Saints & Sinners

Chapter Nine

A.N. Another pic of Asa Butterfield, playing Tristan, who I think is just so fucking fit. That boy just does things to me that are too explicit to put into words. AND LOOK AT THE EYES, THE EYES.

Chapter Nine:

I did the "walk of shame" on my second day at St. Seppo's. A kind-hearted woman probably would have kept her injured minor off of school after being severely beat up the way that I'd been, but my Aunt Agatha was not well known for her kindness, was she?

She'd nodded at me, and that was the end of it. No questions, no storytelling, just a curt nod that ended the entire subject. The next day, my uniform had been washed and laid at the bottom of my bed, and my Aunt waited idly in the kitchen to drive me to school.

The school hallway was crowded around the front entrance, and with my ankle, I'd been given crutches to limp lamely around the corridors, so all eyes had passed straight to me. Strangers, acquaintances, and even people I knew looked at me oddly. And they all knew what had happened.

But the worst kind of looks flew from the faces of who Tristan had called the "saints." Medevik and his gang of so-called Christians, the ones that raised their fists or stood idly by as others did the same. Their faces were proud and risen high, they looked delighted at what they had done, and their ringmaster, Mikhail Medevik, saw me and grinned sickeningly. I knew then that they'd told everyone the truth about my mothers, and about the beating that they'd given me for it.

"Sebby! I can't believe it's true, what they're all saying, it's terrible!" Rou rushed over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, looking down at me, shaking me like a rag doll she'd grew sick of as a child. I took a moment to admire her, a long ponytail of dark chocolate hair dripping down her back in slim strands. Rou was so tall that she looked down on everyone. I felt her shake me a little by the shoulders again to get my attention, my bruised shoulder still slightly inflamed.

"Well it is, it's true," was all I could even bare to say. I couldn't explain why I felt so much shame because of my parents, I couldn't explain why I wanted them kept a secret. I wasn't usually a person that cared what other people thought of me, but that view changed the day I came here. "My mothers are gay, I'm a test-tube baby. There you've got it, Rou, the reason why I was off dumped here. That's why they beat me up, that's why Sister Genevieve thinks I'm the worst kind of sinner in this school, and that's probably why you should stop talking to me before your reputation is bruised."

Her neck twisted in confusion. "What? You are? That's so cute!" She was jumping up and down wildly at that point. "Were you like genetically engineered?" she asked, acting like this whole situation just made me more interesting.

"No. I wasn't engineered. It was like any other pregnancy, just replace the... sex with a turkey baster." I didn't know why, but my voice traipsed to a whisper near the end of that sentence. Talking about stuff like that (...sex...) made me a little nervous. If it wasn't any more obvious at that point, I was clearly a virgin.

"And why would I even care about my reputation, Sebby? I'll always be the Man around here, you can bet all your money on that. I was talking about your ankle, there's a rumour that Mikhail and his cronies beat you up. Is it true?"

I nodded, and her entire body quaked and raged and stormed off down the hallway, her high heels clacking as she went. The Man. That was exactly what she wasn't, yet it fit her so perfectly that it almost seemed true.

Whipping her lush dark brown ponytail over her shoulder, she stopped by the saints' little den by the doors, and slapped Mikhail fully and forcefully across his ugly Russian face. I heard an exchange of words, and noticed Mikhail's passing glances. He looked between the two of us, stunned, before accepting the fact that this time, he may have beaten me, but in the end, he didn't win, he lost. And that made me feel better, if only a little.