The Deep End
Chapter 4
8:05 am.
Fuck. Of all the things he could be, he was late. Not even a good sort of 'just made it' late, his school started in twenty minutes and he wasn't even out of his bed yet.
He scrambled for his clothes, and shrugged on the first hoodie he could find in the depths of the wreck he called his room, after freaking out about finding his socks and making his room look like a bomb site searching for them.
He shoved his books in his bag and nearly fell down he stairs in his haste to leave; twice.
He didn't even have any time to shove some bread down his throat, so he ignored his stomach being a whiny little shit and ran nearly the whole way to school. (Exercise really isn't his strong point though, so a few breaks were in need on the way.)
Nearly tearing his locker door from it's hinges, he swung it open, shovelling some necessary books in his bag before slamming it shut and breaking into a sprint down the hall.
Making an entrance to his class had not been his intention, it just sort of happened.
He could just imagine how bad it looked:
The door flung open; he hadn't meant to pull on it with such force. In scrambled a lanky, ginger kid with his hair out of place wearing an out of place black hoodie. His cheeks red and with pools of purple under his eyes from lack of sleep.
He took his seat near the front, trying to ignore how his peer's eyes seemed to bulge out of their heads at him; but unsurprisingly he failed. Following their gazes to his hoodie, he realized it wasn't even his.
Why would he hav-
Austin. It was Austin's. Alan didn't even have to look at it to realize which one it was because it all suddenly made sense why he had been receiving such murderous glances. It was the one with the fucking pentagram on the back accompanied by some fucking slogan about trusting Satan or whatever.
His life: it was over.
The teacher cleared his throat, sending Alan's attention from his angst and panic ridden thoughts to the black board.
"You will be having your algebra test today, but as it only takes half an hour I am going to give you twenty five minutes of revisio-" That was around the point when Alan's attention was yet again diverted, this time to his algebra book, he never missed an opportunity to study before a test.
At the end of the announcement most people resumed their conversations, but Alan had always had a lack of friends at school, so his option wasn't even really an option.
For the revision time he spent half of it revising and the other half revelling in the comfort and bagginess of 'his' hoodie, and how much it smelt like Austin.
A slip of paper fell out of his book, doing that paper thing where it ends up like 25 feet away from where it is reasonable to guess it has landed.
It landed near to a girl called Alisha that was behind Alan, but thank god she saw it and picked it up and handed it back to him. He didn't even have to say anything, apart from 'thank you' when it was handed to him because nearly having a panic attack about wearing an overly satanic hoodie is no reason to suddenly turn into an ill-mannered dickface.
The note read:
'Hope your algebra test goes well'.
It even had one of those little fucking ":3" faces at the end, but he drew in a nose, ears, whiskers and teeth and it looked like a kitten. Crap, Austin must have seen his kitten calendar on the wall.
He almost lost his shit in that moment. Almost.
So, the test went by pretty smoothly if you exclude the seven times he started daydreaming about his Austin. Then start to doodle his name absentmindedly on the front of his paper, then realise and furiously rub it out, inspecting and erasing any trace of the name.
He saw it as a necessary precaution; the reasonably attractive, male art teacher's first name was Austin. He also knew how friendly his maths teacher and Austin the art teacher were. You could never be too careful. He was gay, but he didn't need the whole town to know and think he had some infatuation with a teacher.
If you were openly gay in the town you might as well dig your reputation a grave. It was almost as shunned as being punk or satanic.
Most of the town couldn't tell apart goths, emos, scenes, punks or any stereotype of that sort from a Satanist. Neither could they comprehend someone being any one of those without being a Satanist, so they were all just clumped together and shoved into the 'NOPE' category.
Come to think of it, he did more daydreaming then work.
Still, he finished the test.
Fuck. Of all the things he could be, he was late. Not even a good sort of 'just made it' late, his school started in twenty minutes and he wasn't even out of his bed yet.
He scrambled for his clothes, and shrugged on the first hoodie he could find in the depths of the wreck he called his room, after freaking out about finding his socks and making his room look like a bomb site searching for them.
He shoved his books in his bag and nearly fell down he stairs in his haste to leave; twice.
He didn't even have any time to shove some bread down his throat, so he ignored his stomach being a whiny little shit and ran nearly the whole way to school. (Exercise really isn't his strong point though, so a few breaks were in need on the way.)
Nearly tearing his locker door from it's hinges, he swung it open, shovelling some necessary books in his bag before slamming it shut and breaking into a sprint down the hall.
Making an entrance to his class had not been his intention, it just sort of happened.
He could just imagine how bad it looked:
The door flung open; he hadn't meant to pull on it with such force. In scrambled a lanky, ginger kid with his hair out of place wearing an out of place black hoodie. His cheeks red and with pools of purple under his eyes from lack of sleep.
He took his seat near the front, trying to ignore how his peer's eyes seemed to bulge out of their heads at him; but unsurprisingly he failed. Following their gazes to his hoodie, he realized it wasn't even his.
Why would he hav-
Austin. It was Austin's. Alan didn't even have to look at it to realize which one it was because it all suddenly made sense why he had been receiving such murderous glances. It was the one with the fucking pentagram on the back accompanied by some fucking slogan about trusting Satan or whatever.
His life: it was over.
The teacher cleared his throat, sending Alan's attention from his angst and panic ridden thoughts to the black board.
"You will be having your algebra test today, but as it only takes half an hour I am going to give you twenty five minutes of revisio-" That was around the point when Alan's attention was yet again diverted, this time to his algebra book, he never missed an opportunity to study before a test.
At the end of the announcement most people resumed their conversations, but Alan had always had a lack of friends at school, so his option wasn't even really an option.
For the revision time he spent half of it revising and the other half revelling in the comfort and bagginess of 'his' hoodie, and how much it smelt like Austin.
A slip of paper fell out of his book, doing that paper thing where it ends up like 25 feet away from where it is reasonable to guess it has landed.
It landed near to a girl called Alisha that was behind Alan, but thank god she saw it and picked it up and handed it back to him. He didn't even have to say anything, apart from 'thank you' when it was handed to him because nearly having a panic attack about wearing an overly satanic hoodie is no reason to suddenly turn into an ill-mannered dickface.
The note read:
'Hope your algebra test goes well'.
It even had one of those little fucking ":3" faces at the end, but he drew in a nose, ears, whiskers and teeth and it looked like a kitten. Crap, Austin must have seen his kitten calendar on the wall.
He almost lost his shit in that moment. Almost.
So, the test went by pretty smoothly if you exclude the seven times he started daydreaming about his Austin. Then start to doodle his name absentmindedly on the front of his paper, then realise and furiously rub it out, inspecting and erasing any trace of the name.
He saw it as a necessary precaution; the reasonably attractive, male art teacher's first name was Austin. He also knew how friendly his maths teacher and Austin the art teacher were. You could never be too careful. He was gay, but he didn't need the whole town to know and think he had some infatuation with a teacher.
If you were openly gay in the town you might as well dig your reputation a grave. It was almost as shunned as being punk or satanic.
Most of the town couldn't tell apart goths, emos, scenes, punks or any stereotype of that sort from a Satanist. Neither could they comprehend someone being any one of those without being a Satanist, so they were all just clumped together and shoved into the 'NOPE' category.
Come to think of it, he did more daydreaming then work.
Still, he finished the test.
♠ ♠ ♠
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