The Boy Who Looked Like a Girl

Ville walked into his Literature class, a class he had missed the day before while arguing with the guidance counselor that he wasn't going to drop out of art for an extra lab or, God forbid, choir.

The male teacher, who was starting to bald, handed Ville a textbook telling him he wouldn't need to bring it to class unless told to and pointed to an empty seat in the front corner of the class. A seat directly in front of Bam Margera.

The teacher, Mr. Spelding-just-call-me-Mark, took attendance by asking anyone who was absent to raise their hand. Figures, Ville thought, opening up his notebook and starting to sketch a graveyard scene, there's one in every school. Damn eccentric teachers. Do they think it honestly makes us give a fuck about their classes?

"So, does anyone recall the quote I had written up on the board yesterday?" Mr. Spelding-just-call-me-Mark asked, picking up a piece of chalk.

"'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' William Shakespeare." The speaker was a blonde girl with her hair in a headband, knee length skirt, sweater buttoned over a white blouse. A girl trying so hard to look perfect.

I bet she has a red lace bra on under that. Ville thought, barely suppressing a snort. He sketched her face in a few seconds, adding a crooked halo over her hair, blood tears running down her cheeks.

"And do you recall that I asked each of you too look up a quote on what you felt either the origin of evil was or the factor that creates evil in our eyes?"

A collective groan from the class followed by the sound of notebooks opening was a good enough answer. Ville looked completely uninterested as the teacher placed a book of quotations on his desk before standing in front of the classroom.

"Does anyone want to share?" Bam poked Ville in the shoulder with the eraser of his pencil, but other than that, there was no response. "I figured as much. Tiffany, why don't we start with you?"

"What are you doing?" Bam whispered, leaning forward to look over Ville's shoulder. Ville shut his notebook quickly, not answering. Instead, he opened up the stupid quote book, looking for some bullshit thing a dead guy said about where evil comes from.

"You don't like me very much, do you?" Bam asked softly, in a voice too perky for the sentence--in Ville's opinion.

"I doubt I'm the only one." Ville muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

Bam grinned and leaned back in his seat, obviously impressed with Ville's response.

Ville was half listening to the nonconvincing arguments on the origin of evil, half skimming the book in front of him, half ignoring Bam humming behind him, and half realizing he was no good at fractions.

"Satan is the origin of evil." a breathy female voice finally said, causing Ville to look up from his book. The girl who was speaking was the one Ville had drawn with the crooked halo. "If it weren't for Satan tempting Eve there would be no evil."

"And Satan makes me tapdance on gravestones." Ville muttered. The girl next to him turned her head and narrowed her eyes. "Careful," the boy warned her, "or your pretty little face will get stuck that way."

Behind him, Bam snickered. Meanwhile, the rest of the class and Mr. Spelding-just-call-me-Mark were looking in the direction of Ville and the girl deathlocked in a staring contest.

The teacher, however, prematurely interrupted the contest, eliminating the chance of a sudden death round. "Do either of you have something to add to the conversation? Angie?" The brunette finally looked away from Ville, shaking her head. "Ville?"

He was supposed to say 'no' and lower his head in an apologetic manner. But nothing about Ville was close to what was supposed to happen. "Yes." he said, green eyes flashing.

"Go ahead, then."

"Satan didn't eat the apple." Ville said. "He told Eve to eat it, but he's not the one who did. If I tell some idiot down the street to kill the president and he does it, I'm not the one who killed him. I just gave some bad advice."

"But Satan put the idea into her head." Crooked-Halo girl said.

"And the Bible put the idea of stoning people into mine, but if I run out and do it, I can't really hide behind your stupid little book, now can I?" Ville snapped. "Satan's just an excuse people like you hide behind so you don't have to admit that it was you who did it. We're all evil, but at least some of us are fucking honest about it. Satan's just someone's imaginary friend."

Ville was used to every eye being on him. And every eye was, slightly widened and occasionally accompanied by a slightly agape jaw. Religion seemed to be the one thing all small towns had in common. And Ville had just made enemies with everyone in this small town.

Well, almost everyone.

"Dude," Bam mumbled to Ville under his breath, "I fucking love you."

And this time, Ville didn't tell him to shut up.

* * *

"You do know that ninety percent of this town is Christian, don't you?" Bam asked, following Ville to his locker.

"I thought it would be higher than that." Ville said, putting his English book in his locker, along with the quote book he had forgotten to hand back to Mr. Spalding-just-call-me-Mark. "So, you're not a Christian?" he asked Bam, raising an eyebrow. "What do your parents say about that?"

"I don't care." Bam told him. "We're not really a religious family. We just go for Christmas and Thanksgiving and when someone bites it."

"Bites it?"

"Dies." Bam grabbed Ville's arm. "Dunn goes to see his dad on Wednesdays and Raab has to go to--get this--church group. So, do you want to come over to my place after school? I won't ask you any stupid questions."

"Are you feeling all right?" Ville asked, laughing as he put his hand on Bam's forehead. What was with this . . . this boy doing to him? Making him smile, making him laugh, making him want . . . what he wanted, however, he couldn't figure out yet.

"Dude, I'd fucking suck your cock if you wanted me to with what you said back there." Bam nodded his head toward the classroom they had just left. "So, you in?"

Ville shrugged his shoulders and gave an I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this smile. "What the hell? Sure."

"Cool. I'll meet you here after school. See ya, Ville." Bam grinned and walked down the hallway, to his own locker and Geometry class. Shaking his head, Ville went to grab his notebook, but ended up knocking the quotations book onto the ground. Kneeling, Ville went to pick it up, eyes locking onto the words on page 126.

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." - Joseph Conrad

And the green eyes of the boy who looked like a girl flooded with memories as the dark hair cloaked his face.

* * *

"In this class, you will turn in several small assignments and one large project that will be fifty percent of your grade." Mrs. Henderson said. "All of your projects must revolve around a circular theme that you will discuss with me. An emotional theme, not something like 'flowers' or 'buildings'. Talk to me about the rise of Capitalism and how it's causing our world to change. Or even something that seems simple, like grief. Just make sure it speaks to you."

Ville looked at the syllabus in front of him, running a finger along the edge of it. Mrs. Henderson was calling them out to the hallway one by one, asking them about what they wanted their themes to be. When she got to Ville's name, he was still staring blankly at the sheet of paper.

He shook his head, as if waking from a dream, and walked out to the hallway. "What?"

"What theme are you planning on using?" Mrs. Henderson asked.

"I-I don't know. What do you want me to use?"

"You're supposed to pick this theme Mr. Valo." She pronounced his last name 'Vay-low', causing Ville to wince.

"Vah-lah." he corrected. "Ville Valo."

"Well, Ville Valo, what theme are you going to do your project on?" Mrs. Henderson asked pointedly.

Ville stared at the wall behind her head for a moment, giving a shrug of succession. "I don't know. Death. I'll do my project on death."

Two brown eyes surveyed him behind glasses. "Think it over and let me know after class. If you really want to use death as a theme, I have no problem with it, but I don't think you do."

Ville rolled his eyes as he walked back into the classroom. Teachers.

But he was faced with a problem much larger than a teacher who knew a little too much. Ville didn't do well with themes. Well, not that people saw. His art projects before had always been dark: murder scenes, haunted graveyards, broken forms of broken people, burning crosses, lost souls in a world without street signs. But darkness was their common theme. At least, that's what people thought.

A common theme was a harder problem. Death was an obvious answer, but it was potentially a street sign to a dangerous path, one Ville stayed far from and had no wish to show anyone. Of course, this was a photography class, not a class where the creation was drawn by his hands. A connection was harder to make between things you saw on a daily basis and someone's inner demons.

The bell rang fifteen minutes later and Ville walked up to his teacher's desk. "Death." he said, before turning and walking out of the room that smelled of paints and wet clay.

* * *

"In this class, you will turn in several small assignments and one large project that will be fifty percent of your grade." Mrs. Henderson said. "All of your projects must revolve around a circular theme that you will discuss with me. An emotional theme, not something like 'flowers' or 'buildings'. Talk to me about the rise of Capitalism and how it's causing our world to change. Or even something that seems simple, like grief. Just make sure it speaks to you."

Ville looked up, laughing out loud. Those were the same words the teacher had used in his other class, down to the examples of themes she wanted.

"Is there a problem, Mr. Valo?"

"Not at all." he said, shaking his head. "Except that repeating the same damn spiel seems hypocritical for your request, at the very least."

Mrs. Henderson's smile faltered. "Fifty sentences. 'I will not use inappropriate language in the art room'."

Ville smirked and shook his head, turning around. Yeah, sure. Whatever, bitch.

And just to be spiteful, when his teacher called him into the hallway and asked him what his theme would be for the semester, he told her with a straight face:

"Death."

"You already chose that for your other class." she said, through gritted teeth.

"Fine." Ville said, trying to contain his snide laughter. "Loss." He walked back into the room, shaking his head.

"Fag." came a voice from the back of the classroom, a guy in a school jersey with a blonde hanging on his arm.

Ville smiled cruelly, crossing the room and throwing an empty seat out of the way, before yanking the speaker out of his seat by the neck of his jersey and throwing him against the wall. His painted nails gripped the boy's throat, maintaining a painful hold on the student who was two inches taller than him and outweighed him by at least seventy pounds.

"Takes one to know one." he hissed. "So," he said, nodding at the blonde girlfriend of the boy who was watching the scene, horrified. "That pretty little thing over there know you bat for the other team?"

"Ville Valo! Keith Thompson! What on earth is going on in here?" Mrs. Henderson demanded, eyes wide as she hurried over to their end of the room.

Ville gave Keith a little grin before loosening his hold and dropping his arm to his side. "Just a misunderstanding." he said.

"Well, take this 'misunderstanding' to the principal’s office. Both of you."

* * *

"Dude, I can't believe you did all of that in one day." Bam said, awe in his voice as he and Ville walked out of the school. Bam was holding his board under his arm, while Ville dug in his pocket for his cigarettes. "You're a fucking god, man."

Ville grinned, lighting his cigarette as they stepped off school grounds. "Don't tell me you haven't ended up in that dick's office before."

"Well, yeah." Bam admitted. "But for stupid shit, really. I've only ever punched one guy at school."

Ville raised an eyebrow. "At school?"

Bam met Ville's grin with one of his own. "Yeah, well . . ."

They walked another block before either of them spoke again. "You ride that thing?" Ville asked, pointing at Bam's skateboard.

"No, I just carry it around."

"Smartass." Ville said, putting out his cigarette and lighting another. "How long've you been doing it?"

"Four years. You board?" Bam asked, face brightening.

"Fuck no." Ville said, laughing. "I can hardly walk straight half the time."

"Oh."

"But I want to see what you can do on it." Ville said. He looked at Bam for a minute. The younger was looking at him a little oddly, eyes looking at his cigarette more than once. "You want a smoke?" Ville asked, slightly uneasy. He didn't like it when people looked at him strangely.

"Can I just have a drag off yours?" Bam asked, taking the cigarette from Ville when he held it out. He put it to his lips and inhaled before handing it back to his friend. He exhaled slowly. "I don't a lot." he explained. "Fucks your breathing up and well," he held up the board, "don't want to do that."

Ville smiled. "I shouldn't." he said. "Asthma."

Bam laughed. "Damn, you just don't listen to anyone, do you?"

"Am I supposed to?" Ville joked, surprised at how easy it was to laugh with this kid he'd known for two days, a kid he'd screamed at just yesterday. "Now, are you going to show me what you do on that thing or not?"

"You want to go to the skatepark?" Bam asked, slightly disbelief in his voice.

"My eyeliner going to set the place on fire?" Ville asked.

"It's just that most people don't go." Bam said. "Unless they board. They're scared of it or something."

"Well," Ville said, "a bunch of guys on wheels doesn't scare me a whole hell of a lot."

Bam punched him in the arm softly. "A guy in eyeliner doesn't scare me a whole hell of a lot either, just so you know."

Ville smiled, pressing the cigarette to his lips again and taking a final drag. What the hell was it with this kid, this kid with messy brown hair hidden by a backward baseball cap and a skateboard under his arm . . . why was it suddenly so easy to smile?

Why was it that he didn't seem to see blood splatters every time he closed his eyes when he was near those clear blue eyes?

Why wasn't he scared?