Plan B

Chapter Sixteen

"Have you heard?"  Hewie bounced into the common room.  "Frankie's gay!"

"Tell us a funny joke, Hewie," Bernard complained without taking his eyes off Smash Bros, in which he was absolutely slaughtering Piers, who had finally decided it was a point of honour of being in the top year to learn how to game.  "We've established he looks like a girl sometimes and can get a little camp, but there's no point getting Aaron's hopes up.  That would be needlessly cruel."

His Jigglypuff started to inflate, and Zelda went in for the kill.

"Piers, most people run away when Jigglypuff gets that big," Bernard said as his character squished Zelda.  Piers wrinkled his nose and backed Zelda away, concentrating on her one remaining life.

Hewie crept around to the back of the sofa and stuck his head between theirs.

"Frankie came out," he said, waggling his eyebrows.

"I told you, it's not funny."  Bernard's tongue poked out between his teeth as he concentrated.  Jigglypuff missed Zelda by a few centimetres and went zooming off the screen.

"It is," Hewie contradicted.  "He stood up on a lab bench and came out in a biology lesson in front of all his classmates and the teacher."

"What?"  Piers hit pause and tossed his controller onto the ground.

"I know."  Hewie looked thoughtful.  "I think he might actually have three balls instead of the regular two."

Bernard snorted.  "What, because he stood on a lab bench?  But everybody would have found out anyway if he came out.  It's not like declaring it to his class makes it that different."

"No, no, no!"  Hewie batted Bernard's controller out of his hands.  "It's not like that.  Megan kissed him in class and—"

"What?"  Bernard scrambled around on the sofa to face Hewie.  "Megan did what?"

A huge grin cracked across Hewie's face.  "Megan kissed Frankie.  In class.  Apparently it's because she was jealous that Phil and Frankie are getting so close, and she has a huge crush on Joey but he barely notices her because he's all over Phil, so she tried to make him jealous by publicly getting off with somebody else while at the same time trying to put Phil in her place by proving she was 'better' than her.  And she thought she could get Frankie to fall for her, since Frankie says that Phil's only a friend of his.  So she pretended to have a crush on Frankie, kissed him in front of the entire class, Frankie rejects her, the rest of the girls try to jump him because they think he's available, cute and witty, and Frankie jumps up onto the lab bench to get away from them yelling that he's not interested in girls just as the teacher walks in."

Bernard guffawed.  "Train wreck of the century!"

"Jesus."  Piers put his head in his hands.  "Why are girls so complicated?  All Megan had to do was say 'b*tch, don't date Frankie, and why won't Joey date me?'  Problem solved."

Hewie snickered softly.  "Well, she took the hit for Phil.  Imagine if the Sexophile had worked up the courage to tell Frankie she fancied him and got rejected because he was gay?"

The door opened.  "Who's gay?"

"Yeah, at least she found out in advance," Bernard said with a grin.  "And she's still available—"

"No, Bernard," interjected Piers.

"Who's gay?" repeated the newcomer as he let the door close and took an enormous bite out of his toastie.

"Frankie," replied the others in unison.

Isaac's face went white and he spluttered on his toastie.  "God.  Do not let Aaron find out or he'll start camping outside Frankie's room."