Behind My Mask

About a week had passed and I had settled in the school quite nicely. For once I didn’t feel like I lived in a hell hole, and my dad had told me that we would be staying here for longer than intended; we would usually only stay maximum 6 months, but now apparently it was going to be a few years. Unless the plans are going to change, which was unlikely.

But obviously I had to jinx it didn’t I?

As I was heading for my car I was shoved into a wall, and rather forcefully if I might say. It was the same jock from last time, but this time he had brought a few of his friends.
“I don’t think that we have properly welcomed you to this school” He said looking at his friends, sniggering, and then back at me. ‘Oh great, and here I thought I would have a normal life without anyone trying to patronize me, but no, they just have to make sure that I am ‘properly introduced’’ I thought sarcastically.
“I’m good thanks” I answered, though this kind of answers normally ended up in me being in deeper shit than I already was; I seemed to always make the same mistakes when faced with these kinds of situations. I would always make sarcastic comments thinking that it is the best thing to do, that they will back away and leave me alone, but it would always backfire at me.

“Really, believe me, you’re not” he said, stepping closer than he already was and aiming straight for my face. Me, being the fucking moron that I was, I put up my hands in self defense, which I immediately regretted because they just started being more aggressive towards me.

“Oh no you don’t” He told me before landing a powerful punch to my stomach. I really just couldn’t understand why they just couldn’t leave me alone; it’s not like I did something to piss them off as far as I knew.
I inhaled sharply as the fist had collided with my abdomen, which I was sure would leave a bruise later. A normal person would have given up and collapsed on the floor to just make the beating a bit more bearable and for them to go easy with the hits, but I kept standing, which earned me a few more powerful blows to the head; he had aimed for my nose which had caused a massive amount of bleeding, and I swear I felt something crack, but I just hoped to god that it wasn’t broken because I sure as hell wasn’t gonna walk around school with a fucking bandage on my nose.

I tried my hardest to avoid the punches from my eyes, because there was no way I was gonna have a black eye, and then end up wearing an eye patch, no sir.
I withheld screaming; I was biting my tongue and doing everything I could to not let out as much as a whimper. I didn’t want to give up that quickly.
There wasn’t anything I could actually do; I was surrounded by 4 guys twice the size of me and I sure wasn’t superman. Compared to them I was quite weak. Though, I’m not exactly unable to defend myself, but I’m not packed with muscles ether.
Another couple of blows had made my legs weak enough to collapse underneath me, and I fell while still holding my stomach, which they were mainly aiming for. I was still fighting strong and not giving out a sound, which just seemed to make them even more pissed off and go at me even more aggressively; I could feel the soles of their shoes kick every part of me available, but in the midst of all that pain I noticed that they avoided my neck and face.
After what felt like hours something had made them stop. My guess was that it was a teacher, but I couldn’t give enough fucks about that right now, I was trying to somehow soothe the pain that was echoing through my body.
Tears had escaped my eyes, but it wasn’t attached to my emotions; they were the sort of tears you couldn’t stop no matter what you did, they would just come out when you experienced a great deal of pain.

If I am perfectly honest, this was one of my worst experiences so far, and now I was just conflicted; this school was both the best and the worst in many ways; whenever there was a good, along with it came a bad, and this time the bad had gone to one extreme. I just wonder how extreme the good can get.

----

I had woken up in a hospital bed, but I didn’t feel that it should have been taken to that extreme, I felt fine. I looked around the room to only find no one there, so I just got up and looked for a mirror wondering just how bad my face was beaten up.

Before I had enough time to look around the room a doctor had came in, looking down at his clipboard before turning his eyes up to look at me.
“Feeling better?”
I simply nodded to his question, and sooner than expected my mum came in; honestly I didn’t expect her at all, since she was always away for work or something else.
“Oh Kellin, my poor baby, what happened to you?” she started, trying to hug me, but I rejected that hug like I did with everyone; I wasn’t exactly the best with physical contact, even with my mum. It’s not that I had this major problem with it, I just felt slightly uncomfortable with hugs. I used to love them like any normal person, but after an incident I just felt repulsed by them. I just can’t remember what it was.

My mum did look slightly hurt, but she didn’t press on it; she had come to accept my strange ways even though it was obvious she was struggling with it.

I had been let home the same day; the doctors told me that I had barely gotten out without any broken bones and that I should be grateful for my luck. My ass, if I would have luck I wouldn’t even be in this kind of situation in the first place, but I guess they had some element of truth to that.
At home I had examined all of my bruises; I obviously had some on my face, but thankfully to my ‘self-defense’ I didn’t have a black eye. My lip had been split open and now had some stitches in it, which I thought were excessive and unnecessary. My nose wasn’t broken, though it did look pretty beaten up, and my whole left cheek was swollen.
My torso was covered in bruises and scabs, and it hurt like hell when I touched them. I guessed that earlier I had been given pain killers since now I was hurting all over with every movement I made.
At various parts of the day my mum would try to rub some ointment on my skin, but I would reject her each time. I did feel a slight guilt nagging at me from the corner of my brain since she was only trying to be nice, but the reason for why I was being such a prick always made me forget it.

But being this beaten up didn’t only have bad points; my mum had made my siblings be nice to me and do whatever I asked. Obviously they didn’t listen to her completely, but it was visible that they respected her request to some extent as they were nicer to me than usual.

I always acted that I didn’t care what people thought of me and their actions towards me, but at the end of the day I was visibly hurt by their harsh words. By the time it did show on my face I was already locked away in my room, putting on another mask and cutting away the pain.
I had discovered self harm when I was 11 and there was no one ever around to tell me right from wrong; I was in deep emotional distress even at such a young age. I had heard that many people did it on their wrists, but I thought it was too showy and too easy to detect, so I had chosen my thighs. So far no one has discovered me, and I am sure to keep it that way.
Though cutting isn’t the only thing I do; I had been pressurized in to smoking when I was only 10. At that time I had no friends and only wanted to fit in, and apparently that was the only thing I could do to fit in to their group, so obviously I did try it and just got addicted to it.
Both of my twin brothers and older sister had found out about it, though somehow they didn’t judge me, instead they said that they would provide anything of the sort if I ever needed it.

----

The next day I had decided to stay home, feeling too mentally exhausted to answer any questions or put up with anyone’s shit, though the day after my mum had forced me to go to school.
It actually made me wonder why she was still at home; she was always away at some business trip just like my dad, and usually wouldn’t be home for more than a day.

I couldn’t say that I complained; I actually quite liked my solitude. My siblings all minded their own business, and that was one of the things that I liked about them. Since my parents were almost never home I could do whatever I wanted, and I could get away with literally anything. If I would murder someone my parents wouldn’t even bat an eyelash, as far as I know.

As soon as I had stepped in to the school people around me started whispering and giving me weird glances, but did I really look that bad? I only had a few bruises visible, was it really that interesting or repulsive? God, some people.
My friends had found me rather quickly and started bombarding me with questions, to which I answered in the simplest way possible. By lunch they had given up, realizing that they won’t get much out from me, but they did have the general idea of who did this to me, and apparently they were going to ‘fuck them over’.

“Hey, Kellin, we are doing a sleepover at Tony’s tomorrow, and you have no choice but to come” Mike told me, I groaned in displeasure, but apparently nothing I would say would persuade him to let me not go. I actually wouldn’t mind going to a sleepover, but truth be told I've never been to one; I never really had the chance since I was always hated no matter where I went.

The day had come quick and the jocks didn’t even show in my presence, but I couldn’t really give two fucks about it. I was still getting strange glances, but again I just flipped anyone off who dared to make a comment or anything more than just a glance.

I had driven home to drop off my school stuff, gotten things that I was told to bring and then went to Tony’s. I already knew where he lived since I have been there a couple of times to drop him off after band practice at Vic’s.

That reminded me; I had chosen Vic to do as my portrait in art as I had found him the most intriguing in the group, but I had yet to learn his personality inside out. Though, me asking him was somewhat awkward; I had rushed my sentence and half of it he didn’t understand, so I had to repeat it slowly, and when he understood he had agreed, in a kind of awkward yet adorable way.

For the sleepover I was told to bring some of the basic stuff; my pj's, my toothbrush, and a blanket if I really wanted to. Though, apparently he had enough spares to go around for almost the whole school.
Tony had a big house, and I could see that without even the need to go inside. First off he had a fucking driveway that was like a private road and massive gates at the beginning of it, and his house was not just big, it was a fucking mansion, so it’s only understandable that all the sleepovers are normally held at his house.
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a butler and full house of maids, I’d actually be surprised if he didn’t.

I would have to say that I myself wasn’t bad off either and that was quite reasonable seeing as my parents were both workaholics and just worked nonstop, I don’t even remember the last time they had taken a holiday.

I was the last person to arrive, but that was to be expected since I did leave an hour later than I was supposed to. I drove through the gates after texting Tony I was here; I was too lazy to get out of my car and press the button that would ring his house phone or some shit. I had to admit that driving through his private road in the dark was slightly unnerving.

I was welcomed by all of them running out and greeting me with a bone crushing group hug; they all knew that I hated hugs, so they tried to do it as often as possible to just take the piss.
The other people who had come were Mike, Jaime and Vic; Matty had come down with the flu, the unlucky bastard. He had been sick for days. We had visited him somewhere along the week to check on his condition, and it didn’t look like he would be able to go out of his house any time soon.

I had eventually managed to get my stuff up to the room we would be spending the night in, the room was huge to say the least; there had been 5 beds set up in the room in a sort of circle, and in the middle of it there was a lot of space in which we could do anything in really. There was one big window that had thick curtains, and the lights were adjustable.
There was also a room next to it, which was attached to this room, that had a large plasma TV on the wall and there were also many games and electronics such as Xbox, Wii, PlayStation 3, and other things that I didn’t even know the name of. Surrounding it were very comfortably looking sofas and there was a coffee table in front of it.
There was even a bathroom attached to this room that was fancy as fuck.
Who knew that someone could be this loaded? Everything was just so convenient; they even had a mini fridge there. I really wouldn’t be surprised if there was a hidden kitchen somewhere in the room.

They had all picked their beds before my arrival, so I just had to go with the one that was left which was between Vic and Jaime. Before I could get comfortable I was dragged off to the room next door where everything was set up for a movie; there was pizza and some other snacks on the table and the sofa had some extra blankets for that little bit of extra comfort, not to mention that it was loaded with pillows. There were a range of DVDs set out, and the lighting was also set up just like in a cinema. At this point I just wanted to move in with Tony, or beg his parents to adopt me.
“Get changed” Tony told me as he shoved me right back out of the room. I was just slightly confused but I did as I was told; I changed in to my comfortable sweats and a comfortable shirt. I wasn’t exactly surprised when I found basically all of them wearing similar things.

After a long game of ‘rock-paper-scissors’ and more debating we had decided on watching one of the ‘Exorcist’ movies. I personally didn’t mind horrors, but I could see Vic and Jaime slightly anxious.
Tony and Mike were sitting on their own arm chairs, both settled in comfortably in their own little space, but I was basically sandwiched between Jaime and Vic while the movie wasn’t even half way through. It started off as me having a perfectly good amount of personal space and we were all evenly spread out, but through the short course of the beginning of the movie they had somehow managed to scoot closer to me, and were now basically clutching to me, though the funniest thing was that the movie wasn’t even that scary.
Part of me wanted to shake them off, but the other part felt perfectly comfortable and also too lazy to do anything about it, so I just let them have their way. It was actually quite adorable if I thought about it.