All American Boys

6. One of the Boys

All American Boys

Chapter 6: One of the Boys

The boys ended up in a full-on brawl. After slamming into the lockers behind him, Isaac quickly recovered, lunging forward and swinging his fist at Cyril. Fortunately for him, he managed to block Isaac's punch before stepping out of his way.

"Stop it!" I pleaded. "That's enough!"

I reached out to try to restrain Isaac. Turns out that was a huge mistake.

Immediately I felt his elbow ram straight into my cheek. I must have cried out loud, as the both of them stopped to look at me. I brought a few fingers to where my face had been hit, and felt it sting to the touch. Isaac had hit me right in the cheekbone, and it was starting to hurt.

Cyril, looked at me, horrified, and surprisingly Isaac seemed to have been taken aback by this as well. He just looked at me with his green eyes, blinking rapidly like a child.

"Look what you've done!" Cyril said. "I hope you're proud of yourself."

I looked up at Isaac, and for a brief moment, our gazes met. The anger that were in those green eyes of his had all but disappeared as he was faced with what he had done. His lips slightly parted as he looked at me with wide eyes, he seemed like he was about to say something. But whatever he wanted to say seemed to have gotten stuck in his throat. Instead, he just shifted his gaze from me to Cyril, before looking at me one last time.

Without a word, he shoved his hands in his pocket and turned around. Before I knew it, he rushed down the corridor, disappearing into the classroom at the end of the hallway – my English classroom.

I didn't even know we were in the same class. Granted, yesterday I was too preoccupied with the fact that Cyril was beside me to pay any attention to who was or was not in my class.

"Are you okay?" Cyril asked me, his hand gently holding on to my bicep. "That jerk."

"I'm fine," I told him, dusting myself with my palms. "It's just a bruise."

"Do you need to go to the nurse's office?" he said. "I can take you there."

"Oh, you don't have to do that," I replied, shaking my head. "It's nothing big."

"You sure?" he said, letting go of me, but his eyes were still fixated on my cheek.

"Yeah." I reassured him. "We should get to class, wouldn't want to keep Mrs Henderson waiting."

Cyril and I were one of the last to enter, and headed over to our seats.

"Oh shoot," he muttered under his breath. "I forgot to take my book."

He was about to stand up, presumably to ask to be excused to his locker, but I stopped him.

"We can share," I offered, pushing my book to the middle of our pair of tables.

I noticed his face light up ever so slightly.

"Really?" he asked.

"Of course," I replied.

With that, I leaned towards him, and I noticed that he did the same. I tried to ignore him and focus on the lesson, but I couldn't help but notice how the young man kept stealing glances at me. Soon enough, I felt his thighs occasionally bump into mine. As disturbing as I found it, I had to pretend I wasn't disturbed by it.

"So what do you think of this text?" Cyril said, starting off a discussion when we were asked to discuss the excerpt from Julius Caesar in pairs.