try hard // luke hemmings

Chapter Eight

School was pretty much like this the whole day. If stares could kill. If words could physically damage me. Why was I being treated like this? Well, I knew, but seriously, it's the first, and probably the only time I would wear something like this.

The only good thing to happen all day was the fact that Luke and his band mates ignored me. Well, sort of. Other than the vulgar and lewd gesture Micheal shot my way, they've left me alone. Like serious alone. I got to eat in the bathrooms just like old times.

I was even surprised that I didn't see Luke at our lockers between any classes. I was living on cloud nine.

But by the end of the day, when I'm usually fed up with all their annoying tactics, I find myself missing them. Calum won't even poke me with his pencil fifty times in the back of my head. Sweet Ashton, who I like most out of the four, can't even look at me without blushing madly and turning his face to look forward again.

Suddenly, it doesn't feel right, the way they're treating me. How everyone is treating me. I look around and I realize everyone is trying hard not to meet my gaze. What was going? At the bell marking the end of eighth period, I trap Ashton.

"Ashton? Why is everyone ignoring me?" I ask. Ashton won't look at me and I really want to slap him because I've tried to ignore their actions the first two and a half months of school and they did everything to ignore my complains and now, when it shouldn't bother me at all, it does! It does and it shouldn't and it's all because I've grown accustomed to their tricks.

Could it possibly be because I miss them?

What the hell? No! I didn't miss any of them. Not at all. I was just looking for information. "Tell me," I plead. Ashton smirks. "I don't have to follow orders from you." And then he's gone.

I want to throw a typical toddler tantrum. Why won't anyone tell me? Oh, that's right. You don't talk to anyone, Cheyanne! Maybe if you had friends, you'd know!

The walk through the hallway is nearly unbearable. Snickers and smirks, laughs and stares, some girl even bumps into me, sending my stuff flying. The sound of their laughter rises into an overwhelming uproar. Two hands help me collect the strewn items. I look up, tears already falling.

"Samuel!" I gasp in shock.

"Are you okay?" He asks, glaring at the odd passerby. I run my hand under my eyes, sniff, "Yeah. Thanks." He offers to hold my backpack and I let him. We walk down the hall together, one of his arms around my shoulder. People moved away from us like we had some disease.

"Samuel, if you hang out with me, no one will hang out with you." I say, ruining my one and only chance at having a friend, but saving him. "They don't like me anyway, Chey." He says as we come up to the front doors, where the pouring rain hasn't stopped. "I'm gay. Which makes me different. Which means they don't like me."

I looked at Samuel in a new light. "I have no idea what they're saying about you and you don't have to tell me anything but that's what I wanted you to know. I'm different, and you're different. We're friends now."

Friends. That concept isn't new to me but it's an old memory. Memories of cookies and dolls, play dates and sandboxes. Then, slowly, the dolls turn into makeup sets, the sandboxes for the mall, play dates for hanging out.

Then, that fateful day, the day of my thirteenth birthday, I didn't have a party. I was tossed into the street by Logan and his friends. A man came up to me and asked, "Cheyanne?" And I lost all innocence. One of my friend's mothers was a good friend of my mom (emphasis on the was) and saw the whole deal. She saw me go from sweet innocent girl, to a cheap prostitue. My mother begged her to keep quiet and she did. But her daughter was never allowed to come over again.