About a Boy

Kellin barely suppressed a cough as he passed the joint back to Jesse, who eagerly took a large puff. The two friends, as well as a few others, were standing behind the bike sheds, skipping English Lit or Geography in favour of doing drugs.
“Hurry up, Jesse,” Gabe whined, grabbing for the thin stick.
“Gimme a second.” Jesse commanded, taking one final puff before reluctantly handing the joint to his friend. Kellin leaned against the wall and shrugged off his blazer, dumping it and his tie on top of his bag as he did so. He hated the school uniform, it was the main reason so many of the boys at their school got beaten up on the bus. As well as the fact that they had a choir. That was compulsory to join. Sadly for Kellin, in freshman year he a) hadn’t been aware of that and b) had actually had some desire to do well in school, resulting in him getting at least one solo in every performance they did.
“Did you hear that?” Jesse asked suddenly. The boys stopped for a moment, listening carefully for a teacher.
“-and if you ride a bike to school-“
“Shit!” Justin hissed, gesturing for all the boys to start moving as they heard their head mistress, Mrs. O’Sullivan leading some new student around the school. Kellin hastily pulled up his bag and blazer, abandoning his tie and started to run after his friends.
“Kellin! Hurry up!” Jack shrieked as Gabe already made his way into the senior building, closely followed by Jesse.
“Kellin Bostwick.” A sharp voice said from behind him. Kellin bit back a sigh as he watched Jack enter the building and turned around to see Mrs. O’Sullivan, her glasses still perched low on her ridiculously pointed nose, twisting his tie between her fingers. “This is yours?” He nodded and held out a hand for the item of clothing, slipping it around his neck when she handed it back. “I won’t ask what you’re doing outside class now, just know that you will be receiving a detention later on in the week. Seeing as you’re already out of class, however, perhaps you can do me a small favour.” She smiled patronisingly at him, thin, badly dyed blonde hair falling in greasy curtains about her face, and Kellin nodded once again, peering over her shoulder in an attempt to see whoever was cowering behind her. “A new boy will be joining your class this year, Victor,” she gestured behind her carelessly, “and I need him to be shown around, but I have a meeting to get to, so if you could finish showing him around the school I would be very grateful.” She clasped her hands in front of her and smiled at Kellin, before quickly making her way to the Junior Building.
Kellin breathed out loudly and looked up at the new boy. He felt his breath catch in his throat when he saw his face because, wow, this kid was gorgeous. He had huge, brown eyes, long, brown hair, tan skin and a seemingly perfect mouth… What made him the most interesting, however, was the nose ring.
“Hey,” Kellin said. He looked curiously at the boy when he just nodded and turned away again, shuffling his feet. “Hello?”
“Um, hi,” the boy muttered. Kellin looked him up and down. He looked like a freshman, he decided, with his slightly over sized blazer, perfectly tied tie and shiny shoes.
“What’s your name?” Kellin persisted.
“I’m Vic.”
“Okay. Well, I’m Kellin.” He didn’t bother to hold out his hand for the boy to shake or anything, there was no point him even pretending to be polite. Instead, he started to make his way to the Senior Building, where he could start showing the boy around. “Come on, then.” He said exasperatedly when Vic didn’t follow.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, scurrying after Kellin. Kellin frowned but didn’t question the boy’s odd behaviour, probably go bullied in his last school or something, he decided. Not that he cared.
Kellin boredly led Vic through the halls of the school, pointing vaguely to the canteen, their cloakrooms, the geography classroom… When they passed the English classroom Kellin looked through the window on the door to see Jesse doodling on a piece of paper. When the ginger boy snapped his head up, Kellin offered him his middle finger with a happy smirk before directing Vic away.
Once they made their way around the Senior Building, Kellin showed Vic the Junior Building, where the freshmen and sophomores stayed for form, registration and tutorial. He noted the way Vic’s eyes lit up when he saw the music room, looking as though he wanted to go into the empty classroom, full of instruments.
“Want to go in?” Kellin offered. He couldn’t help but laugh when Vic’s eyes widened in shock.
“Are we allowed?” He whispered.
Kellin shrugged. “Probably not.”
“Then we can’t-“ Vic was cut off by the ridiculously annoying bell ringing, loud and sharp as one was just above the music room door.
“We can go at lunch.” Kellin suggested. He had no idea why he was being so nice to Vic, because he wasn’t even particularly kind to his group of friends. It had to be because he was cute. There was no other explanation. Vic nodded, looking slightly nervous. “The tour was almost over anyway.” Kellin continued. “This is the language corridor, where you’ll have Spanish, French, German or Italian lessons, but Latin’s upstairs, with the R.E. classrooms.” The joys of going to a Catholic school, he thought bitterly. “So what do you have next?” Vic dug around in his bag for a moment to pull out his planner, and handed it carefully to Kellin.
Tuesday, Period Three was… Physics. Which Kellin also had. “Looks like we’re in the same class. I’ll take you there.” He made his way out of the Junior Building and started to walk back to the Senior Building, ignoring the ugly scenery of the school site he had grown so accustomed to. They walked past the pond with the small Koi fish and into the building, going upstairs to the first floor and to the door of the Second Physics lab. “Don’t go into a lab without a teacher.” He instructed as Vic reached for the door handle.
“Oh. Sorry.” Vic stepped away as more students began to line up outside the classroom.
“Don’t need to apologise.” Kellin shrugged, stepping back as their teacher made her way to the door, smiling to Vic as she did so.
“Alright boys, in we go.” She said, walking in and holding the door open for her students to enter. Kellin watched a Vic hovered at the back of the classroom, unsure where to sit, but shrugged and went to sit near the middle, where he knew Jack would join him shortly.
“Who is that?” And sure enough, Jack slid into the seat next to him, dumping his bag on the floor. “And sorry, by the way. O’Sully catch you?”
“Yeah, prick. He’s a new kid, I think he’s in our form.”
“Boys.” Mrs. Lee said sternly, looking at Kellin and Jack. They stared at her blankly before standing up, something they had to do at the beginning of each class to signify respect to the teacher and a formal start to the lesson.
“Good morning, boys.” She greeted.
“Good morning, Mrs. Lee.” They all muttered. She shook her head sadly at them and gestured for them to sit down.
“Alright, straight into the lesson today. Parallax angles…”
____
Kellin sat at the table he always did with Jesse, Gabe, Jack and Justin at lunch. He had some over battered fish in front of him, which he was pointedly ignoring, and he laughed along with his friends when someone cracked a joke. He looked up to see Vic holding a tray, eyes darting around the canteen in search of a seat. His eyes settled on the seat next to Kellin and then he met Kellin’s gaze, a hopeful look in his eyes. Kellin pointedly looked away, a faint blush gracing his cheeks. When he looked again, he saw Vic sitting at an empty table, alone, a small frown on his lips,
“Not sitting with your best friend?” Jesse joked.
“Shut up.” Kellin muttered. He watched as two boys who he had never spoken to stood next to Vic’s table for a moment before taking two seats across from him, called Tony and Jaime. He was… Happy that someone was befriending him, sure, but he kind of regretted not inviting him to sit with them. But at the same time, he really didn’t.
“He gonna be your new toy boy, Kells?” Gabe continued with the light hearted but annoying taunting.
“Shut your mouth.” Kellin threatened, flicking a chip at his friend. He spared Vic one last glance before turning away completely and resuming conversation with his friends.
____
Kellin didn’t end up showing Vic the music room, mostly because he couldn’t be bothered to approach the boy, but spent the rest of lunch behind the bike sheds, watching his friends smoke because it wasn’t quite to his taste.
On his way home, Kellin got shouted at because of his uniform, but nobody approached him, luckily. He unlocked the door to their large house and took his shoes off. He set them on the rack and walked through the large, white marble entrance hall and up the first two flights of stairs into his bedroom. He sat on the huge, King sized bed and sighed. For some reason, he couldn’t get Vic out of his head. Which annoyed him, because he was just a skinny, quiet boy who had joined his class, and he shouldn’t be affecting Kellin in such a way. He refused to have a crush, point blank refused. Because people had crushes on him, not the other way around.
He sighed once again and tossed his bag into the corner, reaching into his pocket to pull out his iPod and play something by Foo Fighters.