Be Myself! - 45. Unexpected Friendships

The whole school seemed to know that I would be coming back that Tuesday morning. From the moment I got out of Ms Savage’s car I felt like I had become some sort of special attraction for everyone to ogle at. Endless pairs of eyes followed my every movement, but only a few were kind enough to smile, give me a thumbs up, or show me some other form of encouragement. The sudden attention was embarrassing, but the encouraging gestures (as few as they were) still made me feel good and glad I was finally back to school. In the end, the five minutes that it took Oliver and me to reach the headmistress’s office turned out to be a fairly accurate preview of the kind of treatment I would receive over the next few weeks. It was like becoming a celebrity for all the wrong reasons. Despite people’s good intentions, it was not a feeling I enjoyed very much.

“Welcome back, Oscar. It is good to have you among us again. Ariadne said you have been recovering well.” The headmistress greeted me with a warm smile. “Please take a seat, you two.” She was standing behind her desk, and waited for us to get comfortable in the chairs in front of her before sitting down too. “I’m sorry I’m interrupting your first day back by asking you to come here first, but I thought it might be safer for you to go to your class once students are no longer hanging around in the corridors. Your teachers have been told that you and Oliver will be a little late.”

“Do you think Oscar will get hurt?” Oliver asked, looking at me with obvious worry.

“I think the crowded space could become a little overwhelming, both physically and emotionally,” the headmistress answered. She kept looking at me as she spoke, even though she was technically talking to Oliver. “We had an experience a few years ago of a student who returned to school after a serious sport injury. On her first day she told her teachers that the concentration of people in the corridors made it hard for her to move around safely, and she feared that someone would accidentally bump into her and make her injury worse. So I’m trying to minimise that kind of risk.”

“I see. Should I come here every day before class, then?” I asked. When the headmistress had asked that I to come to her office first thing in the morning, I had been under the impression that it would be a one-off thing, but now she made it sound like her proposal would last for a while.

“You’re welcome to if you think this will help, but I’m not going to force you to. I’m just giving you the option.” The headmistress looked at us in silence for a while, but she spoke again before Oliver or I could wonder if this meeting was supposed to be over. “The main reason I called you here, though, is to have a little chat about your school life from now on. I spoke with Ms Savage and Oliver already, but it is your academic future that is at stake, so it is only logical that I speak directly with you as well.” She did not give me time to do more than nod in agreement before she carried on. “Your teachers have been notified of your change in timetable and they have agreed to give you some time to catch up with the rest of the class. They’re also aware that your recovery process might affect your school performance, so please don’t hesitate to let them know if you’re having problems. We’re here to help you as much as we can. You don’t need to be afraid to ask for that help.”

“Mr Smith is particularly keen to help you,” Oliver added. He and the headmistress smiled tenderly. “He asks for news about you every day before the class starts.”

“Why is he asking you? I mean, Jean knows what’s going on as well; isn’t it easier for Mr Smith to ask him instead?” I asked. It was nice to know that one of my teachers cared about me this much, but I found it strange that Jean would not keep him informed. If Mr Smith was that worried, surely he could ask his foster son for news too?

I expected Oliver to speak, but it was the headmistress who answered. “I’m afraid Mr Smith’s relationship with his foster son is not as good as he wishes it was. It doesn’t surprise me that they don’t communicate, even for this. In any case, you can see that I speak the truth when I say we are here to help you. If any students or staff gives you trouble, you can come straight to me, or even speak to Ariadne, and we will sort things out. Do you have any questions?”

“I…” I could not think of anything, and the pressure to give an answer on the spot made it even more difficult to do so. “I don’t know.”

“That’s ok. You can always ask later if something comes to you.” Another smile. The headmistress was being very nice to me, but something did not feel right. As much as I was sure the headmistress was doing her best to help me (she had proved to be that kind of person a few times before with my friends), the whole situation made me feel like I had become some sort of mentally-challenged child with special needs. It felt diminished and awkward, like everyone suddenly expected me to fail on things I used to be good at. As much as I did not believe this kind of expectation was realistic, part of me was still afraid that I would really change that much, that my new scars ran a lot deeper than my skin.

Thankfully we did not stay much longer in the headmistress’s office. The bell rang and when the corridors had become quieter, I followed Oliver to the geography classroom. It was a nice coincidence that my first lesson would be with Mr Smith, though I was slightly apprehensive about how he would react to finally seeing me in person after being worried for so long.

Things turned out just as I feared.

“Welcome back, Oscar!” Mr Smith shouted as soon as Oliver and I entered the classroom. He stood up from his desk, and all other students did the same. As one they started clapping. The gesture was just the right mixture of surprising, touching, and embarrassing to take away any possibility that I could react with anything more than a distended jaw and an uncomfortable sense of dread. To make matters worse, I noticed that Mr Smith’s eyes were watery. It took forever for the clapping to stop. “We’re really glad to have you back. I want you to know that you can count on me for anything you need.”

“Thank you, Mr Smith. The headmistress told me you would say that.”

“Excellent!” Mr Smith beamed. “How about you take a seat beside Oliver so he can fill you in as we go along? We have quite a few free tables for you to choose.” He indicated the rows of double desks in front of him, and indeed there were many vacant places. The whole class was probably just over a dozen students in total. With those numbers, no wonder he was the only geography teacher in the school. It was kind of sad, though.

Mr Smith and the dozen students followed me with their eyes as I found an empty desk to share with Oliver in the middle of the row in front of Mr Smith’s desk, next to Henry’s. Whenever I was free to choose my seat, I usually picked a place in the front row so that I could see the writing board more clearly and be less distracted by students who did not really want to learn. However, all the attention I was getting made me feel that picking a seat right in the front would be like telling everyone to leave me alone and make me sound ungrateful, which was not the kind of message I wanted to give. Hopefully I would be able to pick a front-row seat on some other occasion.

After all the fuss at my arrival, the rest of the lesson was pretty normal. While Mr Smith was explaining things, I got the feeling I understood it all fine, and that there would be no problem at all catching up with the class. One less thing to worry about.

Music was my second lesson of the morning. Oliver took me there on his way to his English class, though we waited for the corridors to be empty before we moved out of geography. I took the headmistress’s story about the injured student very seriously, and decided it was better not to take risks. My mouth was still full of metal and my nose was deformed enough as it was; I did not need an unfortunate accident to make matters worse. Oliver promised to come pick me up for the morning break, and he left me alone for the first time that morning. It took me about five seconds to realise I missed his company.

I did not have too much time to think about Oliver, though. Music classes for fifth-year students were more often than not just a time to go into a small private practice room to play an instrument for fifty minutes. There would occasionally be the odd theory lesson in the classroom, but at our current level those were not very frequent. Until last year, I brought my viola from home on the days I had music. Today, though, I did not have any instrument with me. Too late I realised that my viola was still in Joseph’s house, and that my attempt to retrieve it had been the catalyst for all the horribleness of the last two weeks.

I forgot how to breathe. My whole body shook in agony and fear as I remembered my last words to Oliver on that Sunday; Joseph and Claire were reasonable people who would hear me out and everything would be all right. The entrance to the music department became a confusing blur of colours as my senses were taken over by the memory of Joseph’s hands on me, my back crashing against the glass shelves, his foot tearing into anything it could reach.

“Oscar! Oscar! Hey, Oscar, are you ok?”

It was a familiar voice. Hands grabbed my shoulders and shook me even more. The grip hurt a little, and the pain distracted me from the flashbacks. In front of me, grabbing my shoulders and calling me back to reality, stood Brandon, the guy who used to be my friend, then turned against me when he thought I was gay. When Henry was attacked he apologised for having tried to hurt me, but by that point he had long ceased being part of my life.

Yet, somehow he was the only person who happened to be around to stop my panic attack, and he seemed worried about me even as my eyes became able to focus on him and register his presence.

“What happened to you?” Brandon asked. His tone of voice was softer than I remember it being when we were still friends. He had always been the kind of overly-masculine guy who liked to make sure everyone knew how manly he was at every opportunity. A walking macho stereotype in the making, if ever I saw one. But not this time.

“What are you doing here?” I was so surprised by Brandon’s sudden ‘rescue’ that at first I did not even notice he had asked me a question.

“Nothing in particular.” Brandon turned away from me. The macho attitude returned, and the familiarity of the situation was surprisingly calming.

“Skipping classes again? Who’s helping you catch up nowadays?”

Brandon’s compulsion to spend as much time out of the classroom as he could get away with had been one of the key factors cementing our friendship back in our third year. He did not like to sit quietly for too long, I did not like it when people made fun of me (for looking too foreign; for my spectacular P.E. failures; for being too geeky; too skinny (the list went on and on), so I promised to help him get passable grades without having to actually go to class and listen to the teachers, and he promised to defend me against bullies. We found other reasons to remain friends later, but this was the start of everything.

“Wendy’s trying, but she’s nowhere near as good as you.”

“I used to have to help her too.” I used to have to help all of my friends. I used to be the smart guy who had answers for everything and could repeat a whole lesson from memory as long as I had been paying enough attention. No wonder Brandon would be struggling nowadays.

“Yeah. We miss having a proper teacher around.” Brandon smiled, but it faded quickly. “Are you ok? You looked really weird.”

“I remembered some things that I didn’t want to.”

“Ah.” Brandon looked like he wanted to show a level of understanding of the situation, even though he probably had no clue about why getting those flashbacks caused such a scary reaction. “But you’re fine now, aren’t you?”

“I guess.” For the moment I probably was, but I had no way of telling if the flashbacks would come back every time I thought about music and my viola.

“Do you need some help going inside? I have nothing better to do until the break, so…”

“The teachers won’t like to see you skipping classes.” I raised an eyebrow. It was really weird to see Brandon trying to help me after six months of making a point of staying away, but it was touching too.

“Do I look like I care? That ship has sailed years ago!” Brandon laughed, and I was brought back to the time he and Wendy were my closest friends. That part of my life belonged to an era when I was presumed to be straight by default, and a model student that made my parents proud. I had been happy with my family and friends then. Brandon belonged to that part of me that I was trying to forget since the day I woke up in the hospital. But it felt good to hear him laughing like in those days. For a moment, it was like the last six months had not happened, and nothing had changed between us. I laughed too. In a time of so much confusion and pain, this old familiarity was welcoming.

And for that moment only, I wished nothing had really changed.