*********************{~~~~Chapter 1~~~}*************************
“Hey Faggot,” Louis smirked; watching Harry enter the building from his spot leaned against a locker. His smirk deepened as Harry lowered his head and continued walking.
“Ignoring me, are we?” He asked in a mocking tone, grabbing Harry by the back of his backpack. Harry stopped walking, his face emotionless as it usually was when it started. Louis hated that. He hated his emotionless face. It was freshman year when Louis first laid his eyes on that blank face and he’d instantly wanted to change it. He didn’t like the fact that Harry’s eyes were guarded and his face masked. So he hurt him. When Louis hurt him, Harry had emotions. Not good emotions, but still emotions.
Louis slammed him up against the locker, enjoying the brief look of pain that flashed through his unreadable green eyes and put his face close to Harry’s. “Tell me to stop,” he spat the same line he always did when he hurt Harry, the same line he’d been using for four years, “I’ll stop if you tell me to.” But Louis knew that Harry would never tell him to stop. He never had and never will because Harry didn’t talk. He could talk, Louis knew. He would quietly answer questions when teachers asked or mutter a weak hello when people at the school decided to be friendly and greet him. That didn’t happen often anymore.
As Louis had assumed, Harry didn’t say anything. He just looked at Louis, almost as if he was looking right through him. Louis hated that. He pulled Harry back and threw him to the ground, a smirk forming on his lips as Harry winced.
“You could have told me to stop,” he shrugged, before sending a kick to Harry’s side. Harry didn’t wince, or even acknowledge the kick and that made Louis mad. He sent another hard kick right between Harry’s legs, wanting to see his pain. With a grim smile of satisfaction, Louis watched as Harry let out a yelp and curled into a tight ball, clutching at his groin. His face was screwed up in pain and Louis soaked in every bit of emotion he was showing, not even caring that he had caused Harry pain. It had become routine now. Call him a name, beat him, ridicule him whenever the chance arose, beat him once more after school and call him another name before leaving.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll never have a chance to use that anyway,” Louis smirked, turning and heading for class just as the bell rang.
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Louis sat down in his seat next to Zayn, glad that they had art first period. He hated having boring classes right in the morning because he could never pay attention and ended up doing poorly. Luckily, art was marked on participation... or he hoped it was, otherwise he was going to fail.
Today their art teacher Mr. Sleep was showing them how to draw real things. He had a small box of toy animals on the table in the middle of the room and everyone had to grab one and attempt to replicate it. Louis picked out a giraffe, figuring it looked like the easiest thing to draw and sat back at his seat, watching as their teacher drew his plastic elephant.
“We have an assembly today,” Zayn whispered to him, knowing better than to talk loudly when Mr. Sleep was talking.
“We do? What for?” Louis asked, surprised. He knew that they were having an assembly tomorrow for breast cancer awareness but he hadn’t known there was a chance to get out of class today as well.
“Anti-bullying day,” Zayn shrugged, not even bothering to watch Mr. Sleep’s explanation on how to draw. He was already good enough without it.
“Great,” Louis muttered, “What period?”
“Um, I think our grade goes down this period but I’m not sure,” he told him, starting to draw his horse.
Louis attempted to draw his giraffe, while thinking about the upcoming assembly. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. Every year they held an assembly to tell kids about the importance of bullying and how to make a difference but Louis didn’t want to make a difference, he just wanted to finish his time in this hellhole and get out of there. He remembered feeling bad at the first anti-bullying assembly because he had recently started picking on Harry but he had told himself that he was doing it for good reason. He had to pick on him; otherwise he would never show any emotion. Louis figured that even pain was better than no feelings at all.
Soon a voice sounded over the loudspeakers, telling all senior students to head down to the auditorium for the assembly. Louis sighed and stood up, glancing at his half drawn, poor attempt at a giraffe then at Zayn’s already shaded, wonderfully drawn horse. He hoped once more that it was marked on participation.
“Hey Lou! Zayn!” An Irish voice called and their friend Niall came bounding up to them, “Can’t believe it, this assembly saved my life! I was so not ready for that chemistry test,” he said and continued to go on about how stupid his chemistry class was. Once all of the kids were seated in the auditorium, one of the teachers walked up to speak. Louis hadn’t seen her before but his school was quite large so that was normal. She started talking about the effects of bullying and all that but then, she did something that they didn’t do in the previous assemblies.
“Raise of hands, who in this room has ever been bullied,” She commanded, peering at them all from over her glasses. Louis looked around the room as people started hesitantly raising their hands, glancing around unsurely. He saw a hand slowly rise in front of him and realized that it was Harry. Harry was sitting in the seat directly in front of his and he hadn’t even noticed! Normally this was a prime example of a time to pick on him and make crude jokes but sitting in the middle of an anti-bullying assembly with a cop standing at the nearest door made him rethink that. He’d leave Harry be for today, but only because it was anti-bullying day.
He was about to let his gaze wander back to the teacher standing on the stage when something caught his eye. He wouldn’t have even noticed if the lighting hadn’t hit it the way it did but when he squinted, he knew that he’d seen correctly. With Harry’s hand raised and his many bracelets sliding down his arm, Louis could make out a scar. He looked harder and saw another one, and another one. He felt sick. Was it his fault that Harry had those scars? Had Harry...cut? He realized that the scars were connected to each other, that they spelt something. Looking even closer, Louis could make out that Harry’s scars spelt out the word; fag.
Louis stared, the word imprinted in his mind. Fag; how many times had he called Harry that? He’d been calling him ‘Faggot’ since the beginning of freshman year. Was it his words that caused Harry to do that to himself? To permanently scar those words into his wrist? Louis felt like he might throw up. The guilt was rising in his stomach but he pushed it down, forced himself to make the guilt subside into a slight gnawing feeling in the corner of his mind. What was it to him if Harry cut himself? It was Harry’s life; he made that choice. He repeated those words over and over again in his mind, trying to convince himself that this wasn’t his fault. The rest of the assembly, though, all he could think of was the scars on Harry’s arm, burned into his mind.
Louis hardly even noticed when the assembly ended. He was aware of the other students getting up but didn’t clue in to stand himself until Zayn gave him a small nudge and a look. He stood up, shaking it off and giving his friends a sheepish grin, “That was so boring, I practically fell asleep,” he said, quickly making up an excuse for his odd behavior. The boys accepted it and the three of them headed to their next class which they all had together; biology. Mr. Blakney was a good teacher. He made things interesting but actually taught you things at the same time. That was why Louis enjoyed biology. Harry sat in front of him in that class but Louis was usually so caught up in the subject that he didn’t bother bugging him.
“Hey guys, where should I wear my sticker? On my head, my cheek or my hand?” Niall asked as if it were an important question. I glanced down at my own small sticker saying, ‘Be the change’ and rolled my eyes. They always gave out stupid little stickers at the end of anti-bullying assemblies to show support or whatever. I had mine on my hand, knowing I should wear it for at least a little while before I pretended to lose it and threw it in the trash.
“Put it on your head,” Zayn smirked; watching as Niall happily stuck the sticker to his forehead and gave them two thumbs up. Louis chuckled at his friend’s childish behavior before heading to his seat in the back of the room with Zayn. There were assigned seats in this class but luckily Louis and Zayn had ended up sitting together anyway. Louis looked down at the desk and started playing with the sticker on his hand, waiting for the class to begin.
Mr. Blakney was late by the looks of it. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence. He oftentimes would come into the class five minutes late and just start talking as if he hadn’t left the class waiting. No one really minded, it gave them time to get settled anyway. Louis could feel eyes on him and he looked up, wondering who was looking at him. His eyes caught Harry’s and Harry froze, looking like a deer in headlights. Louis just chuckled and turned away from him, shaking his head a little. He wasn’t going to criticize Harry on anti-bullying day! Harry got this weird look on his face and turned more in his seat so he was facing Louis.
“Look Louis; I know what you’re doing. You’re not going to say anything to me because its anti-bullying day but I know how this goes. As soon as you take that sticker off,” He said angrily, pointing to the sticker on Louis’ hand, “everything goes back to normal. You’ll continue to beat on me and call me names and nothing will make you really stop. I know why, because you don’t care. You don’t care that you’re hurting me because you hate me; everyone hates me and guess what. Now I hate me too, so congratulations, looks like you got what you wanted, jerk.” He spat with venom in his voice before quickly turning back around in his chair and burying his face in his book.
Louis sat there with a stunned expression on his face. He didn’t know what to do; he couldn’t comprehend what just happened. Harry never spoke to him, never, and now he was giving him some speech? Louis wanted to be angry, wanted to ask him what the hell gave him the right to talk to him like that but he couldn’t; because to be honest, Louis was proud of him. Weird, right? But it was true. Louis felt like Harry had just done a very brave thing, standing up for himself like that and he didn’t have any desire to hurt him anymore. But was Harry right? After anti-bullying day ended, would Louis go back to torturing him just like he always did? He wasn’t sure and that scared him.
Before he could think much more on the subject, Mr. Blankney arrived, telling them that they would be learning about the cell membrane. He leaned back in his seat and tried to pay attention to what they were learning but his thoughts kept going back to Harry and how unusual he was acting today. And for the first time ever, Louis didn’t learn anything in biology.
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Louis’ classes seemed to drag by until finally the bell rang, signaling lunch break. Louis met up with Zayn and Niall at Niall’s locker to decide where they wanted to eat. Normally, the three boys just ate in the cafeteria because, honestly, none of them had the money to buy their lunch every day and none of them really wanted to eat fast food every day of their lives anyway. Today was a bagged lunch kind of day so they all headed down to the basement floor of the building where the cafeteria lay.
Louis sat himself down at one of the long tables in the cafeteria and looked around, searching for familiar faces. Sometimes others would join them for lunch, like Eleanor or Danielle, but other times they just ate by themselves. It wasn’t that they weren’t popular; they just enjoyed having a smaller group of good friends. El and Dani seemed to be absent from the cafeteria that day so the three of them just took their seats and started pulling out their lunches.
“Look!”Niall whisper yelled, halfway through lunch hour, nudging his head in the direction of the table behind them, “its Liam Payne...”
Liam Payne was known as the bad boy of our school. It seemed a little ridiculous because he didn’t really look like a bad boy but he definitely acted the part. He was constantly dressing in his black leather jacket and always arrived late for classes. He didn’t really talk much either so I guess you could call him, mysterious. The girls used to be all over him but he’d turned down every single one of them and they’ve learned to give up trying. It was unusual to see him eating in the cafeteria because usually, he disappeared whenever lunch rolled around.
“Why do you think he’s here?” Louis asked, looking at the boy sitting all alone. He didn’t have anything with him, no books or food; he was just sitting there, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed and his earphones in.
“I don’t know... maybe he got kicked out of the place he usually spends lunch?” Zayn guessed but Niall shushed him.
“No way, he’s definitely in a gang or something and their out to get him because he did something wrong so now he’s hiding at school,” Niall whispered, his blue eyes wide. Louis rolled his eyes, only Niall would come up with something like that.
“Whatever guys, I don’t really think it matters... leave him be. Come on, lunch is almost over and I still have to get my math book from my locker,” Louis said, wishing his two friends would stop gawking over Liam, they were growing painfully obvious by the minute.
“Yeah okay,” Niall said, collecting his things and standing up, Zayn following. Louis waited for them to throw out their trash and they headed upstairs to the second floor to get their textbooks that they all kept in Louis’ locker since it was near most of their subjects and easy to get to. Louis parted from the guys and headed to his math class, not looking forward to sitting through the boring lesson.
Louis sat in his math class and decided that now would be the perfect time for a bathroom break. He usually did end up going to bathroom in math since it was so incredibly boring that even skipping only five to ten minutes of it to visit the bathroom seemed worthwhile. He patiently raised his hand and waited for the teacher to call on him so he could ask to use the bathroom. She pointed to the hall pass and Louis stood up and left the room, snatching the hall pass as he walked by. He ignored the random people walking around the almost empty hallways and headed to the boys bathroom which, unfortunately, was right next to the math room meaning a shorter break from calculus for him. He headed into the bathroom and did his business then washed his hands. He looked up at himself in the dirty school mirror and started to look over his appearance.
He was okay looking, he guessed. He didn’t really like his eye color, it was too pale and dull and he didn’t really like his eyebrows but other than that he was good looking. Well, he thought he was anyway. Now that he thought of it, the longer he looked into the mirror, the uglier he thought he looked. He forced himself to look away, running a hand through his hair. Great, he thought to himself, now my hairs messy too, just another thing to add to my list of self hate. Just then, he heard the bathroom door swing open and he quickly positioned himself so he was leaning against the bathroom wall, forcing his face into a look of indifference so whoever it was wouldn’t know what he was thinking about before they’d entered the room.
Harry walked into the bathroom and used the urinals, not even noticing Louis’ presence. Louis forced himself to look away, not wanting to be the awkward person, watching Harry take a pee. Harry finished up and walked over his way to wash his hands. That’s when he finally noticed Louis and his eyes widened.
“Hey faggot,” Louis grinned, forgetting his rule to not bully him that day in an attempt to look casual.
“I knew it,” Harry muttered, washing his hands, “Stickers gone and you’re back to being a douche...”
Louis looked down at his hand in surprise and noticed that his sticker had fallen off sometime during the day. He didn’t want Harry to think of him that way. He didn’t want to come across as a douche.
“You’re not a fag, Harry. I don’t know why I say that stuff,” Louis said, not really realizing the words were coming from his mouth. He quickly snapped his mouth shut and left the bathroom, not wanting to see Harry’s expression because he knew, like always it would be blank. If Louis had looked back though, he would have seen the look of surprise that crossed Harry’s face and the smallest of smiles that accompanied it.