He's Been Damaged, He's Been Misused

"So, did you talk to your mom yesterday?" Ricky asks as they meet up for their walk to school. Chris smiles down at his friend and nods proudly.

"I'm free this weekend, then," Chris adds, causing Ricky to smile.

"What did you do to convince her?"

"Cleaned all day. Cleaning fucking sucks."

"It doesn't if you're used to doing it."

"Is that your way of calling me lazy?"

"It was my way of saying that I don't mind cleaning, but that works too."

<><><>

Chris is in the middle of his last class of the school day, loathing the shit out of his surroundings. It might have something to do with his lack of respect for every single soul in the classroom. That lack of respect exists because they’re all either homophobic, racist, sexist, or all of the above, including the fucking teacher, who’s so homophobic it’s unprofessional. It’s as if they purposely threw the worst people into the worst class with the worst teacher and accidentally mixed Chris in with them.

Chris wants to fucking kill them all.

Well, almost all of them. There’s a new student today, and he took the only empty seat available. They didn’t talk much, the newbie had asked Chris what this class was like, and Chris had replied, telling him that every kid in this class were judgmental assholes. They didn’t talk much after that, well, until the kid caught Chris checking him out. He was pretty, what do you expect? Pretty boy shyly and politely asks Chris to stop, saying that he was making him feel uncomfortable, so Chris turned away and was in that position until now.

“Cerulli!” Mr. Filcaldo, the teacher, growls from the front of the classroom. Every damned student in the room turn in their seats to face them, the new kid curiously following their gaze.

“Filcaldo,” Chris replies rudely. Mr. Filcaldo narrows his eyes at Chris, showing his hatred towards the younger regretlessly.

“Stand up, boy,” Mr. Filcaldo growls. Chris rolls his eyes before rising from his seat. Mr. Filcaldo marches grumpily towards Chris, and the new kid looks scared. Chris figures that he’s taking this situation the wrong way, but he’s not the only one, everyone did in the beginning of the school year. Mr. Filcaldo stops in front of Chris, and Chris literally has to look down at him.

Mr. Filcaldo is a couple inches shorter than Ricky.

Mr. Filcaldo is seething and looks as if he’s trying to hold back the urge to hit Chris as he stares up at him, but he never hits any of the students. He knew he’d lose his job and do some time for child abuse if he did.

“Boy, you make me wanna…” Mr. Filcaldo stops himself there, shaking his head. He reaches behind Chris and drags his chair away from his desk, and Chris can’t help but smirk as he watches the older man stomp over to the front of the classroom, full of attitude.

Mr. Filcaldo disciplines his students by making them stand up for the rest of class, and honestly, Chris finds it stupid as fuck. Yeah, he gets tired of standing for such a long time and makes his feet hurt, but making him stand? Is that the best he’s got?

Chris can still feel eyes on him. A portion of the class still had their eyes set on Chris, who tries his best to ignore it. It pisses him off when people stare at him like that.

Chris is also pissed because he doesn’t even know what he did wrong. He was just sitting there, and Mr. Filcaldo randomly yelled at him.

Oh, wait. Of course. It’s because he’s gay.

Like said before, Mr. Filcaldo is so homophobic, it’s unprofessional.

The end of class approaches before he knows it, and everyone is being dismissed. Before Chris could leave, the new kid stops him.

“Cerulli,” he starts, since he has yet to discover his name. Chris turns to him, eyebrow raised curiously.

“Yeah?” Chris asks. Devin hums awkwardly before speaking up again.

“Uh, wanna exchange numbers? You seem cool,” he says awkwardly. Chris smiles a bit at him.

“Sure,” Chris replies, pulling his iPhone out of his back pocket, handing it to the boy standing before him. Said boy hands him his phone, which is just like Ricky’s, one of those phones that slide to get to the keyboard. An LG Mobile? That’s what Ricky said it was, anyways. Chris takes a bit to figure out how to even get to the contacts, and adds his number when he figures it out. They give each other their phones back and the boy smiles at Chris.

“I’ll text you later, okay?” he tells him, and Chris nods.

“Yeah, alright,” Chris replies to him. The boy awkwardly walks away after waving a goodbye. Chris goes to his own contact list, curious as to what his name is. Silly him, he forgot to ask the boy. Chris raises an eyebrow at his screen.

“Ghost,” he reads out loud. Chris decides that it’s a nickname he goes bye and puts his phone away as Mr. Filcaldo yells at him to get out of his classroom.

“With pleasure,” Chris snaps back as he leaves the room, slamming the door on his way out to emphasize his point.