Archive of Our Own

High school? Secondary. A new school, new people, new teachers. There’s a chance, slim as it is, to be someone new too. Maybe he can’t completely reinvent himself, but there will be enough people from other primaries that never knew him that he might be able to make friends, or at least acquaintances, find a club, get his grades up. His parents will be relieved and maybe he’ll be...if not happy, able to tolerate school. 

The gates are a line of bricks in his periphery, shoes and jeans shuffling by in the crush of bodies making their way in for the first day of class. Laces drag and catch on uneven concrete and asphalt, scuffing brand new shoes. Occasional familiar faces pop up in the crowd from the glances he steals between chunky black fringe, disappearing when he darts his eyes away. Hopefully even if they see him, they’ll pretend they hadn’t.

Easy enough to find, his locker is old and worn but clean and graffiti-free. Fresh. The lock sticks and there are unidentifiable crumbs in the corners, but there are no stink-bombs or notes and his books fit in perfectly fine. It’s going to be fine. His hoodie might even fit if he balls it up-

“Ew, is that Kylar?”

“Who?”
“He went to my last school. Total freak loser. My friend had to sit next to him in maths and said he stank.”

Fidgeting in stunned silence, he kept his eyes locked dead ahead at his crisp new workbook. The two girls behind him were almost done loading their things into the lockers opposite anyhow. Even if word got out, even if rumors spread, there were enough people from other feeder schools that there would have to be enough that wouldn’t care about his past. So what if some of them were already making friends and...talking? 

“He was so gross and gloomy. Totally a cutter.”
“Oh, was he the kid who almost got expelled for threatening someone with a knife?”

“Haha, yeah, he snapped and was so gonna-”

Kylar slammed his locker closed and speed-walked to the rear grounds, ignoring the stuffy heat fogging his head and staring at the linoleum squeaking under his new shoes. So what if word got out? There are enough new people. Someone won’t care. All the benches on the blacktop were occupied by chattering people whose glances made his head buzz with hot-cold panic. A buzzed-down tree stump was free and calling to him, an excuse to not stand and gawk and spiral. The wood hurt his rear when he all but slammed himself onto it, but the paranoid prickling at his nape eased when he opened his workbook and began doodling the other students in the courtyard in the margins. Art club. He’d find the art club later. It would be okay.

--

They all just think he’s shy, quiet, awkward. It’s not so bad. If he convinces himself that no one is talking about him when he hears whispers or the vague cadence of his name in the halls, that he’s just being paranoid when the back of his neck tingles with the pressure of eyes on his back, then he can greet strangers with most of a smile and get a few simple answers out to any casual questions. There are always going to be jerks in every group, in every class, who pick on anyone who seems easy to get a rise out of. Tacks in his seat and paper balls bouncing off his head were the mildest tactics and used to ruin every single lesson for him, so just once or twice a day was godsend. 

The worst bully in the school, the leader of the largest group of delinquents, harassed everyone based more on proximity than anything else so far, so he’d be alright so long as he kept his distance and his head down. As long as he didn’t make eye contact, as long as he stayed with the crowds in halls, as long as he didn’t stand out too much, as long as he put in just enough effort to keep even tenuous acquaintances up in class, it would be okay. He could claw his way back up. It would be okay, not perfect, but okay . If not happy, at least he wouldn’t be completely miserable like last time.

--

Hustling along at the back of another crowd during passing time, Kylar barely pays attention to the irritated yell from a male classmate at the head of the group. Then a girl yelps, the group slows, and people begin moving aside with a toss of hair or rolled eyes for the person cockily shouldering through the stuffed hall on the wrong side. Messy blond hair is all he can see at first, but the crowd is pushing forward behind him in annoyed demand to get past whatever the holdup is and leaving him no cracks to slip away through once he realizes who’s causing the fuss. 

“Nice tits, bitch.”

The exact person he’d been desperately avoiding from day one. An embodiment of old tormentors with brilliant blue eyes and a dimpled grin. A paradoxically reviled and respected force that terrorized the school and managed to sit atop the dog pile of popular students. Whitney. If he puts his head down, parts with the group, and keeps someone in front of him, he won’t be seen. Bodies part but squeeze him out into the opening, leaving no quarter. Ice rockets heel-to-scalp, freezing his blood as his green eyes meet blue.

“Who’s this little fairy?”

“That’s Kylar,” someone offers altogether too quickly. He vaguely recognizes her nasal voice. Ingratiating themselves to the popular dangerous kid by offering a sacrifice was probably smart on her part. Guarantee her safety in the long run by singling out the weak.

She’s pushed aside with a careless palm to her breast, her annoyed exclamation disappearing into the din as the crowd stops moving altogether and becomes an audience . It’s the same as before. It’s the same. Flesh and cotton and watching little flashing eyes form a wall at his back. Whitney brings on the jeering like a teleprompter, Kylar’s collar crumpling between fingers that could have easily wound around his throat, “Nice to meet you.”

“P-please,” Kylar begs, seeing the roadmap of the next four years unfolding in bluescale. Exactly the same. His fingers can only wrap three-fourths around the tan wrist at his chin, smearing clammy sweat as he shakes. Misery comes knocking again.

“Puh-please?” Nasty laughter. “We’re going to have a good year, yeah?” Whitney’s smile dimples, Kylars legs dangle, the sea recedes from the lockers.

The hall monitor gets him out with the master key a few hours later, stiff-limbed and exhausted.

--

Not sharing classes with him was a minor blessing. There isn’t an art club, the entire school surely either heard of his status as Freak Outcast or Target and wouldn’t risk getting caught with him, but he’d survived four years of it before and he could do it again. It sucks, but he can knuckle down and get through it so long as...Well, he just has to. He can’t get expelled. 

If the first day was bad, it has to get better. He’d better make it better. Put up or shut up. They won’t be moving again. Try . Put the effort in, just be normal . As happy as his parents would be if only he could be happy, there were limits . Be normal, be happy, endure, survive. 

Choppy waters churn in his stomach at the rusty red sunrise of the second morning, and Kylar loses his breakfast in the bushes on the way to school. Scrambled toaster waffles disappear into the landscaping, left behind and forgotten. Nicotine ash and the humid stink of a coming storm reek at the gates. He’ll be smart today, keep his guard up and his eyes peeled and be lonely but okay . Raindrops patter on the concrete. Studying in the library sounds like a good idea for now.

Things are going alright. Glances and whispers in the hall notwithstanding, he’s surviving. A few spitballs in class, tripped once, laughed at when he wasn’t prepared to be called on. Almost optimistic, he doesn’t quite want to die by lunch. He’ll keep the streak up, wait it out until everyone forgets he even exists, eke by in silence until he can try again or someone else is pulled into the slot he left behind. It’s like a vacuum, a social hole that must be filled. A necessary pariah.

Every lunch table is filled with some group or another, every chair filled and some twice over. Students sit on the curb outside, in the rear yard, at the gates. Without a herd to blend in to, he’d be painting a target onto his back by being visibly alone . Giving the raucous “cool kid’s table” a wide berth, he makes a beeline for the bathroom. As uncool as it is, he’ll be safe. He’ll be fine. Unseen, unthought of, worth the minor grossness of balancing the tray on his knees as he sits on the toilet with the loose seat.

The stall lock is flimsy, but the knot in his stomach loosens after it clicks closed. The green beans squeak around his fork and between his teeth, unsalted and wet. The unbuttered roll is unappealing but non-threatening, none the worse for wear after a few slow fork-stabs. Ham-steak warmed up and drowned in gravy...could be worse. Not entirely pleasant, but filling. Minutes tick by forkful by forkful, punctuated by shuffling feet and splashes at the urinal.

“No way, someone’s eating in here?” Someone breaks the relative silence, loafers pointed to him under the stall door. Mouth full, he stares at the anonymous shoes until they back away and disappear with quick slaps of rubber on linoleum. He chews slowly, leaning toward the gap under the stall. They’ve left, he didn’t recognize the voice. It’s fine.

Sitting back up and straightening out, he runs his tongue over his teeth. He should finish up and get out anyway, maybe hide in the library until class starts. From now on he might have to balance where he spent his time to avoid getting boxed in, just in case. 

His fork clacks loudly as he stabs through bite after bite, choking down what he can and slopping the rest into the toilet. Disgusting but filling. Not much worse than mum’s home cooking if he’s being honest. Slipping out of the restroom, Kylar goes mostly unnoticed and slips the tray into the return. Next is science, mostly a reprieve from both the mundane and the bullying. Diagrams of the flow of blood, the neat arrangement of organs, the lay of muscle and nerves, the lively community driving every single body on earth; it’s enough to make the day almost bearable. Sometimes, learning about the incredible drive every living thing has to survive in spite of the worst of circumstances is inspiring enough to push him to at least endure .

So he’ll endure.

--

Pizza day comes and Kylar takes advantage of the lunch’s particular portability to eat in the hall on the way to the library. Wiping grease off onto his sweatshirt, he grazes the selection for a few minutes before deciding to check the return bin to get a handle on what other students might be reading. If he can get a handle on common interests and find anyone --There’s a red book underneath a reference book and a cookie-cutter YA fantasy novel, promisingly dense and aged. A cautious flip through the pages turns his face as red as the jacket.

Tucked away in a corner out of sight of the main door and the librarian’s desk, he reads properly from the beginning. Lignin is supposedly the source of that great old book smell, maybe the glue too? Nose buried between pages, he devours as many chapters of Raul and Janet as the break will allow. Old and flowery as it is, it tickles something in his head to read about someone who can just do things. Of course he’d never be the main character, never, but it’s nice to pretend.

To be a guy like Raul, cool and handsome and confident, winning over his lover and getting rid of anyone who got in their way, he’d give anything. Janet did reject him when she found out, though...Sticky dread congeals at the thought of risking his life and giving his all for the sake of his love only to be told his very passion made them hate him. Maybe it’s for the best that he isn’t a Raul.

The librarian sneaks up like a ghost, gently touching his shoulder to inform him that lunch is almost over, causing him to very nearly jump out of his skin. Clapping the book shut and attempting to hide the title with his sleeve, Kylar thanks them for the warning and shrugs their hand off, adjusting the position of his arm and hugging the book close as he sidles away toward the return box. As he drops it in he notices, mortified, that rather than over his stomach he ought to have been holding the book a bit lower.

Unaware of the librarian’s nonchalant dismissal and return to notifying students, he rushed out and off to his locker to put the whole awkward moment behind him. How could he have gotten caught reading that in school? Come to think of it, why would a school stock that sort of thing in the first place? Did they not check their own stock? Was it just an open secret? At least until someone reports it and it inevitably gets taken away like everything else good in his life, he’ll have something to while away his breaks.

His swim trunks greet him at the bottom of his locker, vibrant blue and bone dry. Fuck . For thirty glorious minutes he’d forgotten that he had physical education next. No way in hell is he going through the song and dance of having his clothes tossed in the pool like last year, getting stripped and mocked in the locker room, getting held under, getting tripped on the slippery concrete, having his most embarrassing sketches plastered over the wall while he’s blissfully unaware in class--his train of thought goes steadily further and further afield until the bell rings and he’s still stood stock still in front of his open locker. If he outright skips then he won’t even get to enjoy the quiet of an empty house tonight.

(Morgan) stares critically at him when he arrives with his bag in his arms fully dressed. If he feels so awful that he can’t even change and try treading water, he really shouldn’t have come to school at all. Sufficiently warned that this is the one time he’ll let Kylar off the hook, he shuttles him over to the benches to do other classwork while he instructs the students who did properly prepare for class. Disappointment from a teacher is nothing new. It’s nothing compared to having to waddle soddenly to the principal’s office for a change of clothing. It’s nothing.

The entire pool room is damp and warm and reeks of chlorine, or to be more specific, of chlorine reacted with dirt and oil and sweat and skin and piss . All the benches are finely misted with pool-water and slightly sticky. Charming. The textured concrete dips in worn old paths, leaving little pools of water he can’t even avoid on the way from the phys-ed office to the riser furthest from the chaos of Board of Education mandated exercise. Once he’s no longer even in Mason’s peripheral vision, Kylar pulls his sketchbook out instead of his textbook and gets to work. If nothing else, his fellow students will make for some interesting artistic exercises.

Figure drawings let his mind wander; he can remember playing his favorite machine in the arcade, think about the cute stray dog that sat with him in the alley, imagine what he might say to the cute girl running in the park if only she’d stop for a moment. His classmates become sharp shapes and curling lines on the page, filtered and softened and made safe with pencil lead. The normally stiff, crisp paper feels squidgy in the humid poolside air, but the smudging lines and the soft texture could work for a new piece if he--

“Oops~!” An elbow wings him in the shoulder, jostling his sketchbook loose onto the misted benches with an anticlimactic fwop .The chubby girl who pushed him sneers and rejoins the line for the diving board, giggling and gossiping with her friends about the creepy kid sitting out on the first day and watching the girls . The book slides off into one of the many little puddles on the concrete, water soaking into the cover before he can snatch it back up.

The cover is soft even after he dabs it mostly dry, guaranteed to turn warped and wobbly without a dry-press that he doesn’t have access to in school. Scowling, he draws himself up to his meager height and shiveringly squares his shoulders. In. out. Fills his lungs up with scraps of courage, cheeks reddening in ashamed indignance. That bi-bi-bitch, his throat flutters around the imagined tirade, chest hitching as he gears up to maybe for once stand up for himself.

“Kylar, head back to the lockers for a minute,” Mason interrupts, inscrutably blank, “From now on, even if you’re not swimming you need to get changed. And no books, okay?” His brows crease pityingly, looking down his nose at the miserable sight of a damp, overdressed outcast.

Deflating, Kylar lowers his gaze to the perpetually slippery-scratchy concrete floor. Again, he’s the same he’s always been even when he tries to change. Tucking his sketchbook into his hoodie, he nods. “Y-yes, sir.”

The short walk is so much longer under the judging stares.

--

Another day full of boring frustrating classes, another day of whispered rumors and gossip. Another list of stacking his books up in his locker this way and that, killing time in the library, sketching the most interesting of the figures he sees in the back schoolyard. He survived the worst of the week without another Pool Incident or more than a rough bump in the halls and he’d like to keep it that way. Keeping his head above water, treading shoulder-deep, gulping down stagnant bog-water and chlorine, he hasn’t made any friends yet and he knows the window is closing but there’s nothing to be done about it. Trying to force it is the surest way to send them running. That and desperately clawing for something, anything, a lifeline to pull him from the slippery social pit.

Other outcasts catch his eye, make for good subjects, live in the ruffled paged of his sketchbook and taped up to the inside of his locker door. Ones he especially liked are slipped into the cover of his binder, glued onto subject notebooks, not-quite bragging about his artistic skill but reminding him that there’s at least something that redeems him. He can be good for something, at something. 

There’s one that catches his eye more often than not, almost as much of a target as he is, an outcast without a family and about as many friends. If he could just talk to them, he’s sure they could at least be comrades and lean on one another. The only problem is meeting them. It has to be organic, it can’t be sudden and forced or else it’ll scare them off. They share a class and all, but they sit on opposite sides of the room and it’ll take all year before he gets the chance to be assigned a group project with them.

He thumbs the rough wrinkled paper taped to the inside of his locker, a slightly more pouty-lipped version of their face acting as his motivational poster for the time being. He’ll come up with something. The line of their cheek smudges slightly under his petting. Familiar riotous banter echoes through the hall over the din of the passing period. Instinctively he stiffens, but he disregards the approaching storm and leaves his current masterpiece alone in favor of piling up the day’s books. One with the scenery, just another student at the lockers; surely they’ll be too busy to notice him.

The hall goes quiet, suspicious murmuring rolling through the throngs. Hair prickles on the back of his neck and he considers turning to check, but what good would that do? Strong hands circle his skinny waist, long but blunt fingers curling into the waistband of his slack, material gathering higher in a tight grip. Belt and all, his pants scrape to his knees and pool at the floor to a cacophony of mocking laughter. Frozen, his head goes fuzzy-numb with conflicting panicked instincts and he fails to do much of anything as Whitney slams him face-first into the locker beside his, cringing and zoning out knock-kneed and bloody-nosed on the tile.

“Nice ass, loser,” Whitney barks through a grin, “Might be worth something if you drop out.”

The crowd is split between those lingering to gawk and snicker and those shuffling quietly away to avoid Whitney’s wide-reaching destruction and chaos.

His belt is a little stretched, he later notices, and the rake of thumbnails left long red lines down his hips. He’d picked himself up and put himself back together quick enough, but he had to duck into the nearest classroom to snag tissue to plug his nose up until he could get to the health office. The kindly nurse let him spend half the block laying back on the cot in the back room until his nose stopped bleeding. Any longer than that and she’d have to call home about the injury, she warned.

His classmates look up from their textbooks when he comes in late, watching him right to his seat. Reluctantly turning their attention back to the reading at the behest of the teacher, they let him slip back into obscurity for the time being. Time passes fast and soon he’ll be safe behind the lock of a stall door. In the lunch line he learns that the cafeteria has a weekly rotation of meals and today was once again time for the wildly unappealing TV-dinner approximation.

Hustling along the side of the cafeteria, he slips into the men’s bathroom and sets up camp in one of the stalls once again. It worked out last time. The less people saw him, the safer he’d be. The flimsy lock offers some small comfort, a half-promise of privacy and a barrier that’s not allowed to be crossed. Even if he can’t talk himself into eating any of this slop and flushes it he’ll have a little bit of peace.

Stringy bangs curtained his view of the lunch tray, but even he could see he mostly only pushed the food around. Beans sat sadly in congealing gravy, steamed roll going stiff and stale alarmingly quickly, the ham-steak turning grey. Sweat squeezes through his pores in a needle-hot burst as bitter nicotine gushes across the saggy ceiling tiles.

Thunder crackles as familiarly anonymous fake leather loafers appear under the stall door, smeared with ash and scuffed over the toes and sides. One drifts up, toe catching on the bottom lip of the door and rattling the lock on its way. His breath catches in his chest, his eyes flick to the narrow gap between the wall and the next stall. Dull blue plastic jolts inward, red plastic tray slamming into his hip bones and coating his front in slop, knees screaming in abrupt agony; Whitney catches the door on the rebound with his foot still outstretched from the snap kick, grinning.

“What a waste,” the bully pinches his tongue between his teeth and steps into the stall, green beans flattening under his soles. “You must still be hungry. C’mon, freak, I brought you something.” The world goes dark as Whitney traps him between the subway tile and the cheap school toilet and pinches his nose shut. He doesn’t even unzip, just shuffles his waistband low enough to get his dick out and shoves himself into Kylar’s space.

“No, nn-” Kylar tries, tossing his head back and slipping on gravy trying to scoot out of range.

“Shut up. I’m keeping you company,” Whitney sneers, changing tactics. Strong fingers wind into his greasy hair, yanking him into position and keeping him from slipping off the toilet and crawling out of the stall. Shoving his thumb into Kylar’s mouth, he grips the weaker’s jaw and forces it open. “If you bite, I’ll make you wish you were dead.”

I already do , Kylar thinks, gagging at the salt and musk and testing his teeth against the thumb tucked between his molars. His scalp burns and fingernails test the skin of his throat; a warning. There won’t be a third. Snot and tears add to the salt on his tongue. It feels like an uncooked bratwurst , the distant thought distracts him from gagging on the foreign object being forced into his throat. Rain patters on the bathroom window, a welcome hush that dulls the wet sounds inside and the grunting above him. 

“Yeah, open up,” Whitney groans, losing hold on his unkempt hair in favor of gripping the sides of his head to thrust into the hot, slimy space he was claiming. The harder he got, the more room he would need, and making that space was half the fun. Tucking his other thumb between Kylar’s teeth, he pulled. Pushed his hips forward. Imagined he could see himself popping in and out of the spasming ring of his throat in spite of the darkness. Giggled giddily at the useless little fists on his thighs. 

Kylar can’t breathe. He can’t see. Blurry dark shapes, no air, salt and musk and nicotine, the pipes digging into his lower back and his skull bumping into the cold wall tile with each thrust. Gravy soaks through his shirt, sticky and lukewarm and heavy. His jaw hurts. His knees hurt. He’s supposed to be okay. He was going to be fine.

“Fuuuck,” Whitney moans and grinds deep, thumb slipping free so he can cradle the back of Kylar’s head, “Take it, slut.” 

The tiniest bit of grim satisfaction blooms when Kylar realizes Whitney was probably getting gravy all over the inner legs of his trousers. Small distractions, little blessings. Little blessings, like how his life couldn’t possibly get any worse from here. Not really. Not in any way that mattered. This had never...happened before. Not this. Lots of awful things. He’d been in a cast from being pushed down the stairs, locked in the supply shed, had his notebooks burned, been humiliated by a tenuous crush, but not this. But of course it would happen. It would happen to him.

There’s a throb against his tongue and Whitney shudders. At least it’ll be over soon. It’s a relief when he pulls out in spite of the ache it leaves in his throat and jaw; it’s a relief in spite of how Whitney hunches over hims and butts his glans into his cheek and strips his hand over his shaft again and again until semen stripes over his face and drips from his bangs. It’s over. Whitney smears his cum-and-saliva covered hand through Kylar’s hair and down his shirt, spreading the mess more than cleaning himself. It’s over. It’s over . 

“Didn’t even puke,” Whitney laughs, “good boy. See you later, freakshow.” Preoccupied with leaving the scene of the crime, he just hikes his pants back up and disappears from whence he came.

Shellshocked, Kylar stares at the chipped lunch tray laying on the floor, the crushed beans, the stale roll, gravy drippings. His shoes, with a single green bean nestled into the loop of a lace. His lap, a mess of gravy and the ham-steak cradled against his shirt. It hits him: he’s not going to be okay, it’s not going to be fine. They’re not going to move again, and it’s worse. It’s even worse. Bile and barely-digest food spills back onto his legs and the tacky cheap flooring. At least he hadn’t eaten much.

He waits until the class bell rings to trudge miserably to the office for a change of clothes, contemplating the perks of bringing his knife with him tomorrow.