Please Tell Me What We Have Is Real

By second period I was tired, sick, and annoyed. My headache had gotten worse and I was nearly falling asleep on my desk. What wasn’t helping is Brian was throwing paper at me and pulling my hair. Johnny and I are younger than Brian, but he had to take over a few classes and he has those classes with me. When the bell rang for third period, I got up and walked out the building. Third period was gym, I wasn’t up for getting my face planted in with a dodge ball. I walked up to ‘the spot’. It wasn’t really anything exciting, just a nice shady spot under a tree. This was my spot, the place I go to relax and when I skip classes. When I reached said spot I noticed three figures already sitting there. I walked closer and realized it was Brian and his friends. Great. I continued walking though, that was my spot. It didn’t have a plaque on it claiming it was mine, but it is mine. Jimmy was the first to notice me and he looked concerned. Brian noticed Jimmy was staring at something so he followed Jimmy’s eyes and he smirked when he saw me standing there.

“Hey, fag,” He sneered.

I ignored him and sat down on the other side of the tree. I reached into my backpack and pulled out my sketchbook, pencils and paint; laying them down in front of me. I flipped through the countless pages of drawings when I finally reached my latest creation. That’s when I heard the grass moving and a shadow covering my drawing. Hesitantly, I turned to my right to see Jimmy was sitting next to me.

“Hey. You draw really good,” He said looking at the drawing on the page. I blushed.
“Thank you,” I smiled at him.

I felt a question clawing at my tongue and I couldn’t hold it back.

“Why does Brian hate me?”

His head snapped up and his eyes met mine. “To be honest, I think he likes you but he’s confused. He doesn’t want to believe he’s in love with a guy, so he picks on you to push the feelings aside.”

I blushed again. “Yeah, right.”
“Dude! You’re blushing! You like Brian huh?” Jimmy’s lips curved into a giant grin
I blushed even more and nodded.
“Cute.”

I jumped when my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Johnny asking where I was. I told him I was at the spot and he was going to come here. When I turned my attention back to Jimmy, he was flipping through my sketchbook. He stopped at one particular picture and he started grinning like an idiot. I looked over at which one it was and all the blood rushed to my face as I tried pulling the book away from him.

The picture he was looking at was a drawing I drew of Brian a while back. We were in Math class and he had fallen asleep on his desk. I took it as an opportunity to draw a portrait of him. I successfully yanked the sketchbook out of Jimmy’s grasp and shoved it in my backpack as Johnny was walking up to join us.

“Hey Zacky,” He said sitting down, staring at Jimmy a little nervously.
“He’s cool, don’t worry,” I said, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“Hey short-shit!” Jimmy chuckled and so did I.
“That’s your new nickname,” I said in-between laughs.

We sat laughing over that forever. It was hilarious to us. I noticed Jimmy kept smiling at Johnny and glancing over at him. Maybe Jimmy likes Johnny? I don’t know, I’m not cupid. Jimmy whispered something to Johnny and Johnny’s eyes went wide.
“You told him that you like Brian!?” He shrieked and I just nodded; my body shaking slightly. Johnny hugged me.
“I’m sorry Johnny, I just- he guessed and I didn’t want to lie,” I said.

Johnny understood and we continued goofing off. We were telling jokes and Jimmy was telling us about how he got kicked off the basketball team. Overall we had fun. Pretty soon it was time for lunch so we all gathered our shit and headed into the cafeteria.