do you know? Most of them have white handkerchiefs. They're the only ones who know about the others being gay and most of them even have a "girlfriend" from St. Helen's boarding school for girls, which is only separated from St. Harrold's by a brick wall. The old rickety wall is easily climbed and not very well patrolled, so it's sort of a trend for the boys and girls to sneak over whenever possible. It's the start of a new year at St. Harrold's Academy and all, well, most of these boys plan on coming out of the closet. Coming out of the closet is as simple, yet as complicated, as going to the office telling the headmaster, "I'm gay," once this action is performed the headmaster will hold out his hand. When he does so, whichever boy has confessed is to remove the white handkerchief from his pocket. The headmaster then puts it in the trash and hands him a special red handkerchief. Of course there are complications, like that weekend at church the whole two schools will get a lecture on how, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Then all the homosexual kids will be required to stand for a little public shame, but it's common for them to just roll their eyes and do as told when it comes to this. Now as these boys come out new kids appear and they start off with white handkerchiefs and switch almost immediately to red ones, which causes problems between the original boys with red handkerchiefs.

Red handkerchiefs are a controversial topic everywhere, inside the school, with the parents sending their children there, and with the community outside of the school. Naturally the headmaster of St. Harrold's would just throw the gay kids out on the street, but there's one problem. There is a little law that protects these children from being kicked out of the school for being gay. Thankfully it's against the law for the faculty to discriminate against the homosexual members of the student body, some do anyway. Now that's where the hanky comes in. The red handkerchiefs are shameful. It's theoretically impossible to make any new friends with one. You'd also better hope your current friends are good friends because they're even putting themselves in danger of being friendless by being friendly toward someone wearing a red hanky. There's also the factor that these teens are Catholic, and they were raised in a way that makes them less accepting of homosexuals. It's an issue when your whole belief on sexuality has to change for a friend, it's much easier to just pretend they don't exist

Now that we've covered the basic morals at St. Harrold's Academy, or HA for short, it's time to look into these boys lives, check up, maybe see how they're doing?

We begin in a new school year with Marcus and Ian. Marcus and Ian started dating at the end of the last school year. They had lots of fun skyping and going on dates all summer. Each promised the other that during the beginning school year they would come out. Except when they get back to school Ian runs into a little issue. Ian is a jock, he's tall with broad shoulders and red hair, and SUPER popular. When Ian gets back to chilling with his jock friends he realizes that they would all leave him if they knew he was gay. Ian tried to talk it out with Marcus, he tried to tell him why he couldn't come out. Marcus wouldn't have it though. Finally a month into the school year Marcus cracks.

~MARCUS'S POV.~

I wait by my locker until Ian's friends have all gone until I approach him. I only wait because he's instructed me to do so a million and ten times so he doesn't "Goof up and make lovey dovey eyes" at me in front of his "friends." When the last one leaves I walk up to him, I lean behind him on the lockers, "Hey," I say with a bit of a sigh.