Page 3 of Open Water

There we go. He is already losing his shit. Pressing send before he can rein himself and his filter-less mouth in. Or his texting finger. Whatever.

MAX: And subject myself to your snarky lectures on how I am completely messing up my future prospects? No thanks.

Touché.

TOM: Can we at least be civil? Please? Talk to me. What subjects are you failing? I promise I won’t be mad.

But Tom will lose his shit. He usually does, especially since Max knows how to push all his buttons. Every fucking one.

MAX: Biology, Maths and Drama. Fine?

For fuck’s sake. At least he is trying. He takes a deep breath before letting his fingers tap across the screen.

TOM: You love Drama. It’s what you wanted to get into? Why you chose Östra Real over Rudbeck’s Senior School? How can you be failing Drama? Not having a go but I thought you liked it?

He is trying. Honestly. And failing miserably. Tom lets a sigh escape from his lungs. He shouldn’t have sent that. He knows better than to argue.

MAX: Drama is full of wankers.

Deep breath.

TOM: It’s not the end of the world. I’m sure you have options to sort this out. I am here to help, remember? Let me help. Please.

There is no reply. He types out a few sentences, deleting them straight away. There is nothing he can say that won’t make this worse. Whatever he says, it won’t make a difference.

TOM: I will meet you at 5 by the main entrance. I love you.

He smiles. He can almost see Max’s reaction in front of him, rolling his eyes in disgust over those words

. They never say them anymore and it breaks his heart more than it should.

MAX

I know I should at least try, but to be honest, I can’t see the point. I can’t see the point of finishing school, however much everyone seems to think that it should be the obvious thing to do. It’s not like I am ever going to become something worthwhile. Because I won’t. That’s pretty obvious.

I’ve never been good at studying. Never been bright and intelligent enough. I’m the one who fails all the tests and who forgets to study for the exams. I’m that dude who when he tries to do his homework gets all confused and hands in the wrong fucking assignment. It’s just a mess. Everything is always a mess.

The only thing I used to really like about school was Drama. I mean that. I used to love it, and apparently, I was good at it, finding that place in my head where I could let go. Simon, the Drama nerd of a teacher, said I was good too. That I was really good. He kept saying I had comic timing and that my face could express a million emotions. He said it was a gift. I have no idea what the dude has been smoking.

It’s not like the world has gifted me anything good. I mean, even my own mother didn’t want me. She signed away her parental rights even before my umbilical cord was cut. And yeah, that always makes a great excuse to wallow in self-pity.

At least I have my Dad. My Dad who is a complete wanker half of the time, and the rest of the time I honestly don’t know what planet he is on.

I look just like him. Well, I did until this morning when I locked myself in the disabled toilets at school and dyed my hair black. I just thought it would be a good idea. It made sense in my head, kind of like changing my hair colour would make all the fucking school problems disappear. Like I can pretend it isn’t me that has to go and sit in a classroom after hours and listen to my mentor teacher spill all my failures to my Dad. My Dad who will be sitting there pulling his fingers through his mop of hair and sighing loudly, wondering what the hell has happened to the idea of his perfect textbook son.

Well, tough, Dad. He doesn’t exist. Instead, you are stuck with me, Dad. A tall, skinny kid with bad skin and a brain that is broken. Because I am that kid. The kid who just doesn’t fit the mould. If I was normal, I would be hanging out with all my great friends right now, chatting about nonsense and being stupid. Instead, I am hiding at an empty table at the back of the cafeteria, pretending to do homework, hoping that nobody will come anywhere near me.

I am riddled with anxieties to the point I can barely function. I am fucked in the head. Fact. And I am failing my three main subjects at school. Hip hip fucking hooray.

Anyway, I can’t go back to Drama, becauseheis there. Him. The boy with the most amazing smile. The gorgeous eyes. The tightest arse in the history of tight arses. Yup. That’s the kind of things I notice. Boys. With all the freaking problems I have stacked up against me, a mother who didn’t want her kid, a dad who is a complete twat, a diagnosis of Anxiety Disorder, and on top of that, I am ugly as hell, too tall, too skinny, covered in acne, and hey, yup, I’m gay. Not bi, not confused, not pan, not anything else. I am into dick, and dick only. I’ve never even looked at straight porn, have never had a girl look twice at me anyway and never been kissed. Not that any boys have looked at me either, I’m just not like that. I’m the kid who flies under the radar. Silent. Quiet. A bit of attitude to keep people from getting too close.

Not that anyone knows, because that is not the kind of person I am. I don’t speak up, don’t tell anyone anything about myself. Until that bloody Drama lesson. I messed up, okay? Got caught up in the moment, in the thrill of the game we were playing. I blame fucking damn idiotic shit-eating pot-smoking Simon. Bloody overgrown hippie.

We were supposed to write a character description of someone in a play. Use ourselves as a guide to what we would be portrayed as on stage, along with the deepest darkest secret of the character we would create. Something our character would never have told anyone. Then, we would use all these roles for our next production and make something that was honest. A realistic play about kids our age. The stuff going on in our heads that people didn’t see on the outside. Fucking pompous piece of shit idea.

Then, Simon stood there with this look of awe on his face, reading out our secrets to the room with him sat right there.Him. My crush. The man of my dreams. My dream prince. God. I have fucked him really good in my head. Dreamt of every possible scenario where he would become mine. I have crazy-jizzed all over my sheets, with hazy images of him moaning underneath me, enough times that I can barely stand sleeping in my own mess of a bed, because to be honest, my bed is disgusting. Filthy. I’m filthy in my head too. Messed up. I doubt normal people fantasise over the stuff that goes on in my daydreams. Because that’s where I tend to hang out. In my head. I have messed up most of my other school subjects as well, because I am just so behind that there is no point in catching up.

I had another episode of soul-destroying shit-eating depression after the Drama class disaster. I can’t believe I did it. Oh, fucking hell. I am such an idiot. I can’t quite control that shit, when my head goes into a tailspin. When my thoughts just won’t slow down. It could be because I messed around with my meds. It could be because I wasn’t paying attention to shit. But mostly it was because I wrote down the stuff I shouldn’t have told anyone. I made shit real, and I lost the plot. Completely. And then I didn’t go to school for weeks and now I’m so deep in shit I can barely get up in the morning. See? I’m just stuck in this never-ending circle of disaster.

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