The Others - 1. Chapter 1: Booing at myself

For some reason it feels like everyone is staring at me. I know they can’t possibly know I wrote that stuff, but I can’t help feeling this way. I keep looking around, seeing if someone knows the truth. For the record, this is the first time I’ve been confronted with my texts while I’m in the company of others. And not just the company of others, no, in the company of my classmates.

I can’t even listen to my teacher due to piercing glances, which I surely just imagine. This is the first time I’m getting feedback on my work in person – though my teacher doesn’t know that –and I can’t even listen to it for God’s sake!

“Now pay attention, class. I really want to highlight the next part;

It’s clear that the Bible got misinterpreted. Throughout the ages, this literary masterwork has had a few mistakes introduced into it, due to numerous translations and revisions. Though I think you should know that the majority of those mistakes were intentional.”

My classmates’ chatter becomes louder as the teacher utters more words from my blog. I don’t know if this is because they think the topic is uninteresting or that they simply disagree with me. My teacher is quick to impose his answer to that question, which he couldn’t have heard for I didn’t say it out loud. Ironically, the next part I wrote in the post is about people imposing their opinion using the Bible to back them up.

“Quiet everyone, obviously this blogger is babbling. He is lying and won’t go to heaven. Listen, it gets even worse.

Since the Bible was written, people have been making it a sport to abuse everything in it. They quote things out of context. It’s like the Bible has become a dictionary full of excuses to force someone to submit to their own belief.”

“Dude, you are not seriously paying attention to this shit, are you?” my best friend Marc interrupts.

“Actually I was, until you thought you could be less annoying than this shitty teacher.”

Marc laughs at that, obviously unsure whether that was a compliment or not. “I wonder who wrote all that stuff,” he says as the teacher scrolls down to some of my older posts.

“You do?” I ask.

“No, I don’t,” he laughs almost loud enough for the teacher to hear it. “I do wonder how long it is ‘till lunch.”

“I don’t know who this liar is, but I don’t want to meet him. I don’t think such an encounter would end well,” my teacher says.

Nice, I hate you too.

I hear someone in the class call out that the blogger could be a woman as well.

“Here, look. I will read another post from him,” the teacher continues and sighs arise among my classmates.

In some way I am jealous of believers. They are able to shut down all common sense and blindly believe in someone, something they don’t even know exists.

“He is calling us dumb!” he shouts out.

Marc starts booing. I know it is just out of sarcasm, he wants to show he doesn’t care, but several other kids join in. Soon everybody is yelling at the mysterious blogger. They are yelling at me. In order not to attract attention, I join them. I’m booing myself.

The teacher tries to calm us down, but we won’t stop. Finally, after two minutes of shouting, the teacher from the class next to us comes in to soothe us. Okay, I have to admit, maybe it’s a little inappropriate for a guy attending a strict Catholic school to blog something like that.

The posts are just my honest opinion. I wrote them down to provoke discussion. And that they do. Not once have I achieved any news coverage with my posts despite the media reviewing what I write. I have lots of followers and a lot of people try to help me. The anonymous blogger, that’s what they call me. I often wonder what they would say if they found out it’s a seventeen year old boy typing it. Would it be as popular as it is now, or would people suddenly disagree with me?

“Mr Hampleton.” I see a girl in my class, Candace, decides to speak. Whenever she does that, the rest of the class stops listening. “Do we have to know this for the test?” Of course we don’t. The class is just an excuse for the teacher to rant about what he wants to rant about. Candace knows that, too. The rhetorical question was only asked to point out she thinks this class is… how do you call it?… Bullshit. I think I agree with her. This might be the first time in my life I've agreed with her. I wonder why people always like to imply things instead of saying something directly. I quickly make a mental note to write about people implying things.

By the way, I’d like to clarify that I don’t solely write about religion, but this is Theology, so those are the articles that my teacher picked out.

“No, you don’t have to remember any of this,” he sounds annoyed. “Just let me speak my mind and you can go on with your simple, meaningless lives.”

“Boooo,” I shout and immediately look at Marc as if he shouted it. In response, he shoots me a glance that would’ve killed me if it could.

“Marc Sater, are you disagreeing with me?” Mr Hampleton asks.

“No sir, my life is very meaningless.”

With a nod, the teacher decides to ignore Marc. I manage to resist from laughing out loud. He shoots me another scowl.

“Okay, class is over for today. I will see you next week.”

“Oh god, that was boooooring,” Seth says when we walk out of the classroom. Seth is another friend of mine. I don’t know much about him, I always try to know as little as possible about my friends, because in that way they won’t try to find out about me either. He is pretty cute though, and not wanting to know someone doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to look at them, right?

“Didn’t you like the blog posts?” I ask.

“I think I liked it,” is his response. That, I have to admit, surprises me. I never expect anyone from school to like my writings. At first, I didn’t expect anyone to like it. Don’t ask me: so why did you decide to write it down and post it, if you didn’t expect people to be willing to read it? My answer is: I don’t know why I did it. I think it’s because I wanted feedback. That, I can assure you, I get a lot.

“I read a lot blogs from him, this anonymous blogger. Most of the things he wrote I agree with,” Seth continues.

“You agree with those parts about the Bible?” I try to hide my confusion.

“Of course I don’t! That’s why this class was so boring. I like his posts about economics and politics. He writes about so much more than about religion. I think you should check it out.”

“Mwah, I don’t like it,” Marc says.

“Why so?”

“I don’t like reading.” We all get a good laugh out of that. “But Adam, what’s with all the seriousness all of a sudden? Why do you care what we think of these posts? You are like… interrogating us.”

“I’m just curious,” I mumble.

“Let’s move on guys! I want to talk to some guys that are not as serious.”

Together we walk to our lunch table, but on our way I can’t help thinking about what Seth just said. He reads my posts! I purposely surrounded myself with people I thought were not that deep, the popular guys. They seem to like me for my blunt humour. It’s like I’m as dumb as they are, but apparently there’s more to them. I start wondering if other guys I know also have more to them than I thought. As we walk I notice the others from our little group. Little… nah, we have six guys and four girls, so it’s not that little. Compared to other cliques it’s pretty small though. The others, that’s how I call my ‘friends’. Right now the others are Chris, Todd and Neil.

“Oh god, we just had Theology,” Marc complains as we finally reach them.

“No, you too? From Mr Hampleton?” Chris asks. We nod. “He showed you the blog too, right? The anti-anti-evolution blog?” The three of us nod again. The other two start chuckling. “Did he show you the post about gay people?”

I immediately know which post he is referring to. It’s an old one, but I remember it very clearly. I wrote about homosexuality and the Bible, the connection between the two. That’s probably the post Mr Hampleton chose and I can’t even imagine what he might say about it. Luckily I’m about to find out.

“No, he didn’t,” Seth says. “Why?”

“He told us this blogger was lying, and he was probably gay himself. He said and I quote, ‘That illness probably made him write this nonsense. I wouldn’t mind if all gay people decided to commit suicide, they’re an abomination to God.’”

“Yeah, right after that Carl ran out of the classroom. He was crying,” Todd added.

I notice Seth is very quiet and that’s weird. Normally he is the kind of the guy who participates in everything, but he's looking a little pale.

Marc on the contrary was smiling. “Carl? The backup football player?”

Neil nods. It’s not weird for him to just nod, he almost never talks.

“When did this happen?” Seth asks, his eyes are wide open all of a sudden.

“Last week. Haven’t seen him since,” Tod says.

Seth’s abrupt surge of interest startles me. Does he even know Carl? I look at the others to see if they, like me, had noticed. If they had, they sure knew how to hide it.

I see Marc swiping his phone over and over. “I see a post about gay people here,” he says. “Yeah, it’s probably this one. Did it start by saying that homosexuality is an abomination according to the Bible, that that is one of the biggest misconceptions about the most popular book we know.”

Even before Chris or his friends can say anything, I know this is the one. I wrote it some time ago, but I remember every single word of it. I could finish Marc’s sentence if I wanted to. But why would I want to do that?

“The Bible may be saying something about not accepting sexual relations between two men. Those actions are – according to the common people – part of homosexuality, but they’re wrong. Being sexually attracted to men is not the same as being emotionally attracted to them.

Ahhh, what bullshit.”

“I’m glad I didn’t pay attention in class that day, I would’ve died out of boredom,” Todd groans. “This blogger is a moron.”

“In other languages they have different words for those two concepts,” Seth says. I see the surprise in his eyes. He didn’t mean to say that out loud. Luckily the others didn’t hear him, but I did. Those are the exact words that followed in my post. He read it, but he is acting like he didn’t. Why would he do that?

Then it hit me. Is he gay? Could it be? We’re in a Catholic school, but that doesn’t mean gay people aren’t here. It would be a plot twist in my life. Not that I like him, of course, he is cute, but I am not made for love.

“I agree with Hampleton, all gay people should be exterminated.” Everyone laughs at that and I don’t want to attract attention, so I laugh with them. Even Seth was laughing, so maybe he isn’t gay. But there is definitely something going on.

It bothers me. Exterminated. . . I know it shouldn’t. My posts have offended a lot of people, too. It’s not like I can’t handle criticism, I’m strong. I’m not Carl.

“Lunch is over!” Marc says suddenly, checking his watch. He looks sad. Seriously, that guy is always thinking about lunch. He is living from one meal to the next. “Are you going to come with us to our next classes, Adam?”

I shake my head. “I’ve got things to do, sorry.”

“Is he going to skip again? This kid is never with us anymore," Chris says.

“Chris, even if I stay, I won’t be with you anyway. We don’t share the same classes.”

“But we do,” Seth interrupts me. “You’re leaving us.”

“You’re ditching us,” Marc agrees.

I’m getting tired. Tired of being with them. I need some time on my own, like I always do. “Sorry guys, I’d like to stay. Gotta run though. You too, classes already started.”

“There is nothing wrong, is there?” Seth asks worriedly.

“Hah, probably his leg is falling off or a very contagious virus hit his family, right?” That’s Todd. Seriously, I don’t like that guy, not at all, but what he is trying to say is true.

“Nope.”

“So what’s it this time?” Todd asks.

“Gotta go to the hospital,” I say with a smile.

“Yeah right,” Neil says. It’s the first thing he's said this lunchtime, but he doesn’t need to say more, this was enough. I know they’re right, I’m ditching them, but they won’t understand. Being with them is exhausting. “Good luck gaming the shit out of yourself while we are being good students.”

I know, even in Catholic schools they talk like that. You’ll find those people everywhere. Just like there has to be gay kids in here somewhere. My glance moves to Seth.

“Please stay? Samatha left me too, only Marc is here,” he says.

“Where are the girls anyway?” I ask, trying to change the subject.

“If you actually spent some time with us last week, you would’ve known. They’re at some sort of girl event.” Todd again.

“Gonna stay with us?” Marc asks as if he didn’t hear me the first time.

“Sorry guys.” I walk away while thinking I really want to, but I don’t want to. Not being aware of how little sense that makes I turn around just before I leave the building. I see Seth staring at me. He looks concerned.