•strictly platonic• boy x boy •

•six•

Robyn Hook

6th Grade

"Hey, Em." I sat next to him, twiddling my thumbs.

"What is it, Robyn?" Emerson was reading a book—that nerd—and he seemed upset that I interrupted his nerd session. He was sitting cross-legged in the corner of our classroom. It was free-time and we all chose to play games saved for him. Imagine reading for fun.

"So we were having a discussion-" I started.

Em wrinkled his nose and sniffed, still recovering from his illness. He had been gone for two days prior. He was mad because he had to make up a bunch of homework. Sucks for him.

"Spit it out, already."

I frowned. "If you're gonna be like that, maybe I'll just not tell you."

He rolled his eyes and continued to read. "Fine by me."

I momentarily clamped my mouth shut. Huh. Clearing my throat, I continued talking anyways because I had already been committed. "Well we were all talking about dating. Should I get a girlfriend? A lot of other boys already got one. It's not fair. I should be able to snatch any girl I want."

Em gave me the most intense 'are you stupid look' ever, raising his eyebrow condescendingly. "You're joking."

"Not really."

He snorted. "You, having a girlfriend? You know, jokes are meant to be funny."

"I didn't ask to be roasted, Em." I stuck my tongue out and blew a raspberry.

He paused and rolled his eyes. "I don't even know why you're asking me. I'm like the most single person here. And I'm not your mom. Do whatever you want. But just saying, we're literally children. It's not like any 'romantic' relationship you have now is gonna last anyways. That's all I'll say."

I stared at him wordlessly for a second. I should've expected a response like that. "Have people told you you act way older than you actually are?"

"Have people told you you act dumber than most people our age?"

"Em~" I whined. He was being so mean to me for some reason. I must've seemed really hurt, because Em sighed and closed his book.

"Come here," he said, gesturing me. So I leaned closer. "In my opinion, you're too good for any of these girls here." He smiled at me and ruffled my hair. "Let's make a deal."

"Shoot."

"If we're still single by the age of thirty, we're gonna have to get married

"Deal. But don't get your hopes up," I winked.

~~~

My art teacher droned on to seemingly no end. You weren't supposed to do that. Let us draw and listen to our music in peace. "Good afternoon, class. Today we are going to draw portraits of celebrities. Sounds easy, right? Well, the twist is that you have to do everything upside-down. From the sketching process to the shading. Everything must be done that way. This is to help activate your right brain." My mind zoned out after that. I groaned along with the class when I heard that we had to draw upside-down. I was on the verge of dropping out of that stupid class.

Most of my drawings were mediocre. A lot of kids were there for either fun or for their art credits. I'm the latter.

This was supposed to be a basic art class. It was supposed to be easy. Piece of cake my ass. The only easy thing about this class was that it was easy to say everyone else in the class was far better than I. I became accustomed to feeling inferior. I accepted it.