Loverboy

Well exam week came in and I was trying so hard to study for French 3 but it was just impossible for me. First off, I’m never going to speak it once I graduate. Deuxièmement, baiser cette école. Yeah you heard me. I’m pretty sure the only good thing about exam week is that we only take two every morning and then we can leave campus for the rest of the day and do whatever we want to.

“Are you sure that studying is really going to help you?” Oli spoke up from the silence as I was reading over my French book. “His tests are easy but just long and annoying.” Well, excuse me. I was getting ready to snap back at him but then I realized how much I don’t even care for this subject and I planned on writing the answers down on my desk anyway so.

“We don’t take our French exam until last hour for the day I guess I’m not worried much about it. Wait we both have the same exam hours tomorrow. What’s our English one, anyway?” the teacher never even mentioned what our exam will be so I don’t know if I just didn’t hear it or not.

“English exam? Oh, it’s the same every year. You’re divided into teams of two people and we get a topic to discuss and we have to write out a two page paper on it. Normally it’s those persuasive things so it’s going to be easy. She gives us the entire class hour to type it out and it’s due by the end of class.”

What the hell, why couldn’t we receive our topic a day or two prior to exam week. This school is so well organized!

--

Okay, that English exam paper was easy to type out so pretend I never said any of that. French 3 exam is next and wow just kill me right here, right now. Oh god, oh god, oh god. Those two words kept going through my head as Mr. Aiden passed out the exam packet. He handed me the packet and my eyes widened when I looked at it. Not a single word of English was to be found on the four sheets of paper. I bit down on my lip and looked over to my right to see Oli getting out his pencil. Mr. Aiden went to the front of the room and wrote in bold letters on the whiteboard, “Absolument pas parler pendant le test. Vous parlez, vous échouez.” which translates to, "Absolutely no talking during the test. You talk, you fail." Fuck, I'm so screwed.

"Bon, classe, commencer," Mr. Aiden said as he set a timer down. Everyone immediately started working on the test as I was frantically writing down my name and messing up two times in a row. Straight A student right there.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Oli quickly writing down answers and erasing any mistakes he made. He’s most likely on question eleven while I’m here trying to figure out what the fuck question five is even saying. Only 73 minutes left of torture mental screaming!

Twelve minutes left until the timer went off and I was still screaming inside of my head. This is exactly what happens when you just look at the text rather than actually studying. More than the majority of the class was finished, Oli included, while I frantically guessed on question 111. Oh my god, fuck everything, I’m bullshitting this test.

“Crayons en baisse!” Mr. Aiden’s voice spoke up as the timer went off. Everyone put their pencils down on their desks and slouched back in their chairs. This happened. My French exam was finished and I didn’t have to take another one until the beginning of March. “Était-ce facile ou difficile?” he asked whilst erasing the board. “Difficile” “Difficile” “Facile” different students responded. “Josh, était-il facile ou difficile?” Mr. Aiden asked me. You asked me because you saw my beautiful facial expressions throughout the test, didn’t you?

“Eh, certaines questions étaient difficiles, certains étaient faciles. Dans l'ensemble, moyen.” I responded. Did this answer even make any sense.

“Que diriez-vous, Oliver?” he asked him. Oli shifted slightly in his chair and I could see his body tense up a bit. DON’T ABUSE MY BOYFRIEND WITH YOUR “OUI, OUI.” GIBBERISH, YOU TWAT.

“C'était assez facile, pour être honnête.” he responded. Reminds me that I completely forgot to write down the answers on my desk so I mostly likely got a 56 or something. Mr. Aiden nodded and the bell rang moments after.

Everyone got their things together and piled out of the classroom. Lockers slammed shut and I could hear people have conversations with their friends on what they’re going to do after school. Probably smoke weed or something. Since I wasn’t going to use this locker for almost an entire month, I decided to clean it out a little so I won’t come back to the Civil War battlefield aftermath: locker version.

“Hey, I was looking for you.” Oli’s voice suddenly came up.

“Yea, I decided to stop by my locker and clean it so it’s not all cluttered once winter break ends.” I said, closing my locker door.

“Would you like to go downtown for a little bit or stay in our dorm room?” he asked me. Kind of a no brainer question, don’t you think?

“Going downtown seems lovely."

After we both exited campus, we made our way to downtown. It wasn’t far from the boarding school so a car wasn’t needed. “Do you have any places in mind you want to go to?”

“Uhm, we can stop and get coffee at Starbucks.” I suggested. He nodded his head in agreement.

The sky was starting to darken a little bit so to god knows when it’s going to start raining. Starbucks eventually came into my view next to a bank place on the end of the street. It wasn’t a large shop nor was it too small for me. A front counter was placed in the middle with some tables located to the left and right of it. I got a caramel frappe while Oli got a strawberry smoothie and suggested to take a walk around the park instead of staying in the shop.

You know, for a dark day, quite a lot of people were playing in the field. I could spot a few kids from school but I didn’t bother saying ‘Hi’ or something since I didn’t know them. A carousel that was pretty cheap opened but the line was dreadfully long. Luckily I was able to force Oli into riding on it and have a picture of him and the animal he rode on, which was a tiger.

Our day at the park sadly came to an end and it was time for us to head back to our dorms for the night. My two exams tomorrow were Economics and Biology so that was going to be fun for me. Oi, screw exams, though. I decided to spend my time with Oli by watching a horror movie with him. I’m pretty sure he even fell asleep halfway through the movie so I turned it off and played with his hair until he woke up. “How long was I out?” he asked whilst rubbing his eyes.

“Around thirty minutes. You were sleeping so I just turned off the movie.” I said to him. “You’re really adorable when you sleep, okay?” Well that sounded creepy.

“No, I’m not.” he denied.

“Oli, you know I don’t like it when you say negative things about yourself. Whatever you deny isn’t true anyways.”

“They all are. Before you came here, I used to get beaten up everyday for being who I am. One of the strongest kids and maybe ten others all ganged up on me one day and beat the hell out of me last year. He cracked two ribs, popped my shoulder out of place, and severely bruised my back up. Most of the people who bullied me were a year ahead so they’re obviously all gone now.” he said. Thinking about what those cunts did to him really pissed me off just thinking about it. Oliver’s a human being but they were too stupid to even realize it. “Did I ever tell you that Matty used to be my best friend?”

My head looked straight at him. “Excuse me?”

“Hah, yeah. We were both such unbreakable friends about three years ago. Then when I was sixteen, I came out to him and he thought it was the most disgusting thing ever. Matty stopped hanging out with me from that day and made friends with Kellin and Jesse. It was either them or other people who started rumors that I had sex with boys every night so that made my life awful. To make matters worse, it got to the teachers and I was called to the principal’s office and I was nearly expelled from here. The bullies did touch my body inappropriately and forced me to kiss boys to make the rumor more and more true. Josh let me say this, I have never had sex before in my life. In that year alone, I tried to commit suicide eleven times all because I came out to one person. Since my last suicide attempt failed, I just started cutting and burning to help ease the pain.” Oli’s face showed no emotion throughout his entire speech. Hell, if all of that happened to me, I’d definitely be dead by now.

“This is proof that you’re fighting.” I said.

“My cuts make me feel like shit. My whole body does.”

“But I need you.” I swear after I said that, his eyes lit up.

“Really?” he asked me.

“Of course I do.” I said and kissed him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

--

And fanfuckingfinally today was the last day and exam week was officially over. My last class was Technical Theater and for the Christ of God, it was difficult. More than half of the school was crowding the dorm building, trying to leave so that pissed me off to no end. I met up Oli outside in the courtyard after I grabbed my suitcase from the dorm. He suggested to go wait out on the porch until my mum pulled into the school parking lot. As usual, the temperature wasn’t the best nor was the sky all sunny and stuff. Jesse and Matty were standing by the double doors looking over at Oli and I from time to time. I didn’t want to go start a fight so I just shot a glare back that told them to fuck off.

“Are you going to text me daily?” he asked, looking down at the metal railing and rubbing his pointer finger on it.

“I’ll try my best but the lads are pretty clingy to me since I haven’t seen them since fall break. Some days I’ll probably be busy since mum told me that relatives plan on coming down for a week.” I really didn’t want to leave Oli all alone for 3 ½ weeks but it was too late for me to ask my mum if he can go. “Are you going to talk to Tom?” That’s the real question.

“Oh.” he paused. “I’ll try.”

“No, you’re not going to try. You are going to talk to him and get things sorted out.” I said. Oli definitely didn’t seem all on board with the whole “Socializing with Tom” plan but he really needed to talk to his brother again. Luckily I saw my mum pull into the parking lot so that helped break the awkward moment between us. “Hey, my mum’s here. Want to walk down with me?”

“Sure.” he said. We both walked down the steps and to my mum’s car where she had her window rolled down and the trunk was popped open for me. I put my suitcase in the trunk and gave Oli a goodbye hug which lasted for around 20 seconds.

“Your sweater’s terribly worn out and dirty.” I chuckled. What? It had holes and I can tell he’s had it for a very long time. That’s when I opened my suitcase and pulled out a blue and beige sweater and handed it to him.

“Don’t feel guilty about it, I’ve got maybe two other sweaters in my suitcase so take this one.” I said as he took it, “If you’re ever depressed or suicidal, just think about me when you see it and I guarantee you’ll feel better. You know what? Don’t bother giving it back to when winter break ends. If we ever get separated for some reason, you’ll always have something to remember me by.”

“T-Thank you.” he said, folding it up and putting it in his backpack.

“I’ve got to go now. I love you.” I said and kissed his forehead. He closed the trunk for me and made his to his home.

We were even able to drive by Oli as mum drove out of campus. I waved at him and he waved back with a smile on his face. Just thinking about him being stuck at home for this long just saddened me.

Please. I thought to myself.