“I wish she would just speak to me. Come on, notice me, say something now, would you? Notice me, ask me how I am or something...” Rod thought at the table, “you won’t though, will you? You’re just one of them. Suppose you do say something, suppose you notice how quiet and meek I am, if you dare go against the social strata, if you dare stand out and stick your head out for the little guy, which, of course, you won’t do... hm... Would I be able to say anything back? What could I say? How can I get you to stick around? I don’t need you anyway. It is beneath me to talk to even want friends.”

The frustrated desire to have friends angered him even more and wounded him internally even more than he was aware; he knew that seeking validation from the opposite sex was a fool’s errand, and yet it felt to him like there was a furnace inside of him craving to be fed. He kept flickering his eyes across the table at his handsome and beautiful classmates.

“Come on now, lad. You’re on the popular kids’ table. Not just any popular kids’ table, but the popular kids’ table. Come on now, lad, do something. What are you, a loser?” he asked himself miserably. “How can I join in their conversation? The teacher will disperse us soon into pairs, and obviously I’ll be alone like a castaway.”

He sat at the front table of the classroom and let go his head onto his arms, which were crossed in front of him on the table, and sighed in despair. The remaining students trickled into the classroom behind him, for he sat with his back to the door, including some of the popular girls in his Year group.

“It’s a pity that they don’t try and be my friend,” he said to himself as he felt their presence and smelled their rule-breaking, intoxicating perfume. “If I had even one of them as my girlfriend my life would be so much better than it is now. All my suffering would cease at once. I would be vindicated. How can I make one of them my girlfriend? I can’t even join in the conversation transpiring around me.”

And then Rod’s face sagged like it had aged several years.

“What’s the point?” he thought, “I’m not good enough to make friends. I’m worthless. I’m undeserving of love and belonging. I deserve to be alone.”

A much taller boy said something. Rod looked up, not catching it the first time. He saw Sethan looking at him. “Now, that’s a boy who’s got everything that I want: A girlfriend, popularity, friends...”

“What do you think of Klaudia?” he asked with a smirk, his cold blue eyes penetrating Rod with their unbroken confidence.

“Klaudia,” Rod repeated with a stutter; he couldn’t help it. He simultaneously soaked up the attention he was suddenly receiving from the table as well as wished he was away from their vulturous eyes. His fidgeting increased dramatically. The boy looked at his superior and racked his brain for the correct answer to this puzzle. “What do I say that doesn’t make them not like me?” he wondered.

Sethan turned round to look at the girl on the back table. Although there were other people on the table, she was clearly alone.

“Aw, don’t be so mean,” said the redhead beside Rod, her blue, crystal eyes glittering.

“She’s so hot,” thought Rod, gawking at her freckled face, which reminded him of a glazed donut. He felt a sudden burst of anxiety that he had just said that out loud. “Snap out of it,” he scolded himself, shaking his head and furrowing his brows. “Play it cool. Besides, I’m not actually eleven. I therefore should be able to manipulate this whole table. I am better than this tool. Wait... Why am I thinking like this...”

[Regressing... 16% to full neural reconfiguration]

“Why do you never talk?” asked Sethan.

“Regressing to what exactly?” wondered Rod.

“You don’t have to be so blunt,” laughed Jaz, short for Jasmin, who was sat adjacently on Rod’s left.

“I should be able to dominate socially,” Rod thought with more confidence, his heart beating rapidly. “Ahem,” he coughed forcefully, “I’m not deaf and dumb, just dumb.”

The whole table, which sat six people in addition to him, looked at him in disbelief. They were silent for a while, and Rod interpreted this as them just being more surprised that anything, so he repeated what he had just said again. When he had done so, he leaned back and smirked, staring at Sethan with the sort of look a man would make to one he deemed his inferior. The class had entirely filled out now and waited only on the music teacher. All of them, however, concentrated on Rod, or more specifically, what he had just said.

“I can’t believe you just said that!” a boy from another table called out.

“Weirdo,” added Sethan.

Jaz crinkled her nose. “Yeah, maybe it’s better you don’t speak,” she laughed with scorn.

Barbera, the redhead next to him, glared at him. “Stop speaking, please.”

Rod did not even meet their eyes. Instead, he allowed the oppressiveness of their judgement to keep his head lowered and submitted. “I’m not good enough,” he ruminated. “Good going, you spiteful coward! You can’t even make friends!”

“Sethan, how old is your girlfriend?” asked Jaz.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Same age,” he replied with a straight, disinterested face.

“Not what I heard,” she said, raising her pencilled eyebrow. She wore makeup even though it was against school rules.

“Isn’t she in Year 9?”

“Year 9? Fucking hell, Seth,” Rocco interrupted. He was a blonde boy with Italian parents. He was a ‘cool kid’, though Rod had a feeling that he wasn’t really one on the inside, but rather made to be through some sort of process Rod had yet to figure out. Rod had been placed next to him in science lesson. “How’d you manage that, bro?”

Sethan shrugged, frowning. “Not sure what you’re on about, bruv,” he replied. “We’re just friends,” he added, rubbing his hands together nervously.

Rod sat their quietly, inwardly cursing himself for failing to converse with the group. Any minute now the teacher would come in and end his chance of ingratiating himself with the ‘cool kids’ this time. “How am I supposed to learn social skills if I don’t have the guts to interact with people?” he cursed himself. “But they are too intimidating. I keep fucking up. If I manage to do it, though, imagine how smooth sailing my life will be, and how happy I’ll be?”

“Fucking hell,” Barb said after she took a sip of her hot coffee.

“No need to swear,” teased Rocco with a smirk. His platinum blonde curls covered one of his eyes, the other shone a dark radiant blue which sucked everyone in. “Naughty to swear,” he added in his thick Italian accent.

“This fucking coffee,” continued Barb, holding the disposable cup out for everyone to see, This-”

Rocco contorted his face twistedly and stretched out his hand in imitation of also holding a cup, and said in a deepened tone, “Hm, oh, look at me: I’m well hard aren’t I. ‘This fucking coffee’-”

“Shut up,” she laughed, pretending to be offended. The rest of the table also laughed, and she fidgeted playfully with her auburn hair.

“Shut up,” repeated Rocco devilishly, sticking his tongue out.

Barb erupted into an even greater laughter. She still held the coffee in her left hand, and everyone thought that she was going to end up dropping it by accident since she seemed to lose all control over herself at that moment.

“You’re so funny, Rocco,” Sethan said finally, the sincerity of which was questionable.

“I know I am,” he replied toothily.

“What were you going to say,” asked Jaz, smiling ear to ear along with everyone else.

“I was saying,” Barb said tipsily, as though she was drunk off the social atmosphere, “that this fucking coffee-”

“Oh, there she is swearing again,” Rocco interrupted.

“Stop it Rocco,” said Jaz.

“-cost me £4.”

“Must be a banging coffee,” Sethan said.

Rocco proceeded to slow clap. “Thanks for the information. It was certainly worth the wait,” he said.

Rod sat befuddled. “Why does he get away with it? Eh? I remember how you people treated me. I haven’t forgotten it. I still haven’t forgotten what my parents did to me either.”

“That much for a cup of a coffee? Who the fuck does this school think it is charging that much for a cup of coffee?”

“I know right; why did I even buy it?”

Rod’s eyes narrowed. “I know what you’d be saying Aleku… You’d be criticising them for spending so much on a beverage. You just don’t understand what life is like for the common man. Where are you anyway?” he ruminated.

Glancing at the foreign exchange student in the corner, he wondered how long it would take for her to be surrounded by friends and admirers. “A cute girl like that doesn’t know what real suffering is,” he thought bitterly. He had to get her out of his mind because seeing her alone and feign depression made him only the more bitter and abject. “Don’t I know better? Stop judging people, for goodness’ sake. Why am I like this? It’s like I’ve regressed emotionally two decades.”

“Rocco!” yelled Mr Durm impatiently. “Sit down right now and stop acting like you are still in primary school.” The forty-something year old man scanned the classroom with the suspiciousness of a jailer, his nose upturned and tight: “I see you’ve made yourselves comfortable...”

The blonde troublemaker did what he was told at once but not without a devilish smirk. All the girls looked at him, giggling quietly. Jaz rolled her eyes, but it was obvious that inwardly she was also taken in by the charm and confidence exuding out of the young boy.

“Hm, okay,” began Rod in contemplation, studying the Italian intently, “this is a boy I can learn from. Damn, even though I am in the body of a boy, I still feel like my present self; I look at all these as the children that they truly are. Weird. They act all carefree and everything. It is strange. I am so used to being pressured to perform in every task. I blame Aleku for that.”

“Listen!” Mr Durm interrupted his ruminations savagely, as though overcompensating for the fact that these were twelve-year-old boys he was dealing with and not the sixteen-year-olds he was promised when he applied for the job months back. He didn’t spend 4 years in university to end up teaching children. “What do you have to blab about?” he shouted, louder than before, “you think that this is primary school? You think that you can just come here and act the fool? Do you think that you can just come here and just continue to act like children? Well, boys and girls, or should I say, ‘ladies and gentlemen’? For the moment you stepped through those doors,” and he pointed to the door, “you become not children but men…”

“And women,” muttered Jaz. She sat with her back to him, her arms crossed.

Durm narrowed his eyes and stared at the back of the girl’s head. “Has anyone here played an instrument before?” he asked.

Several hands shot into the air.

“Good. Well,” he clapped his hands, smiling, “find a partner and sit at one of the keyboards over there,” he said, pointing to the back of the classroom.

The tables in the classroom were as before empty, and as expected two half-concerned and helpless eyes stared at him from the side. Then Rod stood up sluggishly and walked like a zombie to one of the keyboards that were still free.

Fearing that his position in the social hierarchy was already decimated from having to work alone, and that the fact of no one choosing to work with him was a confirmation that he was not good enough, he flat out refused to listen to the teacher’s instruction and instead ruminated about whether acting out on his impulses would make people take him seriously. Rod had never in fact acted on his thoughts in a serious manner. He had planned it, of course, written, contemplated, desired, wished and prayed for it; but acting on it, he had never. Why not? He fiddled with the pen between his long, thin fingers. The thought of stabbing somebody with it crossed his mind more than once; but who? The boy who had stabbed him in Year 11…Where was he? Rod scanned the classroom slowly, holding back his tears. He gripped his pen tightly so that it bit into his palm. Then, he pulled off the lid of the ballpoint, revealing the tip, and hovered it over the meaty bit of his thumb, below the joint. Why not? “So I can feel…” Rod told himself encouragingly, “So I can forget…”