It's a bad feeling, when you feel inside that there is no law, no one can or will protect you, and it's sometimes hard in retrospect to remember that feeling, so for a moment I looked back at the times when I was being cornered and pushed around with a sense of confusion.
Why had I let them do that to me? Why hadn't I fought them and raised hell about it? Stormed over to the teachers and demanded they do something.
It was as though for a moment the memory of all I had been through wavered, because everything inside was gone, I was empty, wading about the hallway with a feeling of motionlessness.
In fact I had asked for help, begged for it, fought and been beaten harder because of it, but more than that, the more you fought, the more determined they were to humiliate you as a punishment for it. You go to the teachers and they do these small useless things, like making an announcement not to look down on other kids, or making us all watch videos on bullying, or calling them in and suspending them for a day.
One day in particular, during my first year, when the bullying really started, when Clyde had really spotted me and relentlessly picking on me to the point where it was all graduating into violence. I'd gone red and bruised and fuming to Mr Bronson's office, the head of our form at the time, and told him what happened.
He looked me up and down over the top of his reading glasses, his round nose keeping them fixed in place. "You're not a child anymore sonny, you're capable of sorting out your own disputes like men."
"Like fight him?" I'd been so wide-eyed and shocked that I was practically gawping at him, mouth open and all, like a theatrical actor.
He scoffed. "No not fight him, come on boy you've got a tongue haven't you? You can settled your grievances with words..." He sighed and closed the file he was looking at on his desk and put his pen back behind his ear. "If you want I can take him out of class and put you two up in a room together to talk it out..."
I had expected him to be outraged, to over there and call him up and send him home immediately, for me to maybe even be offered the option of filing charges, which I would decline because it was just a shove and a punch, I'd had it all planned out in my head. I'd prepared for the dramatic fallout of going to the teachers.
And instead he sat there like an icicle in front of me, some kind of wall between us, like my words didn't make it through at all.
"He punched me..." I repeated slowly.
He smiled slightly, a condescending smile like he thought I was being ridiculous, dramatic for no reason, just for a second I saw it flit across his face and he wiped it away.
"Not to play semantics sonny... it's a red mark. You kids need to stop using the word 'punch' for anything that resembles skin to skin contact."
Like the breath was knocked out of me I stood there winded for a long moment.
"Would you like to set up that room for you?"
"No." I answered, feeling cold and shaken as I took a step back.
He exhaled through his nose and pushed his glasses further up his nose, picking his pen back up from behind his ears. "Then close the door slowly on your way out, if Peter stops by outside tell him the copies are still in the printer for him to collect."
I didn't say anything.
"You're alright sonny?"
"Yes sir." I answered quietly.
I wasn't sure why I did, or why I closed the door slowly behind myself and let Peter know as he approached that the copies for him to hand out were in the printer in the IT room.
The rush of burning humiliation stood brighter as I left that teachers office than it ever did at the butt end of one of the million jokes of Clyde's, even the one's that ended up with someone pissing on me or holding me down and drawing something on my face with marker.
And I did keep trying, even though the wind had been knocked from my sails. I knew where I stood suddenly, at the bottom of the pile, had this horrible feeling if one of the other kids that beat on me said he was being beaten there would be a whole hunt for their attackers, an investigation, parent meetings arranged, police called.
If I had slammed Bronson's door I would have gotten in more trouble than he could have for punching me.
In fact Clyde getting kicked out of our school really didn't have as much to do with me as Patrick thought.
Of course it could have just been a paranoid thought, to think they would take them more seriously, perhaps because some of them were in fact more chummy with the teachers than someone who had shut down mentally like myself, but all good suppositions come with evidence.
I waited outside the headmasters office with a degree of amusement. Pierson had gone to the teachers.
After the countless things he and his group had done to me over the years he had gone to the teachers over slap to the face.
The secretary let me know, as she directed me to sit on one of the seats outside, that the headmaster was suddenly a little busy and I might have to wait for a while.
The headmasters office was next to the secretaries office by the main entrance, but it was cut off by two narrow hallways that were closed off, four chairs leading up to the door, a plant and a lamp and a TV screen mounted at the end with school information playing on it inside.
Not a minute into sitting down and waiting I heard the first scuffle inside.
I looked up from my phone and stared at it.
And then I heard them talking slightly muffled through the door.
I got up and moved closer. Inching toward the gap between the door and the doorframe.
"That has nothing to do with me."
I recognised his voice immediately. I stopped a moment, startled, and then leaned back in with a frown again to see him. The boy called Arran, hands in the pockets of his large worn leather jacket. The headmaster, Headmaster Bedford, stood opposite him, standing up behind his desk, his signature grim expression fixed on him with both hands on his table.
"That has everything to do with you." He replied. "Your mother deserves better than that and you know it."
He sighed and pushed his fists deeper in his pockets, his eyelids flickering as he closed his eyes briefly and seemed to meditate for a moment.
"I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm trying to help out a friend."
He scoffed and his chin danced a little at the action. "Not doing anything wrong... If I send someone to look into what you're up to at night, what you're doing in that house you want to cling onto, am I going to hear good news?"
Arran didn't answer.
The headmaster scoffed again to himself, sitting down slowly.
Arran didn't move an inch but he stayed and stared at him.
"You had me meet you here for a reason Abbott."
Bedford snorted and folded his hands in front of him, his elbows on his table. "Sit down."
Arran didn't move.
Bedford shook his head slowly, with some disappointment. "You want the money you're going to have to attend school."
There was a long silence.
"You knew that would be the case coming here so stop making that face."
I couldn't pinpoint an expression from the side but there was definitely a strange feeling in the air, kind of cold and uncomfortable, left an uneasy feeling swimming on the blue carpeted floor.
"Fine." He replied eventually, his voice low and unenthusiastic.
Bedford held up a hand, either to silence him or more likely to stop him from leaving immediately.
"I won't give you any of the money, that money is being deposited on a weekly basis to the rehab centre in question."
Arran didn't say anything.
"You understand what that means right?"
I thought I saw, just from the side of his head, the way Arran clenched his jaw and his shoulders tensed.
"I'll attend."
"And do well." He added forcefully. "No fights, no skipping class, no bad grades. You get a month to catch up and then you're getting at least sixty percent on any given test if you fall below on any single one, I don't care if it's Cooking Science or Art, that bill's not getting paid."
An even longer silence gave me the impression that a staring match was taking place, the room filled with a slight chill, a dark aura emanating from Arran as he took a low breath and turned around.
"It's a deal." He replied in a low voice.
"You start today!" He cut in again. "You've missed a month of the school year and you've only got one left. You're going to get a uniform from the secretaries office and you're going to start today!"
Arran looked back at him. "Tomorrow."
Headmaster Bedford gave him a strange smile. "I thought you knew better than to haggle with me?"
After a moment he turned his head back toward the door slowly.
I backed up just a little, startled that he was almost looking right in my direction for a second before he started walking.
"And in front of the others it's Headmaster Bedford. In private it's father. Call me Abbott again and I'll sell that dratted house. I'm not funding someone else's child." He scoffed. "Think about it Arran, carefully. You'd better choose between being someone else's child or my son."
Arran took a low shallow breath, I saw the dark, cold look on his face as he was leaving, a little aggravation flaring, heated underneath, as he marched toward the door and me all of a sudden.
I stumbled back fast and nearly ran out of the short narrow hallway, ducking and turning into another hallway and walking fast back down.
My heart thumped heavily in my chest as I walked, my footsteps echoing on the linoleum flooring, one of my shoelaces was untied and the aglet of the lace slapping the floor with every step.
"He goes to my school..." I murmured to myself as I headed toward the stairwell.
And he was the headmaster's son?
I shook my head slowly in disbelief, confused.
It felt strange to me that someone like him had any ties to my world at all. We shouldn't have been able to cross paths in the first place.
He wasn't like me, nervous, scared of everything, emotional and weak. Maybe everything about him was the opposite instead. Cold, dangerous, very possibly psychopathic, and charismatic in more natural, unintentional way. I should have wanted to run as far as possible given what I knew of him and yet the moment I was far away from him I wanted to go back.
I shook my head.
Was he in my year? Could he be younger than me? Even if he was in my year there were still four forms he could be a part of.
My hands were sweating.
I looked back down the empty hallway, the sound of classes taking place inside the rooms near me.
Was there even a way to return his cat without him killing me for taking him?
I imagined his eyes staring down at me, cold, hard and infinitely black.
There was no mercy in those eyes.
I crouched down and did up the loose shoelaces. I frowned because I was warm but there were goosebumps on my arms. I got up and continued back down the hall.
[A/N] I have to stop there, this is a good chapter size. I wanted to write two chapters but I have to wake up early and it's already nearly 5 AM. I'll go to bed now and we'll see if I can manage another chapter tomorrow evening.
Goodnight and thank you to my amazing supporters on patreon, and the kind people from the Wattpad Creators Program. I get to write these books because of you all.