Storms - 1. Daniel

I pulled on my jacket. The sleeves were slightly frayed and the lining torn, but it kept me warm enough for this time of year.

‘Mum, I’m off!’ I called. There was no answer. I sighed and walked down the hall towards the kitchen.

My mother was sat at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. She looked small, ashen faced and frail, staring blankly out the window.

‘Mum?’ I asked softly.

She turned her head slowly. ‘Oh. Yeah. Have a good day, Danny.’ She smiled, but it didn’t really reach her eyes.

‘Yeah. Thanks.’ I tried my hardest to smile back, but I guess it didn’t reach my eyes either. Soon, she’d turned back to the window and I’d lost her again.

I walked to school, dragging my feet. My new high school sucked, truth be told. I didn’t know anyone, and I’d never been the best at making friends. Since Mum and I had to move, I had to change schools and leave the few friends I had behind. The commute would have been too expensive.

School was only a ten minute walk from our housing estate, but that was also the only good thing about it. This was a rougher neighbourhood, and so were the people. I found this out the hard way in my first week when a group of year eleven boys cornered me in the loo and stuffed my head down the toilet. I tried to see it as a rite of passage, a welcome to the school. At least that way I knew where I stood.

I didn’t tell anyone about it. Keeping my head down and staying out of trouble was a time-honoured survival tactic. I wasn’t about to abandon it now. Not when I needed it more than ever.

I never knew what it was about me that made other boys hate me so much. It was like they could see that I was different from them. I don’t really dress differently or have a striking appearance. I’m kind of nondescript. Normal looking, you know? Ordinary. You’d think a scrawny black kid would have an easy time blending in at a school like this. You’d be wrong.

I was slight for my age, but not tiny. I’m reasonably clever, but not clever enough to stand out. I used to be a bit chubby, but the past few months had lost me all that weight. I ought to have been able to blend into the crowd, but somehow whenever bullies were present I stood out like a sore thumb.

Maybe they could just smell the gay on me. Some kind of uncanny straight boy bully gaydar.

Back in my old school I had some friends. Mostly girls, but a couple of guys as well. I never told any of them that I liked boys. None of them had contacted me since I moved away. I guess they were all busy.

It was early October now, and I’d been in my new school for about a month. I kept trying to keep my head down, and for the most part people ignored me, but sometimes the bullies would take notice of me and follow me somewhere they could press me for money (of which I have none) or just kick me for laughs. I’m proud to say I took my beatings like a champ.

A gust of wind chased through the school yard as I entered, and I hugged myself against the chill. I stared straight ahead, walking purposefully towards the front door. I had almost reached the relative safety of the school building when someone bumped into my shoulder, hard.

I gasped and grabbed my shoulder, and against my own better judgment I looked up.

The older boy looking down at me had steely grey eyes and short cropped sandy hair. He sneered. ‘Watch where you’re going, faggot!’

I felt my cheeks burn. I looked down, muttered, ‘So–sorry . . .’ and began to walk forward again, but the boy grabbed my shoulder.

‘What sort of apology do you call that, fuckface?’

‘Patrick!’ The voice that had spoken was friendly and cheerful, but I thought I detected an edge of disapproval. No doubt it was my imagination. This was a voice I knew very well.

My bully turned his head, hand still grasping my shoulder. ‘Hey, Mike,’ he said.

The other boy came to a halt before him. He stood tall and broad shouldered, with brown hair to just below his ears and sparkling green-blue eyes. ‘Listen, I forgot my notes for our lab project at home today. Could I look over yours before class?’

Patrick looked like he wanted to tell him to piss off, that he was busy, but one did not simply say no to Michael Storm. ‘Yeah, all right,’ he said, and reluctantly let go of my shoulder, turning away.

Before walking off, Michael flashed me a broad, good-natured smile, and for a moment I felt like I was going to melt. Then he turned away and was gone, and I got my wits about me enough to start moving again.

Michael was the exception. The one person in the entire school who neither bullied nor ignored me. It seemed that Michael had managed the impossible: to be a decent person and still be popular.

I had no idea what he was even doing in this school. I’d overheard people saying that he lived in a large, fancy house with his parents and older sister, right on the edge of where the area turns from working class housing estates to middle class suburbia. His parents were wealthy, and Michael was a good student, so he could have had his pick of any independent school he liked. Yet he picked his local comprehensive—a cesspool of drinking, violence, and teenage pregnancies—and nobody seemed to know why.

This was not the first time Michael had magically appeared when I was being bullied. Complete coincidence, no doubt, but the fact remained that when Michael was nearby, nobody bothered me, as though his mere presence made people want to be nicer. Michael was the only person who ever smiled at me, and it was as if that smile was telling me, ‘Cheer up! Stay strong! It will get better.’

We had never actually had a conversation, of course, and odds were that Michael didn’t even know I existed. He probably smiled at everybody. But his smiles were a comfort nonetheless.

I had only been at school for a couple of weeks when I started having dreams about him, and by the time October rolled around I was forced to admit that I had fallen utterly and hopelessly in love. Which was just like me, really, falling in love with someone who didn’t even know I was there. Safer in the long run, though.

* * *

‘Right, lads.’ Mr. Griffiths twirled a volleyball between his fingers and looked out at us. ‘The girls have been sent on yet another “here’s how not to get pregnant” lecture this morning. Seems to me you lot should be attending those as well, as it takes two to tango, but that’s not my call.’ A few sniggers rose up from the assembled fourteen and fifteen-year-olds. I kept quiet. ‘So, today we’re just going to have a friendly game of volleyball. Daniel, Loz, help me set up the net. The rest of you, split into four teams and we’ll make a bit of a tournament out of it.’

I followed Loz, a burly kid a foot taller than me who had nevertheless never given me any trouble, and Mr. Griffiths into the equipment room. Griffiths dug out the volleyball net and instructed us to go set it up. I was a bit too short to reach the highest anchor point and struggled on tip toe for about a minute before Mr. Griffiths showed up at my side.

‘Here, let me give you a hand with that,’ he said, giving me a friendly grin, and helped me get the net up. ‘There we are. All done.’

Loz and I returned to the rest of the class. Two of the teams were complete, with four people in each, while the other two, led by Aziz and Alec respectively, had three.

‘Dibs on Loz!’ said Aziz the moment we joined them. A collective grumble rose from Alec’s team.

‘No fucking fair, man!’ said Alec. ‘You’re sticking us with this loser?’

Aziz grinned. ‘You snooze, you lose, bruh.’

‘Oi, what’s this then?’ came Mr. Griffiths’s voice. ‘Can’t you lot play nice?’

‘No one wants Hartman on their team, sir,’ said Alec flatly, crossing his arms over his chest and looking resolutely away from me, like I was something nasty he’d found at the bottom of his shoe.

‘Well, too bad for you, because everyone is playing.’ Mr. Griffiths looked between Alec and Aziz. ‘Right. Aziz and Alec, you two will team up with Loz and Daniel. You four,’ he indicated the remaining members of Alec and Aziz’s respective teams, ‘you’ll form the fourth team.’

There was no small amount of grumbling from Alec and Aziz at this arrangement. They glared daggers at Griffiths’s back as he walked away to get the ball, but this was nothing to the looks they shot me. Clearly they felt that this was my fault. Maybe they suspected me of convincing Griffiths to come up with this solution.

I couldn’t really blame them, though. PE was by far my worst subject, a fact that was amply demonstrated when we started playing. We lost the first match, but miraculously won the second thanks to Loz’s height and Aziz’s speed. This didn’t stop my team from shouting abuse at me every time I missed a serve, though, or the opposing team from mockingly singing my praises for the same. We lost our final match, landing us in third place.

Thus it was under the taunts of my teammates (mostly Aziz and Alec, but clearly I had now given Loz a reason to hate me as well, though he was less vocal than the other two) that I headed toward the changing rooms once the lesson was over. This was the worst part of any PE lesson. I’d always been rubbish at PE. I was used to dropping the ball and getting picked last for teams, but the changing rooms afterwards . . . I was grateful that PE was the last lesson before dinner break on Mondays, because that meant that I could hide in a corner until everyone else had finished in the showers, and save myself the embarrassment of potentially popping a stiffy in front of everyone. I wondered idly while I played with my phone whether this was something every gay teen had to deal with, or if I was just unusually depraved.

When the last of my classmates were getting dressed I finally began to remove my own clothing, and by the time I stepped into the shower, the changing room was empty.

As the hot water poured over me, my thoughts wandered involuntarily to Michael again, as they so often did these days when I was alone. I thought back to the way he’d smiled at me that morning. Which was inconvenient, because the image made me feel that familiar tightening in my lower abdomen. Rinsing shampoo out of my hair, I willed the hard-on to go away, but it seemed to have a mind of its own, and when it still persisted once my body was clean of soap suds, I figured I might as well have a wank and get it over with. I was alone, after all.

Like I had done so many times before, I pictured Michael in my mind. Tall, strong, perfect Michael, with his bright eyes shifting in greens and blues and his flawless hair. Michael smiling at me, taking my hand, pulling me close and kissing me. I had only ever kissed one person before—a girl, at a party. Michael would feel nothing like that. I pictured his lips, tried to imagine how he would taste.

Supporting my weight with my free hand on the tiled wall, I sped up the motion of my hand, breathing becoming laboured. My breath hitched in my throat; I was close now.

‘Fuck!’ I whimpered. ‘Michael!’ And just as I shot into my hand with a groan that echoed off the tiles, I heard someone clear their throat behind me and froze.

Frantically, I cleaned myself, trying to look casual (which is really hard when you’re cleaning cum stains off the wall), before I turned my head, most of my body still facing the wall.

Mr. Griffiths gave me this unreadable look, something like surprised amusement. Thank God my skin is dark enough to hide a blush. Griffiths cleared his throat again, looking away. ‘I, er . . . I’d like to see you in my office, please, Daniel. If you have a minute.’

I nodded mutely, and Mr. Griffiths inclined his head before turning away and leaving me alone. I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding and let my forehead come to rest against the cold tile for a few moments before turning the water off. I dried myself off and got dressed in my uniform as quickly as I could, before grabbing my kit and walking to Mr. Griffiths’s office, just off from the gym. I knocked, an uneasy feeling in my stomach. Was I about to be reprimanded?

‘Come in,’ said Mr. Griffiths, and I stepped inside. The PE teacher looked up and smiled. ‘There you are. Have a seat.’ As I sat he reached for a tin sitting in the bookshelf behind him (I noted titles such as Complete Teen Fitness and How to Motivate Brats to Exercise) and offered it to me. ‘Biscuit?’

I shook my head. ‘No thanks.’

Griffiths shrugged and took one for himself. ‘You only started here this term, right?’

‘Er, yeah.’

‘Do the other boys often give you a hard time?’ He regarded me with piercing eyes roughly the colour of glaciers. I just shrugged in response, looking away. His eyes made me uneasy. ‘You prefer to stay late and shower alone?’ he pressed.

I shrugged again. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Does it feel safer?’ When I still gave him no reply, Griffiths sighed. ‘This school tries to have a zero tolerance bullying policy, but as I believe you’ve experienced for yourself it doesn’t really work. But I’d like you to feel safe in my class, Daniel. If someone’s bullying you, giving you a hard time or hurting you in some way, you can talk to me about it. And if you don’t feel comfortable talking to me, the school has a guidance counsellor, a school nurse, and about thirty other capable teachers and members of staff who want to help you.’

I nodded. ‘I know. Thank you, sir. But I’m fine, really.’

Griffiths looked very much like he wasn’t buying that for a second. ‘And how are things at home?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Fine,’ I lied automatically, and left it at that.

Griffiths ran a hand through his short blond hair and gave a frustrated sigh. ‘All right. If you say so.’ He gave me another long, unreadable look and then said, ‘Right, then. You best go get some food before it runs out.’

I nodded and stood. ‘All right. Thank you, sir.’

‘Any time, Daniel.’

I was halfway to the cafeteria before I got jumped. Aziz, Alec and a boy called Jason dragged me into a bathroom where Alec delivered a punch to my gut that caused me to double over in pain.

‘That’s for being shit at volleyball,’ he hissed. He raised his fist again. ‘What did you tell Griffiths?’

I coughed. ‘What?’ I croaked.

‘I fucking saw you go into his office!’ said Jason.

‘Yeah, so what did you tell him?’ Alec waved his fist threateningly.

‘Nothing!’ I insisted, quite truthfully. ‘He asked me to come see him after class, but I didn’t tell him anything, I swear!’

Aziz grabbed my shirt collar and slammed me back against the wall, hard. It almost knocked the breath out of me again. ‘You better not have, you stinking little twat!’ he growled. ‘Or there’ll be worse than this coming.’

As if on cue, Alec punched me again, and then all three of them left. I sank down to the floor, clutching my stomach and trying to catch my breath, hating myself for the tears that welled up in my eyes.

This was what I had been trying to avoid. I sat there for a few minutes as the pain dulled, before finally glancing at my watch. Only twenty minutes left of the break.

I might as well just skip dinner.