Indifference (boyxboy)

17. Horns and a Tail

Elijah

Ryan was avoiding me, I was sure. After I'd had to refuse his offer of eating lunch together on Monday, I'd returned the gesture every day this week, and every day he'd come up with an excuse why he couldn't. And it wasn't like I could complain about it, because he was usually hanging out with Neil and Darren, which I'd encouraged him to do.

The only time I'd spoken to him was in English class. He didn't appear to be angry with me. He spoke to me in class and returned my texts. But I just felt like he didn't want to spend any time with me outside of that. And to be honest, it kind of hurt.

I spotted him across the corridor, probably heading for his locker, so before I could overthink it, I walked across to him.

"Hey Ryan,"

"Oh hey," he said, looking surprised to see me.

"Do you want to meet up at lunch?"

"Um, no, I already made plans with Neil," he said, opening up his locker and rooting inside it, rather than looking at me.

"Oh, it's just we really could do with working a bit on our project." Ok, so I was desperate, sue me.

"Oh right, sure. When do you want to do that?" he asked.

Everything about this conversation felt wrong. It was like we were strangers again.

"How about after school?"

He seemed to think about it for a moment.

"Fine, yes, I can do that."

I wanted to roll my eyes, but instead I just smiled and said, "See you out the front after school then," and then walked off before he could think up another excuse to change his mind.

It really shouldn't have bothered me. After all, I had survived through school so far without having him as my friend. In fact, I survived without having any friends. But over the last couple of weeks I now had Franz, and Beth and Ben, and even grumpy Alicia seemed to be warming to me.

So why did the fact I seemed to be losing Ryan bother me so much?

I headed on autopilot towards the library for my free period. I turned the corner just in time to see Freddie snatching Franz's bag off him.

Just two weeks ago I would have kept my head down and walked on by. But since Ryan had stood up for me in front of Freddie, I hadn't had any bother off Freddie at all. And because Freddie had stopped humiliating me in public on a daily basis, it seemed like others were leaving me alone too. It was almost like I had a protective bubble around me. And maybe it was going to my head, as that is the only explanation for what happened next.

"Hey, get off him!" I said storming over.

Freddie looked at me in shock, and then started laughing,

"Great! Two for the price of one!" he said grabbing my bag too.

He threw Franz's bag into the air first, and drop kicked it across the corridor. Then he took hold of mine,

"Wait!!!" I said.

He stopped and looked at me, his arm poised to drop and his leg ready to swing.

"Some of Ryan's work is in there. He's going to be pissed if you ruin it!"

His body dropped to it's normal relaxed position as he gave me a wary look.

"What's going on between you and Stone. It's very weird. Are you fuck buddies or something?"