Andals

This chapter is from Matthews POV

I didn’t need to wake Sean up this morning. He was up and showered before my alarm went off. He woke me up, all his slamming of cupboards and drawers.
Hopefully he got put off Miss Benged and decided to move onto guys instead and he’s stressed about it.

I wish.

Morning lessons went the same as usual, but everything changed during English.
Sean arrived as early as possible so he could get the best seat at the front. The seat where everyone tried to get, everyone except me. I wandered to the back of class as usual and sat down wishing that Sean would turn around and come sit next to me.

‘Hey, is there anyone sat here?’ I looked up to see a really cute boy in my class called Oli.
‘No.’ He sat down beside me and got out his books. As Miss Benged walked in Oli said to me, ‘I’m so glad Miss Benged knows I’m gay and doesn’t try to get off with me like she does with the rest of the school.’
‘What? You’re gay?’
‘Yeh, if you don’t like it I’ll swap seats to somewhere else, I don’t mind.’ He said it so quickly that it sounded like he’d had a lot of practise saying it. There was obviously a lot of people around that didn’t like gays.
‘No! Its fine, I just didn’t know there where any other gay guys here.’
‘What? Matthew Davies gay?’
‘Well, Yeh. But be quiet about it will you? I’m trying to keep it quiet.’

I got on well with Oli and he sat with me and Sean during dinner. I’d never really given him a chance before as he was one of the populars who every girl in the town followed on trips shopping. The type of person I usually tried to stay away from.
‘So Matt, why are you here?’ Oli asked sounding as if we were locked in a prison for committing some crime. But it was true, no parents sent their children here for the education. Everyone in the room had been sent here to learn how to behave because they’d done something bad at home.
‘I hit my mum.’ I lied too quickly hoping that no one had noticed. I don’t think they had.
‘What about you Sean?’ He asked once I’d answered.
‘Parent’s just got fed up of me pissing about, failing school, always in trouble with the police. Just things like that.’
‘Wow. I just got sent here because my parents decided that they’d had enough of me lounging about at home, not cleaning my room and trying too hard to form a band which they really didn’t want me to do.’
‘You were in a band? What were you called?’ I gasped. I’d once been in a band.
‘Yeh, Bring me the horizon. My parents didn’t like all the swearing and screaming in it. Said that God wouldn’t approve. My parents are strict Christians. I was brought up one my whole life; I think that’s what made me change to who I am. I was fed up of following everyone else and I just wanted to be myself for once. After that I didn’t really bother with church and spent Sunday mornings at band practise.’

Oli left for Maths at the end of lunch and Sean and I went of to physics. One word, boring. Our teacher spent the lesson trying to explain some theory to us while we sat around messing about. I don’t think anyone had ever listened to her in her life.
We started playing a game of truth or dare during the middle of the lesson.
‘So Sean, would you rather snog a guy or a real messed up girl?’ Rhys asked.
‘Well, depends on how fit the guy was. But most probably the guy. Okay, Matthew truth or dare?’
‘Erm…. Truth.’ It wasn’t time for a dare just yet.
‘If you could have sex with anyone in the world who would it be and why?’
‘Erm…’ Think of a girl! Think of a girl! DO NOT SAY SEAN!
‘Sean.’
I could feel everyone’s faces staring at me. Shit. ‘I’ve got to go.’ I stood up and ran out the classroom before anyone could say anything.
I was running full speed down to the toilets tears about to leak from my eyes. Why did I have to be so stupid! Why could I not keep one little tiny secret? Argh! Sean’s going to hate me forever.
I spent the next hour in there when Oli walked in.
‘Hey, what’s up?’ He asked when he saw me.
‘Sean found out I liked him.’
‘That can’t be all that bad can it?’
‘You should have seen the way he looked at me.’ Oli comforted me for a while until dinner when he decided he had better go down. I stayed there for 10 minutes before I wandered off to the library. I liked the library. It was the one place where I could come and relax because no one came in except from when they were in lessons and they needed to do research. I loved to sit in the bean bag in the fiction section and curl up with a book.
Two hours later the librarian kicked me out as she was locking up. It was eight already, maybe I should go back to the room and face my fears.
Hopefully he wasn’t there.

But he was. He was lying on his bed listening to his iPod. He paused it and looked up as I closed the door behind me. I sat on my bed and there was an awkward silence before Sean put away his iPod and said,
‘You never answered why you wanted to have sex with me. Why do you?’