Snow | L.S.

Day Two

*Trigger Warning*
This chapter contains depictions of a panic attack.

***

October 2003.

It was bad enough starting a new school in a completely new area but starting a new school halfway through the first half-term was setting Louis' anxiety sky-high. He was already behind and he hadn't even had his first class yet. As he walked through the school corridors of Kingston Academy, consulting his timetable and the numbers on the doors that he passed, every student was unfamiliar and he tried not to look directly at them, too intimidated to ask for directions.

At the end of a dingy hallway, he found his form room, M1, which was clearly a languages room if the poster of all the ways of saying 'Welcome' in different languages was anything to go by. Bienvenido. Bienvenue. Benvenuto. Willkommen.

He glanced around. The form tutor, who was called Mrs Gray according to Louis' timetable, was staring at the computer screen, a couple of students were reading or doodling in their student planners, and a group of boys in the back were laughing. One curly-haired kid was sitting on top of the table with his friends gathered around him. He briefly looked up at Louis walking in before returning to their conversation and whispering something. Louis swallowed and took a seat at one of the empty rows of desks, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

"Oi." Louis felt a poke against his back. He turned around to see the guy on the table leaning across. "You new here?"

"Er, yes," Louis replied quietly.

"You want to hang around with us? We can show you around," the boy suggested and those green eyes were the first comforting thing Louis had felt since arriving on the strange premises.

Louis hesitantly nodded. "That would be great. Thank you." He peered over the boy's shoulder at the other boys and gulped. They were clearly very opposite to Louis, just from all their built frames and tall statures and how everyone who filtered into the classroom seemed to say hello to them. Sporty. Jock. Popular. All things Louis was not.

"Harry." The boy held his hand out.

"Louis." Louis shook his hand.

"And this is Liam." Harry pointed behind him to a brunet boy with chestnut eyes.

"Nice to meet you, Louis," Liam replied. His smile offered kindness and Louis started to feel more relaxed. "So, where've you moved from?"

"Doncaster..."

Louis' first class was art - his favourite. Harry or Liam wasn't in his group so, instead, he hesitantly sat down next to an olive-skinned boy with dark hair and eyes. He seemed as quiet as Louis which Louis was rather grateful for. He looked up when Louis slid a stool out from underneath the desk. When Louis was settled with his sketchbook and pencils out, he glanced over at the boy and saw that he was doodling.

"Hey, that's really good," Louis said to him.

The boy looked at him and frowned. "You think so?"

"Of course! It's so inventive."

And that it was. The page was full of unique designs he had never seen before. Whenever Louis drew he had to use a reference most of the time but it was clear that no such thing was used for this boy's sketches.

"She doesn't seem to think so," the boy mumbled, directing his eyes at the art teacher at the front. "Says it's too 'graffiti-like'." He rolled his eyes.