2.

When Dad went away, he left nothing. Not a letter, not a word, nor personal belongings. One night he had packed everything and just...left. The only thing from him that remained was his bomber jacket. He had loved it. And he just left it on the hook. Why I will never know, but I always told myself that that was the way he told me that he loved me even if he left us.

My mother didn’t take it well. At all. She grew depressed to a point where she wasn’t able to work for a while. Like a zombie she used to walk through the house and would barely talk to me, I grew isolated and lonely in my own family. We didn’t have much money and we had to move into a shaggy old house in the 5th circle. It was difficult, very difficult, but somehow we got through it. Mom works again and I am a different person.

In my angry years, I had ignored the message that was behind my father’s jacket. I wore it as a symbol for myself. A symbol to remind myself that everyone would disappoint me, leave me. A symbol from my Dad to show me that I wasn’t worth enough for him to stay. My mind was so fucked up back then. But I still loved him as the Dad he was, for teaching me how to shoot a gun, how to drive, for making stupid puns and Dad jokes. I still missed him. One of my deepest wishes was to see him again.

But nobody really understands a hurt, confused twelve year old boy and his actions, not even he himself. So they let him roam freely, not knowing what to do or how to stop him when they realized it has gone too far and in the end he learned the hard way. Working with grown men on construction sites in your freetime, carrying bricks and cement while being eyed judgingly from the workers and classmates who came by randomly; I won’t deny that it was humiliating, embarrassing and one of the worst things to experience, but I also want to say that I damn did deserve it. I realized it was my own fault, realized that it was wrong to blackmail, to beat up, to play dictator and I finally, after years, broke free from my angry self.

I did it mostly out of my own strength. And I believe that for one to truly experience what it means to fix yourself up, to build yourself again you have to overcome one of your own weaknesses. You realize that you can do so much more when you just believe in yourself a little. I know it sounds cheesy and made up, but that’s exactly how it is. All the willpower that I had wasted on anger, I have now free to use for whatever I want it to use for. And that’s great. That’s how I keep my 3.2 GPA up, somehow.

Hunter, Jason and I met up again at lunch, in the Cafeteria. We sat at the same table as always, alone. I had gained the table in the past years and even now, after these years are over for a considerable time now no one dared to sit at this table. But it’s cool, we had the table entirely for ourselves. Hunter looked more than tired; with eyes nearly shut he poked in the mashed potatoes with peas and cooked carrots, barley eating any of it. Which was perfectly natural, the food in the Cafeteria is really as bad as everyone says. Actually I think it’s bad everywhere. Or did you ever hear someone say: “Hm, this Cafeteria food is delicious!”.

Jason was just hanging around. I can’t really describe what that means, he just does what he always does in a manner or an aura only Jason has. Jason always looks incredibly bored and that’s what he probably is. I knew him and Hunter since Kindergarden and even back then our personalities didn’t seem to match up, but somehow we still became friends. And it stayed that way. Jason is possibly the smartest in our group, but he’s not making a great deal out of it. Since I knew him, he is just bored with his bored look, with bored yawning and bored listening. He has a permanent facial expression that lets people think he disapproves of everything they say, but I think it’s just the unfortunate shape of his face. Some might say that a behaviour like that is horrible, but I don’t really give a shit, Jason was always a good and loyal friend to me so that’s why I don’t give a single damn about the way he acts.

Right now his watery, pale green eyes studied french vocabularies for a test he would write in the next period and he didn’t pay much attention to what was going on around him.

I was chewing on my self-made sandwich, when Hunter suddenly looked up, past me, somewhere into the Cafeteria.

“Hey, Sean?”, he asked without looking away from the spot.

“Hm?”, I managed before swallowing the big piece of bread I had in my mouth. I was hungry, I hadn’t eaten all day.

“Why is that Connor-Boy staring at your back from his table”, Hunter’s face warped a bit in suspiciousness.

“Huh? He does?”

“Yeah. I’m sitting in a way I can directly see what he is looking at”

“He’s probably staring at me because I have a meet up with him after school at the gate”, I answered casually, again biting in my sandwich.

“What?!”, Hunter exclaimed a bit too loud, now even Jason was shifting his focus from his french book to me with a curious and questioning, but at the same time incomprehensible look on his face.

“Why would you meet up with that Connor-scum”, he asked in his deep, calm voice, but the hatred for Connor was still audible. Jason had never liked Connor, even before the talk-back and jaw-break thing. If it was a personal thing or not I couldn’t tell, Jason wasn’t a person who liked to talk about stuff that was going on in his mind.

“Do you remember that I told you Mr Black wanted to do a Biology project with us?”

Hunter grunted and Jason rolled his eyes.

“He teamed you up with him, am I right or am I right?”, Hunter now pushed the mashed potatoes to the side, “Well, we better go with you. You can never trust people like him. And we never should leave the side of our boss”.

“Don’t call me like that”, I put the sandwich down in my lunchbox.

“Like what?”

“Boss”

“Why, boss?”, Hunter grinned.

“It’s ridiculous, stop it”

“But boss…”

“Hunter, stop, I’m serious what are you doing”, I felt my eyebrows knitting in irritation.

“But you kinda are our boss”, Jason suddenly said out of the nowhere and that was something I never expected for him to say. Hunter was the jokester in our group, not Jason.

I let out a huge sigh. “Why, Jason, explain it to me. I don’t see your logic there”. This was just plain ridiculous. We weren’t in some kind of mobster movie or a cheesy high school drama, so why did they put up with this?

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Oh, come on Sean, now you’re acting dumb”, Jason closed his book, “In the last years you were always the person who told both of us what to do, we were your fucking bodyguards, dude. I know you don’t like this role, but you have to admit that this group kind of formed itself into this system in the last years”

That was a point I didn’t and couldn’t miss.

“Yeah, sure, but…”

“And we’re not mad about it, boss”, Hunter said, looking at me too serious for him.

“Yeah, we were your bodyguards gladly”, Jason ended.

I didn’t know what to say. Did they plan this? Did they talk about this before? They seemed so sure and calm in what they were saying and I was just creeped out. Were they joking with me, what was this? I was kinda freaked out, but I was too tired and too lazy to fight with them.

“What the fuck, okay you weirdos, but please just continue calling me Sean, like everybody else does”, I mumbled over the jarring sound of the bell that ended lunch time.

“Never!”, Hunter grinned, in his usual jokester-grinning.

I somehow survived a double hour Math without napping away and left the classroom as soon the bell was ringing. I waited a few minutes for Hunter and Jason to reach the entrance door and we walked out together, like we always did.

“Yo, let’s get Thai Food, I’m starving”, Hunter said and we all agreed, when I saw Connor standing at the gate. I nearly forgot him over all the Algebra and numbers I had to deal with in the last two hours.

“Ah, I nearly forgot him”, I whispered my thought to Jason and Hunter, “I hope he doesn’t take to long, I could use some food too”.

We arrived at the gate, giving them no chance to respond. Connor’s eyes darted between Hunter, Jason and me suspiciously and he shifted a bit on his spot, seemingly uncomfortable.

“So”, I began, lazily crossing my arms, “What is it that you wanted to talk about”.

Connor cleared his throat before he began to talk.

“Can we talk alone?”, he looked at Hunter and Jason, “Without your...friends?”.

It was obvious that instead of ‘friends’ he first wanted to say something different, but it seemed that he hold back in time before the word could slip out.

I heard Jason flicking his tongue, but I knew Connor wouldn’t talk if the two of them were still present.

“Hunter, Jason. You two can go ahead, I’m coming after soon”, I didn’t shift my gaze from Connor while I talked, I wanted to make sure he didn’t had something malicious on his mind. But the only thing I could detect was that he was just skittish.

“You sure ‘bout dat, Sean?”, Jason asked.

“Just go”

“Alright, your choice, boss”, Hunter said casually and walked away with Jason, but not without shooting a intimidating look to Connor. My inner self wanted to strangle Hunter for using that word. He absolutely did that on purpose.

“Hunter, stop that, I swear to God”, I hissed back at him, but he just turned a little, shrugged and continued to walk away.

Connor watched the two leaving, before turning back to me.

“They sure do listen good, am I right, haha”, his laugh was nervous.

“Yeah, they do, now tell me what you want”.

Connor kicked a stone.

“Ah, you know we have this project we have to do now, right”, he said slowly.

“Yes, obviously”, I responded.

“I just wanted to know…”, he stopped, thought about his sentences and then continued, “We had some issues in the past and, um...we- we’re cool right?”

That was something I totally did not see coming.

It caught me completely off guard.

“Huh?”, I said dumbfounded.

“Ah, you know. There’s no way you forgot. I mean, I squished your nose and there was blood everywhere. I, we fucking sued you and I saw you working your ass off on that construction site”, Connor now looked straight into my face, “I avoided you the best I could in the past years, but now…”

I was still perplex, I was more prepared for him to lash out at me than that.

“Uh, yah, I see your point”, I responded again, finally shifting back to normal a bit.

“I mean, you’re probably still angry about this whole stuff. The whole day I was thinking about how to approach this topic respectively and when I saw you coming there, with your two buddies at your side I had a major flashback. So I wanted to know: Are we cool? Or are we going to have a bad time?”

I started to realize what he wanted to tell me between the lines and the puzzle finally solved itself.

“Wait, are you saying you were scared because of me?”, I asked carefully to test my theory.

His eyes staring at the ground proved me right.

“Ooooh”, I let out, it was logical to be scared. He didn’t really know I’ve changed much and thought I would give him some serious problems. He couldn't know. Since he avoided me he also didn't hear the newest news of a changed bully.

“God, Connor. I broke your fuckin’ jaw, I really don’t blame you for sueing me. Of course we’re cool, dude”

Now he seemed surprised.

“What? Are we really?”

“Yeah”

“No joke, prank, nothing?”, he asked to be completely sure. I just nodded.

He stood there for a short while, looking more than confused, staring into nothing.

“Okay, great”, he suddenly said with a bit of relief in his voice, “great, hrm. So when do you have time to meet up, for the project I mean”.

I thought about it a short while, in between workdays it would suck, I wouldn’t have the nerve to hang around with someone. On the weekend I would want to spend time with Jason and Hunter, or just myself because I quite enjoy alone-time. So there was only one day left where I could tolerate working on a school project.

“How ‘bout Fridays. At my house, if that’s okay. 4P.M.”, I suggested and Connor nodded hastily. He still seemed a bit uncomfortable in his skin, but I didn’t mind.

“Yeah, Fridays sounds good, 4P.M.”, he repeated, “Uh, where do you live exactly?”

“42 Poe Street, 5th circle if you didn’t know”, I answered, “Okay, I gotta go. Hunter and Jason are waiting for me and I don’t like to keep people waiting”, I told him and began walking past him.

“Yeah, uh ‘kay!”, I heard him say, a bit unsure, “Was great talking to you, too!”

In the same moment a strange feeling overcame me, which I first couldn’t assign to anything. But a few feet further I knew: Connor Brown was one of the most normal kids I would encounter, but I also knew that he would probably make a good friend.

I snorted a bit in amusement and decided to add him to my crew. He would join eventually, I was sure about it.