Chapter 10

"Stupid, stupid, stupid." Mike cursed himself under his breath as he stomped home.

'Why can't I tell him how I feel?' he wondered.

Plonking himself on the sofa, he sank into the cushions, wishing he could disappear completely; fall into the cracks and become forever lost.

'I know I've blown it,' Mike thought. 'So why can't I just let it go?'

He loaded up his social media, searching Sammy in profiles.

Nothing.

'He doesn't even have a profile?' Mike frowned. He wondered if he was partly responsible for that before challenging himself with the very real possibility he was the sole reason. Sammy didn't have any friends until Caine turned up. The friend's he'd bought over from primary school had been quick to abandon him when Mike and his friends had singled him out as their victim.

'I ruined his childhood,' Mike realized. 'How can I expect him to ever forgive or trust me?'

As unlikely as it was to happen, getting Sammy to like him had become a priority. It was hard to pinpoint exactly when this obsession started, when he'd transitioned from carefree to downright neurotic over the boy.

It was all he could think about.

Failing to find a profile for Sammy, he searched for Caine instead. When that familiar picture of the white-haired boy posing alongside Caine popped up, he felt his heart skip a beat.

As his older brother piled into the room, taking over the space with their movement and noise, Mike fumbled with his phone and dropped it onto the carpet.

He went to grab it, but his brother was faster, swiping it up in his giant bear hands.

"Looking at porn?" his brother teased, looking down at the phone.

"Give it!" Mike cried in a panic, trying to wrestle the phone from his bigger, stronger brother.

"Him again?" Chris asked. "Is he your boyfriend or something?"

"Fuck off man," Mike scolded him, feeling his face turn red with a heady mix of anger and shame.

His older brother, Gary, took a seat beside him.

"You know we're only teasing, right?" Gary asked.

Mike nodded, looking down to hide his crimson face.

"I mean, when we throw words like faggot about, we don't really mean it, you get that right? We don't care if you're gay," Gary explained.

"I'm not gay," Mike blurted.

"Oh, come off it, man, we've all known since you were eight." Chris snickered.

Gary shushed Chris, raising a finger, and shaking his head.

"It's okay if you don't wanna talk about it yet, mate," Gary said, turning his attention back to Mike.

With that Mike ran to his room, pushing the door shut with a shaking hand. He collapsed onto his bed, rolled himself up in his quilt and listened to his Mum scolding his brothers and until he fell asleep.

For the third night in a row, he dreamt of Sammy.

###

In English, Sammy sat two chairs to the left in the row ahead. It was hard not to stare at him. Mike had to make a conscious effort to look at anyone or anything else. He made the mistake of overcompensating, staring at Ricky for a second too long.

When the class delinquent raised his eyebrows in question, Mike recentered his concentration on the table, reading the graffiti etched in with compasses and sharpies.

"Any volunteers to play Romeo?" Miss Day asked.

Unsurprisingly, nobody volunteered.

A kid at the back of the room coughed loudly, making the silence seem more prominent.

"Nobody?" Miss Day asked. "Come on, if you don't volunteer, I'll choose someone."

You could almost see the tension in the air it was so thick.

'Someone else, please volunteer,' Mike prayed. The thought of being chosen to play the lead was terrifying. He breathed a sigh of relief as Ricky stood up.

"I'll do it if Jess plays Juliet," Ricky announced.

"Ew, why her?" Grace asked.

Ricky turned to her; face twisted into a scowl. "Fuck off, racist."

The class held its collective breath as Grace turned white. She looked at Mike to defend her, but seeing what Kiaan had posted, he didn't want to stick his neck out. She was on her own.

The strangest thing about the scene was Miss Day's reaction. Usually, profanity was punished, but the teacher had deliberately chosen to overlook the F word, either because she hated Grace as much as the students or because she was grateful for Ricky's offer to play Romeo.

Miss Day was one of the few teachers who wasn't terrified of Ricky. If he chose to, Ricky could disrupt an hour-long class and was nothing in the teacher's arsenal that would stop him. Extra work. Detentions. Exclusions. None of them bothered him. It wasn't as if they could rely on his Mum to help discipline him—she was high more often than not. After a teacher was fired for physically assaulting the lad, the rest of the faculty had decided to give him leeway, only intervening in his affairs if he was doing something dangerous.

Mike wished he were more like Ricky. Fearless and self-assured.

"So?" Miss Day asked Jess.

The girl looked over at Ricky and nodded.

The class murmured about this development, whispering about the unlikely couple the way that nosy lot gossiped about everything. It made a change of pace from hearing them discuss Grace and her wickedly racist slurs against Kiaan.

"It was kind of Kiaan to blur her name, don't you think?" Eddy asked him, almost as if he'd pulled the thoughts straight from his brain.

"Yeah, but we all know it's her. It was obvious," Mike pointed out. "He didn't have to put her name."

"Yeah, we all know it's her, but the rest of the world doesn't. I mean, people hiring for jobs and universities google candidates. Who's going to pick a racist?" Eddy said.

Mike hadn't thought about it like that. This thing could potentially follow her for the rest of her life.

"I don't wanna hang out with her anymore. People will tar us with the same brush if we do," Eddy said. "I asked the others, and they agree with me."

"So, we are all just going to ghost her?" Mike asked.

"What else can we do?" Eddy asked.

'Stand by our friend no matter what anyone thinks?' Mike thought but didn't dare say. In a way, he agreed with Eddy. It was small-minded people like Grace who made his life more difficult. He wouldn't have to hide his feelings for Sammy if it wasn't for bigots.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

'I might be friends with him right now if it wasn't for that bunch of losers,' Mike thought, directing his rage at all fascists in the direction of his former friend.

"Stuff her," he said.

Grace had always had Ricky's magical seal of approval. Without that, her popularity level was bound to plummet even further than it already had. With half the school on her back, she needed Ricky to defend her.

"Ricky has made his stance on the Grace situation pretty clear too," he said. "She's fucked."

"He's half Jamaican. He probably deals with racism a lot," Eddy said.

"Who would dare?" Mike frowned.

"Well, I mean systemic racism. The racism inbuilt into society. I've been reading about it on social media since the Black Lives Matter movement, you know?"

Mike nodded as if he knew, but it sounded pretty complicated to his simple mind.

"It's the same with homophobia," Eddy added. His voice changed with the topic, becoming quieter yet more intense.

When Mike clamed up, he went on. "Well, there are different rules for straight and gay people surrounding marriage and adoption etc. Everyone should have equal rights. Don't you think so? We are all just human after all."

Eddy fixed his eyes on him; a look loaded with meaning.

'He's telling me it's okay to be gay,' Mike thought. 'First my brothers, now Eddy.'

For a horrible moment he thought he was going to cry, but he managed to hold it back, smiling instead.

When the lesson ended the boys left together, Eddy draping his arm over his shoulders in a brotherly hug. Grace approached them, eyes wide and indignant. When she opened her mouth to speak the boys veered away as one.

"Piss off, Grace."