The Wall and Goat - 2. Chapter 2 - Jesse

I did not want to move.

Move house, move schools, none of it.

I liked living in central London. I loved having the tube and being able to get out and about with my friends. Being independent. Hanging out at burger joints and bars until all hours. All of it.

And then my mother, who was cheating on Dad in the first place, caught him sleeping with his secretary and all hell broke loose. That’s how me and Mum ended up taking all our worldly possessions and moving to the countryside. Some little town in the middle of shit-all and nowhere. And then, to top it off, it snowed the day we arrived and Mum made me go to school anyway.

I loved my last school. I was pretty much the centre of the popular clique. I was on every sports team; I was smart, and I was happy.

Spent the morning following the deputy head of my new school around like a recalcitrant puppy and he’d oh so kindly explained that he was going to get someone from my new tutor group to show me around. I hate the idea of having a new friend planted on me. I had friends, plenty of them, but they were back in central London and as much as I wanted to think otherwise, I knew that every day I wasn’t there they would miss me less and less. Sure I had woken up this morning to find a dozen texts of sorry’s and goodbye’s, but that would stop soon and I knew it.

The boy he had left me had been introduced as Maxie. He was huge, swarthy and dark with black hair; in short he did not look like an average seventeen year old. He was kind of hot and smiled at me, but I was sulking. Truth was I wasn’t impressed by anything round here. Not this half rotten building they call a school, not the dingy hallways or the crappy cafeteria food. But I’d followed him, this over eager boy, around this sorry excuse of a school and then walked home to find that, just when I wanted to be left alone to wallow in my misery, he lived next fucking door.

Mum was sorting out boxes in the kitchen. She is pretty I suppose, with frizzy blond hair and blue eyes like mine, and she was standing in the kitchen amongst a pile of half empty boxes and newspaper. My mother is not a patient or organised woman.

“Hey sweetie,” She waved at my from the open plan kitchen to where I was standing in the hall, hanging up my coat. Unlike my mother, I like to be organised and tidy. “Did they close the school?”

“Yeah. I kinda like the uniform, but the school is so small.” I walked to the back of the house and looked out over the big oblong of garden, now covered in heaps of grainy white. “God I hate the snow.”

“I picked out a room upstairs for you; it’s got a good window. Your bed is all set up, I had the moving guys do it.”

“Thanks.”

“You hungry Jes?”

“I’m OK.” I went up the stairs to my room. I had barely eaten at home since I turned fourteen, going out to meet friends, eating out and shopping well after the tourists in London went home was much more interesting. Reduced Oriental food in Camden market, take away’s from Yo! And hot food eaten with chopsticks by the side of the road. Me and my friends were the cool kids, we were the ones that tourists stared at. Students visiting the city wanted to be us, hanging out and looking awesome.

I threw my satchel onto my bed and stared at the space that was now my room. It was such a step down from the big two floor apartment we used to live it. There was a knock. I looked at the door, then at the wall. A knock from the wall? I walked over to my bed and tapped the wall. The flowery wall paper was going to have to go.

Knock knock.

I recoiled from the wall. The kid, Maxie, lived next door. That must be his room, on the other side of my wall. Of all the fucking luck.

*

I spent the weekend alternately moping about my room, checking on the fast-dwindling text messages from my phone and unpacking. Most of my stuff was geared towards homework, sports and books. I spent most of Saturday trying to work out if I could move my bed away from that wall but there was nowhere else to put it.

Sunday there was more snow and Maxie had friends over, three of them mucking about in his garden for well over an hour before they vanished. The snow in our yard was pristine and smooth, in comparison to the white fluffy mess of his. I hated the snow. Snow in London meant slush and slurry, buses mucked up and shops closing when they shouldn’t be. Out here nothing seemed changed, I’d never seen my new home town without snow. It wasn’t a great start.

At night I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. I had no friends in this shitty little country town, and while I wasn’t likely to get any moping around at home, I wasn’t really keen on the idea of replacing all my friends. They seemed to have forgotten me easily enough. That first night after I’d thumped that wall I’d made sure to sleep on the furthest side of my bed. I hated the idea of this Maxie guy sleeping so close to me, even if we were in different houses. Unfortunately I wasn’t much in control of my dreams.

I dreamt Maxie in my bed, his big form furnished with tattoos he probably didn’t have. He was naked, his hands big, grasping at my shoulders and pecs as I lay in bed. I woke with the sheets twisted around me, my crotch damp and sticky.

I am not liking this town.

*

School resumed on Tuesday after much of the snow had thawed. As I’d told mum, I quite liked the uniform. The navy blue and beige combination. I wasn’t keen on the yellow piping and the yellow striped tie, but overall it wasn’t bad.

I’d woken from a dream in which Maxie starred in. Again. But this time I’d woken with a hard on stiff as literal wood and almost painful. None of my usual images helped as I jacked off, being very careful not to knock the wall with my elbow, and I had to resort to the stash of half-imagined memories I wished I could get rid of in order to get going.

I shouldered my satchel, walked out of the house, my hand on the gate and turned. And there was Maxie. The boy smiled and gave half a wave. I slammed the gate and started towards school. I could almost feel him following me.

All day I tried to avoid him, but we had registration and two classes together. And I hated being the new boy in a small-ish school. Everyone who’s anyone wanted to know everything about me. I almost wished I’d stuck with Maxie, at least there would have been someone to field all the attention for me. But every time I saw Maxie a sensation passed through me from heart to loins like boiling honey. He was obviously dangerous to be around. Lucky for me I had PE that first day, and due to the remaining wet snow we had basketball.

I liked basketball. I liked all sports and I was good at all of them. I changed in the old-fashioned changing room, cold with a hard floor and slatted wooden benches, and tried to avoid looking anywhere but at the floor. I could feel people looking at me. On the court I ran laps to warm up before the teacher called everyone together. He chose two students to pick teams, a tall-ish skinny black kid and a sort of non-descript type of boy with close cropped hair. I was not surprised to be picked near the back end of the process. New boy was not a great status to have, even if I knew I did look the part. I could keep my head down and not get noticed, or I could try and make the next year and half here actually enjoyable and start making friends. I was still too wound up to really chat much but I decided that I could do as my old PE teacher always said and leave all my talent out on the court.

Forty five minutes later, sweaty and full of endorphins, we headed back to the changing rooms and I felt a couple of hands slapping me on the shoulder. The skinny black guy grinned at me, his teeth impossibly white.

“Dude. You. Are. Good!” His big hand on my shoulder was super-warm, “Jesse right? I’m Ian.”

“Right. So do we get showers?”

“Yeah. The water is either boiling hot or frozen. This way.”

“That’s OK,” I followed Ian, feeling relaxed, “I like a lobster shower!”

He wasn’t joking about the water; half the showers were freezing and the other half you could just about stand in for a few seconds. It seemed like the best bet was to dose myself in cold water until my teeth chattered and then jump into the hot to get warm again. By this means I managed to get clean and avoid getting the regulatory post-sport hard on, which was a bonus. I chatted to Ian as I got dressed.

“You’re pretty good yourself y’know,” I grinned, his work on the pitch had been energetic if slightly sloppy, “So do the school teams do any good?”

“You’re kidding?” this was from the boy next to Ian, slightly chubby but with a kinda cute friendly face, “We suck generally. Performing arts is the place to be if you want recognition.”

“Dude!” Ian looked shocked, “Pete, don’t fucking tell him that. He’ll quit and he’s really good.”

“Well thanks,” I pulled on my chinos, managing to avoid skimming my gaze over anyone else’s crotch, “I was on the teams at my last school for swimming, basketball and cross country. County and City championships.”

“Wow.” Pete looked seriously impressed, “Maybe we can make qualifications this season.”

Ian grinned and clapped him on the shoulder.

“He ain’t joining rugby Pete, you guys still suck.” Ian flipped up his collar and straightened his tie, “Where’s your next class Jesse?”

“I have no idea,” I fished my timetable from my satchel. It had been perfectly folded until Maxie had gotten his hands on it. The boy was obviously messy, “Erm, art. Room P16.”

“I’ll walk you,” Pete grinned, “I’m in Deets all afternoon. Didn’t peg you as the art type.”

I shrugged and we said goodbye to Ian who was off to Work. P16 turned out to be fairly obvious once you got close. The art room was decorated outside and in with students’ work.

“Sheesh.”

“Yeah,” Pete agreed, he smiled at me and I couldn’t help finding him cute. I shook my head to try and dislodge the thought, “it sure is something. See you at lunch?”

I entered the art rooms with butterflies of trepidation. I loved art, I loved making things that expressed how I felt. Picking art as one of my option subjects was about the only thing at my last school that people had doubted about me. After all, I was the sports nut, but hand me a great big canvas and a bunch of paints and I’m a happy boy.

And the first thing I saw when I walked in was Maxie, shirtless.

Post-sporting hard-ons be damned because what ran through me was like sticking a fork in an electrical socket. I’d never been so turned on in my life. He had the most fabulous body. Trim waist but he wasn’t slender, not at all. He had shoulders like an ox and an abdomen ridged with muscle. His hair fell in front over his eyes and his coffee brown skin shone in the warm red heat lamps. I dropped my bag with a thud.

Maxie looked up and pulled on an oversized shirt with an unravelling hem and paint stains. He smiled at me. I looked away and stalked off to the other side of the room. All lesson I tried not to look back at him and ended up with paint on my new school chinos. What moron had designed this uniform? I threw away the piece I’d planned out, too distracted to concentrate much on it and shouldered my bag as I practically ran from the room at the end of the lesson. I barged past Maxie on my way out, knocking into his shoulder, and it took all my strength not to look back.

I sat with Ian and Pete every day that first week, and quickly got recruited to the swim team practice with Ian. I loved to swim more than I feared getting caught, or showering with a bunch of other cute guys. Ian wasted no time in introducing me to all the popular set at school and by Friday I was eating lunch with a group of ten or so guys and girls who welcomed me into their little clique like a long lost cousin. And I worked really hard at ignoring Maxie.

In the mornings I started leaving for school early so I wouldn’t have to walk with him. I sat at the other side of our tutor room, and didn’t look at him. Even when he was deputized to do equipment and uniform checks I refused to make eye contact, simply opening my bag for inspection. Art class became my biggest worry. He was always early, and he changed every lesson into his art clothes. The sight of his naked upper body was haunting me even when I was awake.

Unfortunately, going home it was harder to avoid him. There were no clubs to keep me at school and after a few streets we were the only two figures going our way; no one else seemed to live on our side of the little town. I never looked at him, never said hello, and by the Friday he had stopped trying to greet me when we saw each other.

Every night I could feel him there, on the other side of that wall. I heard him. In the dead of night as I lay awake I could hear him moving. When he rolled over in bed or his fingers brushed that wall I could hear him. He kept me up at night and I hated it.

Yes, Maxie was gorgeous. He made me feel things I didn’t want to feel and I hated it. Other guys I saw at school or on TV were cute, but nothing inspired a reaction like he did. Every night I woke up with the covers either thrown across the room or twisted around my legs, a far cry from the military precision that my bed looked like before I slept in it.

After a week I was ready to break something.