° make a list.
Write down the most important things.
I'll give you the first: you. °

Chapter 23

It is all easier said than done.

After the talk with Nessa, our parents come home and surprisingly buy the story we sell about the mirror and all. I'm pretty sure mum was going to ask for more details on it but dad waves it off, blaming the mirror for being too old. I retire into my room and I can't sleep.

Now I am barely able to keep my eyes open as I dragged my feet on the hallway regretting why I got out from bed. Except, I didn't willingly get out of bed, mum forced me out. I don't know what the time was but I must have gotten up pretty late to take Darcy's sleeping pills after tossing and turning on my bed for hours. I don't sleep walk but now I'm pretty sure I'm sleep walking, I have no idea what's going on around me. The cap I had on helping me in more ways than I can give it credit for.

I had a lot of things to work on, one of them being the impossible chant at the back of my head. Despite everything Nessa and I talked about, despite what I believed and how I felt, as I thought more about it, I could still hear the chant — homosexuality is a sin — ringing at the back of my head like an old fond song. I can't imagine myself being free, being gay and being like Sky.

I bang into someone and the force pushes me to the locker I was hoping was mine. I feel brain dead. With a groan, I rub my eyes even though they remain closed, relying on the locker for support. Please be mine, it'll be too embarrassing if you weren't.

"Hey, are you okay?" Someone asks and on any other day the voice and accent would have given out who it is and gotten me on alert but now, it's like everything is on slow motion for me.

I turn around, my back still on the locker and I force my eyes to flutter open. Buzz cut and blue eyes. I nod, "yeah, sorry."

The person chuckles slightly, "Taylor, are you drunk?"

Lou... Lou!

I almost choke on air as I stand up straight, my eyes popping open and forcing myself awake. Buzz cut, blue eyes- Jesus! I blink many times, gulping, "um-- Hi."

Lou cocks his head to a side to look at me, "hello."

Face palm, if only the group can come and swallow me now. I pick a bit on my hair — the part that's hanging out the cap— I couldn't even bother to be awake enough to do my hair so I just pulled a cap on and Nessa also drove me to school. I couldn't drive in my sleepy state. I shake my head at Lou, "No, I'm not drunk."

"You sure, Taylor?" He asks, he looks mildly amused and if it's possible I'll be beet red by now.

"Yes, Saint," I say nodding and hoping he believes me. I've always wished for a conversation and after all this time, this is how it decides to go? I really really want to restart today.

Lou looks around him and the behind, like he wasn't sure I am talking to him. When he looks back at me, he has a drool worthy smile on. "Okay, sure."

"Bye," I mutter under my breath when he walks away, going into the swarm of students. I turn back to my locker with a grimace, happy that at least it's my locker, then I bang my head on it. Stupid, idiot...

"Hey, Taylor?" Lou calls and I whip my head around so fast, I almost break something. He's backing the student population, looking at me and when I raise my brow in askance, he grins. "Je m'appelle Louie St Martin."

Then he winks at me, turning around with his amused smile and disappearing from sight.

My French is good, really good on paper and I try to speak from time to time and what he said is pretty basic but it takes me a minute to understand it. Oh my God... Did I really call him saint? Who in the world bears just saint?! What is wrong with me?

"Hey Issy," Jamal says clasping a hand on my shoulder out of nowhere and making my jump with a gasp.

"Mal!"

"What?" He raises his hand up, staring at me eye wide. "Are you okay?"

With a sigh I open up my locker, "Dandy."

"What the fuck is it?" He asks switching sides so his face isn't blocked my the locker door. "And why do you have a cap on?"

I shrug, "fashion?" It was a Chris Brown cap with a CB at the front. I like it, makes me look cooler than I am.

"I thought we both settled that hats, caps whatever aren't your thing. Not with a hair like that," he flicks at the hood of my cap.

I quickly pull it down further, I feel not-human. Maybe I've finally turned into a vampire. "Mal, please leave me alone."

"You look like a hoodrat," he chuckles, "better not embarrass me. Now except your fashion sense, what else is wrong with you?"

"Nothing," I switch my books, I wasn't in the mood of arguing and he didn't seem like he was going to let it go. "I just-- I just called Lou, Saint." Just saying it makes me cringe so bad, I nearly shudder.

"Um-"

"Lou," I look Mal dead in the eye. "I called Lou, Saint. After he called me Taylor."

"Just Saint?" He asks to clarify and I nod, then he burst out laughing. "Saint? You were just like, Lou Saint? Saint?"

If I can, I'll flip him off but I can't so I just glare shutting my locker and walking off. "Mal, I already feel bad enough."

"Oh good God, I wish I was there. I'd love to see both your faces."

To that I stick my tongue out to him, running my hand over my face. "I feel--"

"Fucked?"

I shrug, "that'll work."

"What?" He jumps to my front. "Did you actually-"

"Jamal!" I shove him away from me but it's more his laughter that almost makes him fall. "You're a rotten fowl."

"At least I don't go around calling people half their surnames, nitwit."

"You're more of a nit that I am," I fire back, "and it was one time."

"You still like him," he says in a low voice as we enter the classroom.

"I do not," I deny in a harsh whisper. "Shut up, Mal."

He doesn't say any more thing until we're sitting, "do you think you're going to be a kind of Playboy? Shuffling gu-- hearts?"

I scrowl at him, "no, you already have that covered."

Speaking of hearts, Sky. Sky. I haven't spoken to him since the last time after his house. I miss him so much, I never thought I'd miss him like this. He didn't show up at my locker, and we haven't called or texted. What do I need to do to make things right? Do I even need to do anything? Should I? But I want to, I want to see him, I want to talk to him. I want things back to normal.

"Unless you mean my books, else I don't know what you're talking about," Mal says, flipping through a book.

"Shut up Mal."

"What do you think about--"

We are cut off my the new presence in our midst, the sweety smell of perfume invading our nostrils. "Hi boys," Sara Cornwell sings out, waving manicured nails in front of her and jutting a hip out.

Jamal and I exchange a look and smile back at her, "hi Sara." We both say in sync, looking at her and wondering what she's doing here.

Sara is the Reverend's cousin who lives with him. She's really beautiful with blond hair that had highlights on and among the 'popular kids' of the school. Sara's also a cheerleader, in the church choir and involved in many many thing, loved by all. I wouldn't say I like or hate Sara, I think she's a bit much and a queen of hypocrites. She's like Darcy just the worst version that's completely pretentious.

At church she'd be all holy and excessive, putting an extra pitch in her voice in the choir, shaking and bouncing around during prayers, sometimes even speaking in tongues and yelling so everybody would know it's Sara doing it. Her uncle the Reverend adores her as do many other parents— in the open that is. I've heard families gossip about how excessive she is. I asked mum once and mum said she liked her and considered her highly spirited. Which I later found out was a code word and better way of saying over the top. Anyway, that's Sara... In church.

Here in school is a different story entirely. Long story short, she's a different person entirely, the only thing she has in common with her church self is her over the top attitude. It even all got worst when she returned from a summer in the city and started behaving like she's different and better than everyone else.

But who am I to judge? Hypocrisy practically lives in the town's veins and I don't hate her.

"So," she dramatically slaps a yellow paper on our desk, moving our eyes from her glossy lips to the paper (I'll rather not meet her eyes and her lip gloss is glaring). "I'm turning seventeen," she sings waving out seven fingers, then laughs. "So I'm having a birthday party at the house and you are all invited!"

I don't even know people celebrate seventeen years in a big way. I always think it's sweet sixteen, then eighteen, then twenty one... Maybe that's for the less rich. Jamal passes the yellow paper to me and I read the details. Also, am I the last to turn seventeen?

"So, I'd see you guys, right?"

"Sure thing, Sara," Jamal nods, smiling with her. I nod too for lack of a better response.

"Great," she blows out a kiss, turning around on her pointy heels and sing out, "Bye boys."

"Bye Sara," we repeat again, carrying the same tone. After she leaves, we turn to each other and laugh.

"Oh my God-"

"Sara never seizes to amaze me," Jamal says and we share a look, putting out our fingers like she did. "Hi Boys," we both say, then burst out laughing.

"When do think she'd stop behaving like that?" I ask, dropping the invite in front of him. Nessa says she'd outgrow it one day.

"I don't know, just one summer in london and she's gone cuckoo," Mal shakes his head. "Do you think that's how everyone behaves there?"

"No way, Nessa'a gone and she didn't come back like that."

"Right," he waves the paper. "When do you pick me?"

"What?" I blink at him. "You know I'm not going. I don't attend parties."

"So? It's Sara Cornwell's party," Jamal says like it's supposed to mean something.

"Yeah?"

"So it's like the only party you can ever attend. Like ever!"

"It's still a party."

"Of the Reverend's fucking cousin."

I scrunch my lip at the two wrongly combined words. "Jamal..."

"Issy, you mum likes Sara. Everybody adores her. This is like the one party you can ever attend in your life. Ever."

I bite my lip looking down at the paper, "but-"

"No buts Issy," he groans. "Don't you ever want to attend a party."

"I actually don't-"

"It's the one party, the one. Everybody is going to be there, you'd be missing out completely. Even Sky is going to be there."

Sky... I'll really like to see Sky.

"Mum would not agree and I won't fit in, it's Sara's party for crying out loud."

"Your mum would agree, what could go wrong at the Reverend's house anyway," he smiles, nudging me. "And I'd be there."

Just then we both look up as the teacher rushes into the class, late and apologizing. I chew my lip, looking down at the paper without any other worry. Sky.

"And everybody is going?" I ask, my mind all on one person. If he's there then it might be worth my time.

"Everybody," he winks. "Every bloody Hunt."

"Shut up Mal," I say, my cheeks warming up as I shove the paper to him. "I'd think about it."

"I'd be at your house by seven."

"Mister Cole and Taylor," our names are called and we both look up sharply. The teacher glares, "I'd like to begin the class, if you stop chaffering about now, I'll not send you out."

"Okay," I say just at the same time Jamal says, "consider it stopped sir." We exchange a look and immediately reach on our books.

As the teacher talks, I'm completely distracted and I can't stop thinking about Sky. Did he even come to school today? Would he be at the party? I can go and not find him, I'd be bummed out. And if I do see him, what do I say. I can't just say sorry, what would I be apologizing for. He didn't do anything wrong and I didn't either...right?  I sneak my phone out my bag, making sure the teacher wasn't looking my way at all.

What do I do? I can't continue like this, it's been too long, it's torture.

Finally I make up my mind and text out; Hi.

It takes eight minutes, fourty seven seconds for Sky to reply. During which I've died and resurrected, ten times. I am starting to think our 'fight' is more than I think and I just killed myself by texting just hi. Thankfully what I see next, makes my day a whole lot better.

He didn't send an ordinary text back, it's a picture. A picture of himself resting his head on his desk in a class. It was angled strangely, definitely so that the teacher doesn't see. His hair is falling over his face and he had his tongue sticking out with his eyes closed. He looks so beautiful, my heart stops for a second and I miss him so much more. See his bored and dying pose makes a laugh bubble out of me before I can help it but thankfully it's not loud enough to attract the teacher's attention.

Jamal raises his brow at me and when I just shrug, he shakes his head and looks away. I sigh in relief, going back to my phone. I place it under my desk, look down at it and quickly take a picture of myself to send to him too. This time his reply is immediate.

You fucking have a cap on... strange.

I smile, about to explain why when another text from him comes in.

But very hot.

Yeah, I'm a goner.

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