Be Myself! - 20. One Long Summer

As the first week of the ‘study group’ came to a close I realised I was spending more time with Olivia’s family than with mine. Every day I arrived home after dinner and left straight after breakfast; there was just enough time to tell my parents the group was going well and I was still confident in my ability to pass all exams. I was out of the house before they could ask any further questions. After I spent my second weekend in a row at the Viñas’s, I realised their place was becoming as familiar to me as my own home, a feeling strengthened by the fact that my girlfriend’s parents always treated me like I was fully part of the family, not just an insistently bothersome guest.

For the last day of exams we planned to have a more ‘private’ celebration. Fittingly, Geography would be the last exam for all of us, and then our fourth year of school would be over for good. Olivia and I stayed in the exam room until the two hour maximum time period for the test was over. I had finished my paper in less than an hour, but decided to use the rest of the time to check and re-check all my answers. My parents would not allow me to take Geography next year, but I felt I should give it my best shot because it was Mr Smith’s subject. Henry had been taken to a separate room to answer the questions orally. He was going to be given an extra half an hour to compensate for his inability to write, and thus he had asked Olivia and me to not wait for him.

“Wow, I can’t believe it’s over!” Olivia exclaimed as soon as we felt the wind brushing against our faces, the ultimate proof that the school building and our fourth year of Secondary School were behind us now. “It’s over! It’s over!” Olivia jumped and danced all the way to the front gate. It was good to see her happy and cheerful like this; for me the end of exam period was nothing more than a short break on a continuum of learning; nothing was really over, and therefore I did not feel so compelled to celebrate that way. “I can’t wait to be home!” Because of her enthusiasm, Olivia ended up half-dragging me towards her house, where her parents awaited with a delicious chocolate cake.

“Congratulations on surviving your exams!” Mr Viñas greeted us, kissing his daughter on the cheek and patting me on the back. “Now relax, and enjoy your freedom for as long as it lasts!”

“Hell yeah!” Olivia agreed, grabbing two pieces of cake and jumping on the couch. She turned the TV on and scrolled past dozens of boring daytime programmes until she found something that would not make us lose faith in humanity. “Oscar, come here.” She patted the seat next to her. “Let’s kill our remaining brain cells! We deserve it!”

“Er... sure?” I joined her on the couch, even though I was not particularly keen on becoming a mindless vegetable in front of the TV. I had never really been allowed to watch anything aired before six p.m. because my father said it was either for children or stupid low-class people. I knew vaguely what the programmes were about, and based on that information had no reason to question him.

“Ah, it feels so good to not have to think anymore!” Olivia exclaimed, lying over me once we had consumed the caloric equivalent of three meals in the form of chocolate cake. “Can we just stay like this forever?”

“Don’t you want to know your results?” I asked, wondering why she acted like nothing else mattered when the end of exams was just the beginning of our journey towards fifth year. In late August we would receive our results by post and only then there would really be a reason to celebrate anything.

“I don’t care about results; they can go fuck themselves and die in a pit of quicksand!” Olivia answered nonchalantly and laughed. “Though I suppose it would be just like you to be completely neurotic over it for the whole summer.”

“I have no reason not to. If I don’t do well enough, I won’t be able to do what I want in the future,” I scolded her, somewhat offended that she cared so little about everything. Her attitude made me feel like she was disregarding all the effort I had put into those exams over the past months, like none of it mattered anymore because the next battery of tests was a whole year away.

“Oh, sorry, I forgot you always aim for the highest possible achievement.” She did not seem very sincere, though. “But you’re the smartest guy in our whole year; if I knew half the stuff you do I wouldn’t even bother with revisions!”

“Good for you.” I did not feel like carrying on with this conversation, and thankfully Olivia understood that. The TV flickered images and sounds at us for what seemed like an eternity before we gathered enough energy to leave the couch, by which point dinner was already waiting for us.

(...)

“Oscar, I am concerned about your behaviour. I understand that during the exams you were tutoring your classmates, but we are now in July and you still spend most of your days away. Where are you going? Who are you spending so much time with?”

“No one,” I lied, looking away from my father. We were sitting at the breakfast table, but mum was not going to join us because she was feeling a bit indisposed. Dad had my undivided attention, and it pleased him.

“No one? So you have been away from home every day on your own? For what?” My face burned in embarrassment and fear. All I could think was that I had spent most of last month hanging out with my friends. We mostly stayed at Olivia’s, but every now and then we went to Henry’s or we would just hang out at the park. Even Edward joined us sometimes, when he was sure Ariadne was going to be around.

“To think about things,” I answered, grabbing my trousers under the table to keep my hands from shaking too much. Olivia had taught me to try get as much time as possible to make up a story when I was pressed like this; I hoped that being as vague as possible would help.

“What things?” My father’s face was terrifying. He was leaning on the table, getting as close to me as he could without climbing on it. His eyes were cold and piercing, examining every tiny movement of my muscles searching for signs of deceit. I would not be surprised if he could see the sweat dripping from my face.

“Ah… exams, school, what to do from now until August…” I gripped my trousers with such force I could feel my nails digging in my leg. Hopefully there would be no visible scratches.

“And to think about those things you need to be out of the house?”

“I like fresh air?” My answer was not meant to sound like a question. Dad somehow got even closer, and I tried my best not to blink under his intense stare. To my surprise, after some eternally long seconds of this staring match, my father retreated and put a hand on his temples, seemingly considerably less tense.

“Oscar, please be truthful with me. Tell me the truth. I know you are lying and you know I know it.” Dad seemed tired all of a sudden, like he had had enough of my poor excuses. Did he know how long I had been lying for? Did he know why I was lying? I found it hard to believe he wanted to hear the whole truth. There was no reason to believe he had somehow changed his mind about the gay things over the past few weeks, not when it had taken me much longer than that to accept I had become a part of that world.

“I’m sorry, dad. It’s just…” It was not exactly his fault. I was scared of his punishment, of being forcefully dragged to my room and not being able to leave for the next two weeks. Of the shame it brought me. The pain. Just thinking about those things made my eyes water, and soon enough I felt something wet falling on my hand. It was not a tear, though, but a drop of sweat.

“What are you afraid of, Oscar? If you did something wrong you have to tell me as soon as possible, before you make it worse. I hate punishing you as much as you hate being punished. It hurts me too.” It was not dad’s fault that he had to punish me; it was what parents did to misbehaving children. It was his duty. But if I told him everything, he would make me stay away from my friends forever. He would make sure I never felt like approaching them again. I could not risk it, even if it made things worse later.

“I know, dad. I just…” I needed to find a good excuse. Something I could justly be afraid of him finding out about, but that would hopefully not lead to his worst punishment. Olivia had once suggested I made it look like I was going out with another girl. It was pretty much the only hope I had at that point. “I met this girl and she convinced me to help her out during exams.” I was not technically lying; Olivia had made me do just that. “She convinced me to do things with her too, but after exams were over she said she had been lying about taking the pill and now…” How angry would he be if he was told he was about to become a granddad before the age of fifty? Could I get away with saying my ‘girlfriend’ had a miscarriage before I had to introduce her to him? Maybe if the girl died because of the miscarriage…

I felt awful for lying, but I felt even worse for wanting to end two innocent, even if fictitious, lives in the process.

“Oscar…” My father used his angry warning tone. He was not happy, but hopefully not as unhappy as if I told him I was still seeing Olivia and every now and then engaging in man-to-man sex with Jean.

“I’m sorry, father. She said she didn’t like condoms and I really wanted to be with her and…” I lowered my head in shame. If I was lucky the red taking over my face would me mistaken by embarrassment about the sex talk rather than the embarrassment for telling such blatant lies.

“I want to meet this girl. It sounds like she had been using you to get some kind of advantage.” My father rose from his chair. He sounded angry and determined; the kind of mood combination I feared most. “I will make sure she gets rid of this parasite before it is too late.”

“It already is,” I told him, thinking that my best bet would be to delay his ‘meeting’ with the ‘girlfriend’. “She only told me about it when she was sure there was nothing I could do.” At least I did not need to try force some kind of desperate tone to come out of my mouth; it happened naturally under my father’s intense stare.

“Very well, then. Take me to the girl’s parents. I will make sure you will have nothing to do with her from now on.”

“I… I will try…” I stuttered. Everything apart from my mouth had frozen in fear; he was walking towards me and his anger was only getting worse. “They travel a lot and… and…” I needed more excuses. Anything would do. Anything. “They hate her. They think she is a good-for-nothing who…”

“She definitely is,” my father interrupted. “Well, that makes things easier. If she was bad from the start, it is likely that her parents will be cooperative.” He smirked, but his anger refused to dissipate. “Now, as for why you would hook up with such a bad apple…”

“I’m sorry, dad! I was desperate!” I had burned myself in my own lie. I should have thought it through. “I really wanted a girlfriend after the way things turned out with Olivia and…” he sent me a warning glare; I was not allowed to speak of Olivia and her family in his presence after our disastrous family dinner. “Sorry. I was desperate, dad, and she was the only one who was willing to go out with me,” I finished rather clumsily.

“Very well. I will speak with this slut’s father as soon as possible. Now come with me.” My father indicated I should stand up and follow him out of the kitchen. The dreaded words I feared most. He walked ahead and I obediently followed, through the kitchen door to the stairs, across the corridor to my room. He closed the door after I came in. “Remember, Oscar, it hurts me too.”

(...)

It was not as bad as the day I met Jean, but the punishment still made me afraid to leave my room for one whole week. My father told me I had been a gullible idiot to believe in such a silly story, and that I had been immature in my decision to have sex with a girl just to prove a point. He gave me two weeks to get the girl’s address and set a time when her parents would be home, apparently very conscious of the fact that I could not be seen by someone I had intimate contact with while my bruises were still healing.

When Olivia and my other friends called, I told them I had caught a cold and would have to stay home to avoid passing it on to any of them. Everyone believed me at first, but soon Olivia and Jean began to bother me on chat about what was going on.

‘Why dont u wanna Skype? I miss seeing ur face,’ Olivia asked. The three of us were in a group chat initiated by her. It seemed the two of them had been discussing my sudden absence and had come up with a plan to get to the truth.

‘Yeah, and I miss your cock,’ Jean helpfully added. I almost felt like smiling at his comment.

‘I’m sick, I don’t want to show my face. I look horrible.’ It was not really a lie. During the past week I had only left my room for toilet breaks and quick meals. I did not dare spend more time with my father than necessary. Mum was as angry as he was, and just as willing to show my ‘girlfriend’s’ parents a piece of her mind.

‘You can’t look horrible. You’re too sexy.’

‘I agree w/ him.’

‘No, seriously, I don’t want to.’ No matter what I said, Olivia and Jean kept insisting. They threatened to send me texts every ten minutes if I did not show my face to them. Alarmed by the possibility of my father hearing the continuous correspondence, I had no other choice but to give in.

“Ok, you do look horrible,” Olivia noted when her eyes landed on me for the first time in days. My hair was a mess, there were dark bags under my eyes because every time I tried to sleep I was attacked by nightmares involving my father and his punishments, and I had a cut on my lip because my mouth was constantly dry and I could not be bothered to do anything about it.

“I don’t know, I would still let you fuck me,” Jean pouted with his usual sexiness. Olivia giggled, but I did not have the energy to say anything.

“I didn’t say anything about fucking, just about his face,” my girlfriend replied. Even as tired as I was, I could not help but blush intensely because my sex life was once again put on the spotlight. At least this way they would not ask about my ‘sickness’. “I think it’s cruel to reject someone just because of the way they look. As long as Oscar is still willing and his penis is working, I would go for it too.”

“You’re embarrassing me,” I warned in an ineffective tired monotone. The other two just laughed.

“If you don’t want us to say those things, you better talk instead.” Olivia grinned. They had probably planned this whole thing.

“There is nothing to say. I’m sick, I feel horrible, and all that sex talk is not helping.”

“Ok, I’m sorry, Oscar. We were just worried about you.” Olivia sighed. Hopefully it meant they had finally believed me and would thus leave me alone like I wanted. I was about to mentally congratulate myself on this small victory when dad knocked on my door. I quickly opened a website about the Higgs Bosom and moved with some difficulty to let him in. Olivia and Jean realised what was happening and thankfully remained silent.

“Have you got the girl’s address already? Has she contacted you?”

“No, not really. I don’t know where she is.” The knowledge that my friends were listening to everything and possibly seeing my father’s angry face made me even more nervous than usual. If dad mentioned anything about his punishments, I would have a lot to explain to Olivia, and she would not doubt spill it to her own parents. I did not dare think about what would happen if Mr Viñas and Ms Savage ever heard about it.

“Is she running away from you now? I thought she wanted money from us.”

“Maybe she just wanted a free flat to live in.” I shrugged. I was trying to remember the common stereotype for teen mums according to what my parents told me. Every now and then when something like this came up in the news they would rant about those ‘useless leeches’ who trapped a boy into marrying them and as a bonus got a flat from the government. Then they left school and lived the rest of their lives on benefits, draining resources from taxpayers that should be invested in education and health care for the people who actually deserved them.

“I cannot believe you got involved with such scum. What happened to you this year?” My father’s disapproving glare was one of the worst I had seen on him. It did not help that Olivia and Jean were probably seeing it too. “First that disgusting man-whore seduces you like you are nothing but a naïve little girl, then you irresponsibly fall for another whore’s trick. I don’t think your mother or I can take another disappointment like this.” The few unhealed gashes in my leg throbbed.

“Yes, father, I understand. I will be more careful from now on.”

“You better. And give me a time I can see the girl’s parents as soon as possible.”

“Yes, father, I will.” Thankfully, he left soon after that, though not before nodding menacingly to me. Most of the tension left me when I heard the door closing, but I knew this was not over yet. I still had to face my friends and their questions.

“Ok, what was that?” There would be no point in hiding my cover-up story anymore, and I was too tired to keep up the lies. I told them about my made-up pregnant girlfriend (Olivia laughed so hard I feared my parents would hear her), and my father’s plans to talk to her non-existing parents, but omitted anything to do with what happened after we left the kitchen that day.

“You have some imagination after all!” Jean beamed once the story was over. Hopefully they would find the story so amusing that they would stop nagging me and ignore any obvious links between my ‘confession’ and my sudden ‘illness’. “I would never be able to come up with something like that!”

“No one would believe you if you did, though,” Olivia pointed out, still smiling far too much. As long as it kept them distracted…

“True. Unless I found a sexy guy with a working uterus and somehow managed to spill stuff on him, even though he would be the one giving my ass a good pounding, but what are the chances?” Jean also seemed far too excited for his own good. I did not want to know what he was thinking about.

“Yeah, what are the chances…?” Olivia agreed, though her smile diminished considerably. Thankfully our conversation did not last very long after this; Olivia announced her father needed help with dinner and disappeared from the conversation. Jean tried to convince me to have long-distance sex with him, but I was saved from this embarrassing possibility by Mr Smith calling my friend to eat.

Finally alone in my room, I did not feel like leaving it, even when mum announced our food was also ready. I had to drag myself down the stairs, my motivation being that I did not want to give my father anymore excuses to being angry with me.

(...)

Another part of my punishment was that my parents decided not to give me a birthday party this year. I had been too much of a disappointment to be worth that kind of investment. For the last fifteen years my birthday parties had been the highlight of my non-academic year; they were the ultimate prize for being an excellent child. It was such a big part of my family life that I had come to assume that every child had the same kind of party that I did, with all the toys, balloons, clowns, and cake while in primary school, and then movies and investigative games for the more grown-ups. I still remembered my shock when Hannah told me she would not be getting a party, or that she never had a party. It was a foreign concept almost as hard to grasp as the whole sexuality thing, though with much smaller life-changing consequences.

So not having a birthday party to celebrate my sixteenth birthday (the symbolical Coming of Age moment when I would be considered an adult for most things), came as a big blow to me. I wanted my farewell to childhood to be special, unique, the kind of event I would remember for the rest of my life and look back with near-envy to the times of happiness long gone. But no. Not anymore. All because of life-changing events in the school toilet and a badly-told lie.

Or at least so I thought.

“Oscar, can you come here tomorrow?” Olivia asked me the day after our last conversation. We were once again on Skype, and once again I had been coerced to show my face by my overly concerned girlfriend.

“No, I have to stay here.” She had invited me to go to her house on my birthday. Even if I felt like leaving my room by this point, there was no way I could trick my parents into letting me out on a day I was supposed to be punished. But Olivia did not want to give up so easily.

“Sunday, then?”

“Do I have to?”

“We miss you! It would be nice to have you around again. Even Sam is asking for you,” Olivia pleaded with cute puppy-dog eyes. I knew she was using some kind of emotional manipulation, but the truth was that I missed her too. I missed my friends, even Jean and his creepy sexual advances.

“I don’t know how. I ran out of excuses.” If she knew how to help me, I might feel brave enough to face the world again. The gashes on my legs were almost healed; as long we did not have sex I would be alright.

“Tell them you want to go to the library or something. A bookshop. You like those things, don’t you?”

“As long as I actually come back with some books, maybe.” My father always said that the one thing always worth spending money on was books. Olivia’s idea could work. We fleshed out more details about the plan over the next half hour, so that by the time we were done I felt a little bit more confident about leaving the house once again.

(...)

My sixteenth birthday came and went without any major incidents. My parents wished me happy birthday during breakfast and I was reminded of my newest punishment. From then on my father spent the rest of the day in his study and mum went out with a group of friends. I stayed in my room mostly lying on my bed hoping for the day to end soon. At some point I realised that my new plan for escaping parental control had once again awoken my rebellious disposition; the room I had been confined to became more like a prison, and the more time I spent there, the more it became associated with my father’s punishment rather than the place where I studied and slept. The two most recent rounds of punishment (eerily similar in almost every detail), played over and over in my mind, making me first leave the bed where it all took place, then leave the room that slowly suffocated me. I ran to our private library on the ground floor to hide amidst ancient, smelly books.

At night, forced back in that room, I could not sleep. Nightmares plagued me regardless of whether my eyes were open or closed.

It was under this severe lack of sleep that I tried to convince my father to let me go to the local library. Olivia and I had everything planned in terms of what I had to say and do to justify my disappearance for a whole day. We had an answer for every counter argument, apart from one thing we completely overlooked.

“The library is closed on Sunday, Oscar. You will have to wait until tomorrow.”

We completely forgot about it. We forgot we were dealing with a Sunday in the middle of summer holidays. Nothing was going to be open, except maybe bookshops. I changed my arguments accordingly, and thankfully my father let me go under promise that I would buy something useful to keep my mind sharp during the summer. I texted Olivia and told her to meet me at one of the largest bookshops in the city centre. As much as I wanted to see my friends again, I had to make sure I fulfilled my promise if I did not want this to become our last meeting.

“Ok, so we’re looking for some kind of useful junk.” Olivia nodded when I told her my new plan. “Ok, let’s rush. The party is supposed to start in the next hour. What are you looking for?”

“Let’s look at the Physics section. My father likes those kinds of books.”

“Sure. Here we go!” Olivia dragged me up the stairs to the second floor, where the Physics section was. She was so determined to get everything done quickly that she was hardly paying attention to which book she was grabbing. Olivia was just misplacing random items on the shelves, shoving them into my face and asking whether they would be the one I was looking for. After ten minutes of this messy search, I had enough.

“I think it will go faster if you stop bothering me every two seconds.”

“I’m just trying to help! We’re missing your party!”

“Well, at the moment I have more important things in mind than a birthday party!” Even if it was supposed to be a special one. After all the nightmares, the tension, and the threats, the last thing I wanted was to make my father angry again. I would not be able to face him today if I could not pretend to have done exactly what I told him I would. Without a worthy book, I would not be able to enjoy any party or anything ever again.

Unfortunately, Olivia did not understand my situation.

“Oh, come on! It’s just a book! Why does it matter so much which one it is?”

“Look, let me find the book in peace. I’ll let you know when I get it. You can even go ahead to the party if you want.” I was too stressed and too tired to argue or come up with an explanation that could omit my main reasons and still make sense.

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll wait, though it would’ve been nice if I could know why you’re so worked up.”

“I’m tired, ok? I’ve been sick and I haven’t been out of my room for more than a week.” At least this much was true. The lack of sleep was definitely affecting me; hopefully it would change once this bookshop stress was over.

“Ok, sorry. Just let me know when you’re finished.” Olivia walked away, staying out in the corridor while I looked through the shelves. It took me another fifteen minutes of careful consideration before I found a book that I thought my father would approve of. Olivia and I rushed to the train station and managed to get on one just as its doors were closing. The twelve minute journey to her house was spent with me desperately trying to skim through the book in order to have something to tell my father while Olivia tried to share her plans for the party. By the time we got off, my tired brain insisted in telling me that the universe had the shape of a two-layer chocolate cake and it was, in fact, rainbow-coloured.

(...)

“Happy birthday, Oscar!” It was not really surprising that Jean was the first to reach me when we entered Olivia’s living room, though all my friends were there already. “You’re all grown-up now, how does it feel?” As he spoke, Jean grabbed my ass with one hand and sensually touched my chest with the other.

“Not that much different, actually.” Between being afraid of my parents and the endless nightmares I had not had the time to enjoy being sixteen yet.

“You do know you technically can’t have sex with Olivia anymore, right? She’s under the age of consent, and you’re not.” Jean was grinning far too much as he said that, but my girlfriend had an answer ready.

“It doesn’t matter because he’s my boyfriend and we’re very close in age. It would only be a crime if someone went to the police about it, and we all know it’s not going to happen.” She stared threateningly at Jean, like she thought he would be tempted to do just that. She stared at the rest of our friends the same way; probably to be sure she got her point across. “And anyway, aren’t you even younger than me?”

“The age of my fucks was never something I worried about. Actually, Oscar is probably the youngest guy to ever impale my ass.”

Whether Jean intended for it or not, a grave silence fell on the room as soon as the words spilled from his mouth. Jean’s past was staring at us in the face, and it was not a pleasant sight. I probably was not the only one wanting to run away and forget everything we had just heard. Surprisingly, it was Sam who got rid of the tension; he noticed our silence and promptly invaded the room with his childish naivety.

“Hey, is this a party or a funeral?”

“It’s the funeral of their innocence,” Hannah answered, sighing heavily and looking pointedly at Jean. The blond acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened; his hands had not moved from my ass and chest, and his sexy grin remained perfectly in place.

“Cool. Does that mean they’re about to have an orgy?” Sam asked, surprising almost everyone in the room apart from his sister and Hannah.

“No, it means they’ve just realised how creepy their friend is,” Hannah answered apathetically. She had not been as impressed by Sam’s matter-of-fact use of the word ‘orgy’ as the rest of us (probably because she had known Jean for years).

“Ah, ok. So Jean is a psychopath? Has he got a chainsaw or something?”

“I’ve got something much better!” Jean’s grin grew to epic proportions, making Olivia look scared for a second. “Though I won’t be showing it to you for the next couple of years.” Olivia laughed in relief. Sam, on the other hand, pouted cutely and stormed out of the room claiming that Jean was ‘no fun’. After that we slowly rebuilt the party atmosphere, but it took a while for everyone to feel truly relaxed. It did not help that Jean kept hitting on me, Henry, and Edward as if the future of the world depended on the four of us having the orgy that Sam mentioned.

At least once the party got going it became quite successful. There was no alcohol (not so much because I did not want to drink, even if I had just become legally allowed to, but because Hannah did not want to be around drugs. It was a fair request considering her history of rehab, and thus we all agreed to have an alcohol-free party), so our main entertainment had to come from somewhere else. Jean suggested he be the star of the party, but Olivia’s parents wisely declined. Instead, we got a couple of board games out.

“Is that your idea of a cool party?” Helena asked, eyeing the pile of boxes with suspicion.

“I like board games,” Ariadne interjected. Helena rolled her eyes. “I used to be pretty good at Scrabble, but I haven’t played it in years!”

“Shall we start with it, then?” Olivia asked the group. Hannah and Edward were not particularly keen on any of the games, Helena would rather do something completely different, and Ariadne, Henry and I raised our hands like a particularly polite group of kids waiting their turn to play. Jean was too busy sitting on Henry’s lap to participate in the vote. “Ok, Scrabble it is!”

Since the game could only be played by a maximum of four players, we decided to form pairs. Henry and Jean were already occupying only one seat on the couch, so they were declared one. Olivia and I, Helena and Ariadne, and Edward and Hannah formed the other three.

Jean and Henry started the game. The word they placed on the board was, fittingly, ‘sex’. This made the three other males in the group blush uncontrollably for the first ten minutes of the game. We only stopped because Ariadne managed to turn ‘sex’ into ‘sextet’. About half way through the game, an interesting exchange happened between Jean and Henry, culminating in the reveal of yet another piece of the puzzle that was the blonde’s past.

“No, you can’t spell it that way,” Henry noted, preventing Jean from placing four tiles on the board.

“Are you sure? That’s how you say it.” Jean looked puzzled, but Henry seemed very sure.

“But just because you say it one way doesn’t mean you spell it that way.”

“True that,” Olivia added, even though she had as much of a clue about what was happening as I did. “English sucks at spelling. Spanish is a lot easier.”

“It doesn’t make sense. Are you sure this is not how you spell it?” Jean insisted, looking at the tiles in his hands and at the board in utter confusion.

“Yes, I am. Spelling is one of my strong points in English.”

“Well, my strongest point in English is that I learned to speak the language in, like, a year. But I didn’t know how to write back then, and it looks like Mr Smith was not a good teacher.”

“English is not your first language?” Olivia asked. She was not the only person in the room whose curiosity was suddenly spiked.

“How? You don’t even have an accent!” Henry added.

“I learned when I was around seven. That’s when my boss took me here. I’m just very good, so I learned quickly.”

“What is your mother language, then?” Ariadne asked. Like Henry said, Jean had no trace of a foreign accent, so it was hard to guess.

“Does it matter? I can’t even speak it anymore.”

“You forgot it?” While most of us seemed surprised with the newest revelations, Ariadne was more curious and excited. She leaned closer to Jean, making the blond seek shelter behind Henry, just to get away from her breasts.

“Yeah. Haven’t used it for more than half my life, it’s gone now.” Jean shrugged, though from his crouched position behind Henry it did not have much of an impact.

“I didn’t think it could happen.” Ariadne still acted like she was marvelled by the latest scientific discovery. Jean, on the other hand, did not seem very comfortable, though it was hard to tell whether it was because of the intense questioning, or his forced proximity to oversized breasts. “Is it really, really gone, or do you think you could remember it if you heard it again?”

“It’s gone. I can’t use it again and I don’t want to.”

“But what language was it?”

“Guess.” Jean pointedly avoided looking at her. Even though he tried to put on his normal carefree posture, it was obvious he had become tense and fidgety.

“It’s French, isn’t it?” Henry asked, surprising the rest of us. He turned his body to face Jean and took the blonde’s hands in his. “Your name kind of gives it away.” Jean nodded, still visibly uncomfortable. Considering how I was so used to seeing the blond making other people feel that way, it was disconcerting to see him in such a vulnerable position. “We don’t need to talk about it anymore if you don’t want to.”

“You’re right. We don’t need to. Can I put my word on the board now?” Jean jumped on Henry’s lap. His smiled returned once he had been relieved of the pressure to talk about his past. It had been the first time he had been uncomfortable sharing personal information. All other times, it was other people who became uncomfortable with what he was saying. I tried not to think too hard about it, but what I knew so far seemed to indicate that all the creepy stuff he was more than ok sharing with us had happened after he learned English. It meant that whatever had taken place before that was something even more horrible than what we already knew of his past.

I could not even imagine what it could have been. And I definitely did not want to.

“No, you can’t. It’s still a wrong word. Try this one.” Henry took the letters from Jean’s hand and managed to clumsily place them on the board despite his limited motor coordination. Intersecting with the ‘s’ in ‘sextet’ we could now read the word ‘trust’.

(...)

The party was supposed to end after we watched a movie together. Before that, the Viñas made me blow the birthday candles on my cake (they put sixteen small candles in there instead of just two with the numbers one and six) before we were allowed to eat it. We took our places in front of the television (including Sam this time), each carrying at least one cake slice. Like Olivia had tried to tell me on the train, it was a chocolate cake coloured like the rainbow on the inside. It was a true visual spectacle, even if it meant we would be ingesting a lot of artificial colouring with it.

The movie of choice was ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’. Olivia said it was fitting to our group because it was comedy/parody and a gay movie, so we all agreed to watch. Ariadne and Helena had seen it already, but were more than happy to watch it again. Jean, on the other hand, tried to drag Henry away once he realised (barely ten minutes into the movie), that it was going to focus on lesbians. Ariadne convinced him to stay by pointing out that there were plenty of sexy gay men around too (and just as she said that, one of said sexy gay men appeared on the screen, as if to prove her point).

Olivia and I sat on the couch right in front of the television. Throughout the movie she found many ways of lying on my lap to cuddle with me or just hold me in a protective way. It was just as well, because the movie was full of moments that hit far too close to home for me and I wanted to either run away or cry in despair. I obviously did none of it in public, but it made me wonder whether my girlfriend and her family had something else in mind when they chose this specific movie for my birthday party.

Maybe they were trying to send me a message. Maybe they had always done so, but I did not realise it until I saw the end of the movie with Olivia sitting comfortably on my lap, surrounded by the friends who had stuck with me through the lowest point of my life. I finally understood what they were trying to say, and it made me smile.

Jean was a creepy sex maniac and Olivia did not care at all about her school career. Hannah and Helena were scary and sometimes downright cruel. Henry was too nice for his own good and Edward could be a bit nicer at times. Ariadne could actually speak to me every now and then and Sam could shut up for a change. Still, the people I had around me were my friends; they had chosen to be with me, bear with me, and help me. It was not their duty, not something profitable for them, but they were still there. And at that moment I felt like they would always be.