Floating Face Down (boyxboy)

Chapter Three

I didn't attend my last two classes.

Instead I sat there for a while on the floor. The uneven cold concrete under me froze my legs and hands and I shivered but sat still and waited.

I wasn't sure what I was waiting for sometimes. But every day I felt the same way, suspended in a strange nirvana, constricting me as I waited and waited.

When someone finally saw me a burst of anxiety put me on my feet again and I got up.

I limped but I wasn't injured there, my arms, my face and my balls were but not my legs. With my vomit sprayed up against the wall next to me and the hem along the zipper of my back torn, the contents out, I had to collect my things together slowly before I could finally get moving.

I'd been hit enough in my face that I should have been bruised to hell, a swelling nice and tender on my cheeks and near my eye, but the colour of bruises took a while to brew.

I couldn't go home right away, because I knew I'd get in trouble for that, and instead walked to the park and sat down on a bench and got my diary out of my broken bag and looked at it but didn't even lift a pen. 

I didn't get much sympathy for being bullied, not at home or at school, and if I was fully honest I didn't understand why.

The worst thing was every time I thought about it I got pissed, angry that people didn't care. Because if I saw a kid getting beat on I'd stop them, wouldn't I? He had to have other victims...

The possibility that I wouldn't freaked me out more than anything. In that case I wasn't even a side character, I was nothing, just like them.

The day wasn't warm, and as the evening approached it got colder, so by the time I got out my pen my hands were pretty stiff.

Patrick and his friends caught me. I tried to hide in the toilets and then I tried to run. I should have run to the lunch hall again but I'd be the one in trouble again. They always make it sound equal, like we both chose to fight, they don't care if I'm running away.

The moment Patrick punched my face I started fighting back and I think I got him in the ear but even one on one I wasn't as strong as him and got punched in the stomach. Then Zack sat on me and made me tell them my name was Ellie. I didn't do it, I just glared at them, at first, but they punched my stomach so hard I thought I was gonna die. So yeah I got scared. I repeated whatever they told me to repeat, and when they made me say it louder I said it louder. I don't know all of what I said.

"We're just playing right?" He sorta shoved my head with his hand, standing over me.

I shook my head.

He rolled his eyes. "Take a joke Elliot."

When they were done they got off and kicked me in the balls and I vomited up the wall. Then when I got up I realised my bag was broken I don't know when that happened.

I didn't feel sorry about getting Clyde expelled. He was an asshole to me. First year of secondary school he'd spotted me as a target and started picking on me. I'd been picked on the last two, nearly three years of primary school, I was tired of it, I wanted the fresh start I'd been promised, I wanted friends so badly that I'd dreamed of a noose that night from the disappointment of it all.

Back then I'd still talked back, I'd had the energy to. Patrick had just been one of Clyde's daft followers, doing everything he said, laughing at every one of his non-jokes. A true drone of the king of the school, at the time.