Chapter 3: Chapter Two

[A/N] Quick reminder there's some rough language and fighting. Also, I changed the name of the guy Elliot likes to Victor.

Sorry about the rare updates, I've got a lot of books to write at the moment and ending them is more difficult than starting them. A bad ending can ruin a whole book.  (ㆆ ^ ㆆ) That said I'm going to switch up my schedule and put this on the weekly update list on the 1st of February, but I've yet to decide what day.

Do y'all like the name Elliot? If not let me know what names you like instead and I can put it to a poll on my Twitter page (@OkiNeptune) ✰

Victor was the kind of guy whose mom just fixed him up right when she was making him, good genetics, perfect teeth and skin and the kind of muscle that looked more natural rather than due to athletics. His hair was blond, eyebrows a little darker, light grey-blue eyes. Some kind of Nordic descent.

He was tall, but in a good way, not half made of neck, nice legs and broad shoulders. When he leaned over my desk slightly as he passed through the tables in slight disarray I always got a little thumping in my heart, trying not to look up at him and make it obvious.

Victor was the only one with enough social credit to stop people from messing with me and get away with it, everyone liked the guy, not just me. If the Patrick or one of those guys continued after Victor declared in his own affable way not to do just that there was usually some chorus of dissatisfaction from our classmates.

I'd get it double as bad later if they were shamed into stopping like that. One thing I'd learned over my time being the least likeable person in the school, apparently, was that half their anger probably came from guilt. The more you made them face up to how shitty they were being, the more pissed they became, someone had to be at fault for how bad they felt and it couldn't be them.

Still, it was the thought that counted, the feeling in the moment, the vindication, in a way, and the tickle of happiness that came from having someone step up to my defence.

He didn't say 'hi', but he usually noticed me, more so than anyone else did. And when I smiled at him from across the class he winked at me, with the kind of charismatic ease that tied me up in knots.

It was successful anyway, every time, a little flutter in my chest and a smile on my lips for the next half an hour.

I tried not to make it obvious, I was definitely not out. I might be able to tolerate bullying but I wasn't looking to help them out with finding things to use against me, others might be able to but not me.

The teacher stepped into the room, a Miss Sharma, short and pretty with an amazingly thick set of purple rimmed glasses and shiny long black hair she seemed to have permanently set in a side plait.

"Good morning guys." She put her folder down and stopped to shush the kids still talking and waggle her hand to direct the ones still out of their seats into the places they were meant to be sitting. " Come on, hurry. Lets get your attendance down!"

Miss Sharma was our form teacher, I saw her every morning. Mixed feelings every time.

She was a genuinely great teacher, I meant that. She taught Biology, my favourite subject, knew her subject like the back of her hand.

But in the end it didn't matter, I didn't like her, because every day she came in late and left early. And the moment she was gone, the moment certain people got bored, it was the moment they started messing with me, like a street dog, an easy target for apathetic bored teens.

This time, when she was done and left us to our own devices with fifteen minutes before the bell went off and a promise from the students to knuckle down and study or do homework before heading off to our first lesson, I got out my history homework to finish.

I didn't get good grades, I had a kind of lethargy towards learning I couldn't shake, even in my favourite subjects I wasn't even close to a good student, and homework was something I struggled with, just couldn't get myself to even try.

Regardless I went over the questions and scribbled something approximating an answer.

It was the questions I found the hardest, I never knew exactly what they wanted from me.

"Hey Elliot..." I heard the grinning voice to my side a moment before I looked up just as Patrick moved my desk a couple inches with his foot and the metal legs screeched in dramatic fear.

I looked up at him with what might have been a calm look, or a terrified one. It was so hard to tell, as much as I tried for the former I felt the latter too strongly for it not to show through.

He chuckled. "What are you glaring for?"

A couple friends stepped up around him, one called Nick wearing his white gym shirt instead of the normal school uniform long sleeved light blue shirt we were supposed to be wearing, the other called Tariq, with air pods in his ears and a permanently dazed look as he followed the others wherever they went.

"Huh?" He asked after I didn't reply.

Another lesson I'd learned. No answer was a good answer, if they decided they don't like you there is nothing you can say or do to make them change their minds. Staying silent felt better than saying anything and getting laughed at.

I looked down at my work, but I couldn't focus on anything other than him no matter how relaxed I pretended to be.

"Hey Ellie?"  He smacked the back of my head hard. "Seriously, you wanna ignore me?"

Something sinister entered his voice and I knew I had to answer. "'M not ignoring you."

"Really?" He snickered and moved my table again just as I put my pen on the paper. "You going on the trip coming up, huh? Buddy?"

I shook my head, pretending to write out an answer to the question for my History homework. If he even glanced at the question he would realise I was writing nonsense.

Patrick smacked the back of my head again, hard, my head jumping forwards and only moving back an inch, staying there, hunched forwards. "You're so silent today, you talked so much yesterday."

I did. I'd snapped for a moment, told him he was a prick, that it sucked that I had to stay at this school with assholes like him that think they're so impressive for no reason.  It wasn't the best put down, and it came complete with a voice break in the last word, but I wasn't good at that kind of thing, too scared, too nervous, too angry, too all over the place.

"I'm tired." I replied simply.

"I thought you wanted to move school?" He kicked my table again and instead of moving much it vibrated.

I shrugged, still looking down at my desk.

Scattered, I couldn't think when they came close, fear and anger and humiliation burned like an automatic lightbulb, emotions trained to appear out of habit, and then like an acidic residue clinging to me after they had left I felt resentment burning away in my stomach for the rest of the day.

Nick leaned in as well. "I heard that too, huh, you don't wanna move school anymore?"

I shrugged.

"You don't want us to help you?"

"We could do that." Patrick agreed with some additional light laughter. "We're helpful, do you wanna move school Ellie? Do you want us to help you?"

"No." I replied after a moment.

They laughed loudly.

"Come on guys, let him do his homework, don't bother him." Victor cut in, with a light perfect smile on his lips, a slice of his perfect teeth showing, clear eyes striking me from across the room.

"Yeah, actually though... we're trying to work, you're being too loud." Sophie added in agreement, whose mathematics homework was sat spread out on the table where she sat with her friends, trying to finish it.

"Shut the fuck up Sophie." Patrick glared at her, glancing at Victor but not saying anything, shaking his head lightly as he glanced back at me, not quite moving away. "I'm just trying to ask him a fucking question. He's the one not answering."

"What question?" Debbie defended her friend. "You're just laughing like idiots, we have ears, okay? Don't talk to her like that."

"Fuck off." He moved to glare at her.

It might have been a little unwholesome how pleased I was watching his anger scatter across the room, unintentionally attacking bystanders. I wished every day for the rest of this class to hate him as much as I did, but never saw it last very long.

He looked back at me. "Are you coming on the Treewalk trip or not? Give a fucking answer this time."

"I said no." I replied quietly.

"You didn't fucking say no, did he say no?"

Tariq shook his head. "He just ignored us."

"Right." A pen tapped on the table, Victor had set it down and turned to look at him again. He looked back at me. If Victor told him to stop twice there would be even more support behind him. If Victor was fed up with something, so was everyone else. He looked back at me. "So you're coming?"

"No..." I repeated again, slowly, confused.

I couldn't tell if he'd said that on purpose or by accident, too disinterested in my answer to hear it.

"What I'm hearing is you're coming." He grinned slowly, as if thinking of something.

"I'm not." I replied immediately, with a little more force. If he had an idea in mind I would need a thousand miles to run from it.

"Awesome, see you there then?" Nick joined in.

"I'm not going." I repeated firmly.

"Sweet. Don't make us miss you. We wanna hang out." Patrick smiled at me. "Bring snacks."

"A lot of them." Tariq nodded.

"I-"

Before I could respond the bell rang a moment later he quickly leaned in, snatched the pen out of my hand and drew a penis across the entire page I'd been working on and threw it into the corner of the room casually as they moved away.

It smacked the wall and bounced off somewhere, the sound of it rolling covered up as people began to get up and collect their things to move out of the classroom slowly. Pencil cases and bags zipping up, chairs squeaking on the floor, and light chatter growing louder as people traversed across the classroom and out down the hall.

I tore the page slowly out of my exercise book and scrunched it up, packing my things into my bag, including the page, one by one before getting up.

I wanted to be left alone, to move through the halls alone, ideally go to my next lesson alone, but no matter how slow I was that wasn't possible.

~⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣︵⌣~

The school therapist, or whatever she was, had me writing in a diary. One entry every day. It wasn't the worst idea, but it felt a lot like homework.

You see recounting your day when you were in the position I was in was particularly grim. First you had to think about what order to write things in, what priority certain things had over others, and, ultimately, who you thought might end up reading it.

The Miss Polwarth promised not to read it, but flipped through the pages to make sure I was writing something, and occasionally for no real reason I could see, the books were kept in her small two metre by one and a half metre repainted rose pink closet space.

And when I brought it home it was possible my parents might see it, or Colby might, but the reality was even if they did they wouldn't bother reading it.

So I tried to leave out my feelings on certain things, but religiously recounted what happened in class, and the hallways, and in the school grounds, and outside the school grounds.

And the more I wrote, the more down I felt, and sat listless for a while as I hid in the toilets during lunch with the diary on my lap, knowing they were looking for me.

I opened my locker after leaving for lunch and found out someone had poured some kind of soft drink on all my stuff including my PE kit and my books, it was like two full bottles of the stuff it was dripping everywhere. I mean I know who it was, Patrick always has something to do with this stuff. It's been two years now and he still hates me.

The lock was still on my locker door, untouched, so I don't know how they got in, but since they managed to figure a way to break inside it, I have to carry them in my backpack from now on.

Someone laughed as they watched some of the liquid drip off the door when I opened it.

I don't know them, maybe they were from the year above, or the year below.

I don't get it. How do they all know, like somehow telepathically, that I'm the target, the runt. Is it something I do, I say, is it the way I look?  Something in my eyes that says 'bully me'...

I heard the door open and some boys walked inside, none of them speaking.

I breathed slowly and put my pen back on the pages.

Depression mixed perfectly with stifled frustration to ignite a spark of anger.

Miss Polwarth doesn't read this diary. If she did she'd have to do something about them. Instead the stupid cow asks me to fill in questionnaires all day and calls that therapy, maybe she doesn't call it therapy, I sure don't know what it's good for. Fuck her and fuck this stupid diary. And fuck you, whoever is reading it. Fuck you the most because either you're me, and you're pathetic, or you're reading my diary without permission and you're an asshole for that, I hope you drown in the school fish tank.

I took a shuddering breath and looked down at the page, cringed and put the pen in my backpack pocket. I wouldn't let Polwarth keep this diary in her room anymore. I'd get medicated for anger management problems or something.

"Elliot!" Came the sing-songy voice from the opening toilet door, louder as he entered the toilets and a couple pairs of footsteps followed behind him. "Come out the play!" He mimicked David Patrick Kelly's line from the Warriors.

"Ellie!" He sang as he walked through, some laughter following.

"Do you think she even knows she's ugly? She acts like such a bitch." I heard Nick talking to one of the others.

"Ellie?" He continued, now knocking on the stall doors one by one, even the ones clearly empty.

Toilets were my go-to place to hide, cliché but usually he didn't bother looking for me down here, because there were other students around, and the place stank until the cleaners rescued it on Sunday.

"Get off it!" The kid in the next stall snapped at him. "Fuck off you idiot!"

Patrick laughed with forced enthusiasm, and then nearly sent me flying off the seat as he kicked the door to the stall next to me hard enough to cause the entire frame of the stalls to vibrate.

"Such a dickhead..." The guy grumbled, but with a significantly less confident tone.

Then he pounded on my door and I jumped and got up.

"Is that the sound of silence?" He chuckled. "Gotta be our girl Ellie in there..."

I didn't say anything.

"Shouldn't you be in the girls toilets Ellie?" He asked loudly.

My face felt hot, even through the stall door it was hard not to get nervous.

Go away. I willed him to in my head, like I was Matilda trying to awaken my powers. Please go away.

He kicked the door hard and I gasped by accident, not only pretty unmanly but also loud enough for him to hear and when he burst out laughing I knew I was done for.

The entire group started laughing along with him and my heart hammered away in my chest as they started fiddling with the door.

"We were having a conversation this morning, I just wanna talk!" He spoke through the door, a sense of newfound diplomacy apparently taking over before he continued, "What's the problem? Looking for Victor?"

The rattling got louder and I put my clammy hands on the lock, but realised after a moment it wouldn't do any good, they'd get it open at some point.

So I opened it and thankfully they stepped back in surprise for a moment as I stepped out, and then shoved past them and booked it.

I'd have slammed face first into the door in about three steps if someone wasn't walking in at that same moment, it wasn't that heavy but it opened slow and it would be long enough for them to catch and drag me back.

If there was one place I didn't want them to mess with me in, it was the toilet.

I ran like my life depended on it, went flying through the hallways, my heart pounding, my backpack jumping on my back. As I ran I tightened the straps, turning a corner just in time not to hit the wall and catching a glimpse of the five of them as they chased me, and the teacher that looked at me, shocked, as I flew past him.

"Boys!" He yelled at us. "Don't run inside. Run outside! Outside! You're going to hurt someone!"

We did go outside, because that was the next nearest door, and as I stumbled down the steps I began to run out of breath, my lungs burning already, my heart pounding in my neck and face, I staggered for a moment and then got back to running, and got a good way toward the end of the school grounds before my legs began to get numb and it was harder to stay running.

My lungs were burning, I wasn't good at this no matter how much I practiced, and just as I reached the gate and turned the corner I tripped, didn't fall but only just about caught myself and staggered back upright, and by the time I was five metres down it was already too late, I felt someone yank my backpack backwards and went flying in reverse.

I was too out of breath to speak as they circled around me, tears in my eyes from the wind.

My chest was still rising and falling fast, my face and neck, arms and legs, covered in a sheen of sweat. And my lungs still hurt, I couldn't stand up if I wanted to.

"What's up Ellie?" Patrick asked, slightly out of breath as well. "Trying to run? I jus' wanna be friends man."

I licked my dry, cracked lips and swallowed, looking up at him defiantly.

He glanced down at my lips and back up at my eyes. "What're you so afraid of huh?"

"We're tryna be your friends." Stan laughed.

I hated laughing. They all laughed, all the time, forced fake laughter, dramatic and shrill, covering up the barbarism of their every word and action.

I didn't like laughing anymore because of it, every time I laughed I heard the echo of their laughter in my brain. It felt like acid.

"I don't want friends." I lied, my heart pounding away.

I shouldn't have run as far as I did, I'd been trying to get to a busy street, somewhere I wouldn't get in trouble for fighting as though it was voluntary, but where they would see a bunch of kids wailing on another kid, but I'd managed to run just far enough no one from the school or a busy street would see us.

"I don't want a spastic fucking bitch to get my friend expelled but life happens." He glared at me, circling me suddenly, getting closer.

I shakily exhaled. "I said sorry..."

My heart thumped as he stepped right up and leaned over me. "Make it sound like you mean it." He demanded, his eyes blazing a moment before his fist connected with my face.

[A/N] Big warm thank you to my patrons and to the WCP for, essentially, sponsoring this book into existence. And a big warm hug to my community for being a non toxic wholesome mess.

Lots of hugs   ♡