I'm All Wrong

My alarm clock bursts into life, on queue, at quarter past six. I flick my hand out to swipe the top of it, and smother its enfuriating whining. It isn't ever really necessary, i'd never actually sleep that long, but it's a reminder that some degree of productivity is required: given the chance i'd probably just sit here all day, with my art and my comics, my precious vinyl player... Oh yeah - except there's no way I'd actually stay off school. Not when it means denying myself the chance to see Frank. Who am I kidding.
Having reaffirmed this sentiment, I close my comic, a sigh dropping from my lips. I roll out of bed and shiver as the freezing air hits my legs through my pyjamas. I reach over to the window and tug on the cord. The blind lifts away from the windowsill but I'm met with more blackness. The winter months are my favourite, to the despair of my parents. In summer I'd have to go out of my way to dispell the sunlight: it's much easier like this. I love the safety of the dark. My room is in the roof of our house and I don't bother turning the light on, preferring to change in the dark - another bonus of which is that I don't have to see my body.
Mondays mean new jeans. Also Thursdays, but today is a Monday. I collect my skinny black jeans; my Korn shirt; the black hoody which I'd borrowed off Mikey several washes ago, then worn thumbholes in the cuffs; and two socks and a pair of boxers from my lucky dip drawer. I pause to pick at the hole in the jumper which isn't Mikey's anymore, then quickly shed my pyjamas, glancing away from my body, and step briskly into my clothes. I should probably find a belt, but I'll have to wait - because I can't stand waking up to find people are already up in the house, I am awake before everyone else.
I turn and pull the covers over my bed, tucking the corners around the mattress with painstaking precision then sit down on the end of my bed to run through the lessons which i have today. The house is unnervingly quiet. Sat in the dark, the darkness seems to radiate stillness through the house.
I push myself off the bed, cutting of my speculation, collect my school bag and open my door. Easing my cuff over the face of my watch, i observe the time it twenty three minutes past six. The second hand runs over the six to mark half way to twenty four minutes past.
I tread lightly over the carpet to the stairs, not wishing to break the delicate silence which is still hanging over the place. It has less than six minutes left of life - I should preserve what I can.
Once I'm downstairs, I toast myself some bread and smother it with peanut butter. By the time I'm done, it's half past and my family are getting up. Just because I'm a great brother (and because Mikey's incomprehensibly disorganised) I make him a nutella sandwich and wrap neatly it in cling film. Honestly, the lengths I go to to look after my little brother.
By four minutes before seven o'clock he still hasn't surfaced, and my parents are leaving, so I traipse back upstairs to confirm that he's still denying the arrival of another Monday.
I nudge open his door with my foot and poke my head around the door. Mikey pulls the covers further over his head. I'm resisting the urge to sigh; unfortunately, that's not fair to Mikey.
"C'mon Moikey, you've got to get up to see Alicia."
Mikey groans.
"Hey, I really think you should save groaning for your girlfriend" I laugh.
This elicits a little more of a reponse, from Mikey, who tries to tell me to shut up without leaving his bed. I retrieve from where then have been strewn over his floor various articles of Mikey's wardrobe and roughly fold them over themselves so that I have a small pile. Setting them by his door, I leave his nutella sandwich on the top:
"Ok, there're some clothes by the door and so's your breakfast... It's gone seven, alright?"
Downstairs, I recheck my school books and lace my boots up. I glance out of the window - I'm not feeling so optimistic about the weather: my leather jacket probably isn't enough, so I lift my long coat from the hook by the door. Carefully, I press the buttons in and wrap the waistband around my body.
It's nearly quarter past seven.
"Mikey..?" He doesn't answer. "Mikey we've got two minutes."
"Wha'dyou say?" He shouts back at me.
"Two minutes, Mikey!"
"Huh? Shit ok ok gimme five minutes!"
"Two minutes!!"
"Woah ok ok one secccccc..."
He'll be down in a minute... probably. Deciding to give him as long as it takes for my phone to turn on, I reach for my iPhone in my pocket and depress the button at the top until the screen glows into life.
When my lock screen appears I'm met with Frank's familiar morning text and I can't help but smile. I'm not sure he knows how much it means to me, but it changes my whole day, just to see he cares, and he thought of me... Maybe I read too much into it. Maybe it's wishful thinking. Anyway, I like it. It's kinda cute.
Before I have time to notice that I've got carried away in my probably-tragically-unrequited feelings for Frank, Mikey trips down the last few steps, fumbling with the last couple of buttons on his shirt. Chuckling, I hand him his jacket and unlock the door as Mikey shoves his feet into his all-stars. It's not quite twenty past seven - at least we should get there in time not to miss the bus, which would have us believe it leaves the stop at the end of our road at at 7.22. (In reality the driver, whose name is Matt and used to go to our school until he got kicked out for nobody-quite-knows-what and now works as a bus driver, amicably agreed never to leave before half seven so Mikey and I have time to sort ourselves out.)
Sure enough, as we arrive at the stop, the bus swings round the corner, seven minutes later than scheduled. Matt smiles at me as we scan our cards at the reader. "Mate, I've got an inspector coming with us tomorrow, i've gotta be on time, alright?" I thank him and poke Mikey in his skinny ribs. We laugh and Matt pulls the bus out onto the road.

By the time we arrive at school, it's quarter past eight, leaving us fifteen minutes to procrastinate our arrival at morning role call. Frank texts reported that he'll be here in a couple of minutes, so I leave Mikey just outside school with a reminder that his laces are hanging undone and dragging persistantly along the floor, and lean sideways against the wall to wait for Frank.
When he turns up, I'm hiding in my phone in a probably-vain attempt to look less like a loner, so I don't notice him:
Out of nowhere he jabs my waist. I jump a foot in the air, much to the amusement of my assaulter, who laughs amicably at me.
"Shut up, Frank, you scared the piss out of me!"
He laughs at me again "Love you too, Geeeeee!" Frank smiles innocently at me.
"Ah shaddup" I smile back at him. He has the best smile - it makes his eyes scrunch up a little, and his eyes glint, and then he has this almost-but-not-quite-a-dimple on his left cheek... The asymmetry should irk me, but Frank's smile it too contagious.
"Penny for 'em?" He interrupts the rambling admirations.
"Hm? Nah i'm cool." I smile. I'd really rather not spoil the best friendship I've ever had by smothering it by explaining romantic feelings that are not only nothing but trouble but also, let's face it, are doomed to remain unrequited.
Frank snorts quietly "Suit yourself." He slings his arm lazily around my waist and it's all I can do not to lean down and kiss him. I catch a sigh, not wanting him to see that I'm not quite happy with it. Then he might move his hand, which is resting on my hip. I move my hand to curl over his, but chicken out and shove it in my pocket instead, my fingers curling into a fist.
I turn, glancing down at Frank to question whether he's coming too. "One sec, Ray's just coming." Shit, this isn't looking quite platonic enough for Ray's company. (Talk about paranoid.) Reluctantly I draw my hand out of my pocket and turn around to check where Ray is behind me, unlacing myself from Frank's arm. He's about 50 yards away, strolling towards us. Once he arrives, we walk together to form to the soundtrack of Ray beguiling us with his predictable fangirlesque nonsense- which at least saves me having to talk.

At the end of the day, I'm let out of double chemistry late, so my plan to meet Frank after his music tech is squashed. I catch him at the changing room, emptying his locker. Unfortunately, today he spares me my awkwardness in trying to find a way to ask him if he wants to get coffee with me after school, because he has a guitar lesson after school on Mondays. I say goodbye, and turn to leave, but he appears behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, in a slightly wierd kind of embrace. I laugh and lean my head back to smile at him.
He stands like that for a couple of seconds, then releases me. I hold his gaze for a moment, then turn to leave saying goodbye again.
"See you tomorrow, Gee" he responds.
It's not really until Matt greets me when I get on the bus, commenting wryly that I look considerably happier today, that it properly occurs to me that Frank hasn't actually done that before - and that realisation is far from helpful to my attempts to neutralise my expression.