Chapter 3-1
642 Words
Chapter 3
On Tuesday morning, Anton got a locker key from Miss Taylor, and spent most of break with Emma trying to find its home.
“They don’t exactly write the numbers on them big,” she complained, “and they’re all out of order.”
“What’s all out of order?”
Anton jumped at that deep, easy voice—and then his stomach dropped when Jude slid his arms around Emma’s waist and hugged her from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder in a very familiar, intimate pose.
Shit.
“The lockers,” he said numbly, to force his brain off the despondency. He shouldn’t be surprised, really. Jude was good-looking, Emma was pretty…it was natural. And it wasn’t like he could have dated Jude anyway, not if he didn’t want anyone to find out about him.
“Oh, right,” Jude said. “On the up side, it’ll be yours until you leave school again. They don’t swap them around every year.”
Anton nodded, keeping his eyes very definitely away from the sight of Jude hugging Emma like that, and started on the next column of lockers, squinting at the tiny numbers.
“Are you even awake yet?” he heard Emma ask Jude.
“Not really.”
“I can tell. You’re almost sweet when you’re sleepy.”
“Mehhh.”
Anton swallowed dryly, and finally found it. The key needed a bit of a jiggle to unstick the lock, but it finally popped open. And sitting inside was nothing but air, and an envelope.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I dunno. A treasure map?” Jude suggested. Emma hit him. “Ow!”
“You’re an arse,” she said loftily. “It’s for you,” she added to Anton. Sure enough, when he turned it over, his surname was printed on the front in tidy handwriting.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see, moron. Ow!”
“Jude, either be sweet and sleepy, or go be a prick somewhere else.”
“But I wanna be a prick here,” Jude whined, wriggling against her back as though he was trying to hide behind her, even though he was taller than her.
“Tough shit.”
Anton ripped the envelope open. Inside was a card. It was just a plain celebratory type card, balloons and stuff on the front, but when he flipped it open welcome to 10B!!! was written inside in a blue bubble, surrounded by little scribbled signatures and variances on the central message.
“Oh,” he said.
His stomach twisted violently. It looked like the whole class had signed it. And something about it felt funny, like…they were being nice to him even though they knew nothing about him. Some of them had even written his name, so it couldn’t have been pre-prepared, and…
“You knew this was my locker, and you let me look?” he asked Emma, who grinned.
“Yeah, well, didn’t want to be too obvious,” she said. “One of the girls pushed it in this morning.”
Anton swallowed, scanning the signatures. Jude and Emma had both signed it. Walsh had called him Welsh Williams. He thought Larimer had signed it near the top, unless there was someone called Fatima. And it was…stupidly nice of them. Stupidly.
“Thanks,” he croaked.
“Welcome,” Emma said quietly.
“S’tradition, mate,” Jude added. “You’re one of us now. We’re gonna join you to the hive mind at half term and then you’ll start to morph into Walsh.”
“Jude!” Emma protested, elbowing him in the gut. Jude grimaced and escaped.
“Uncalled for!”
“Your face is uncalled for!” she retorted, then slid her arm through Anton’s and hugged his elbow. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just…just surprised. It was really nice of you all, though.”
“We don’t get new people very often,” Emma said. “And anyway, the boys will all accept you if you like football. Jude said you’re a Spurs fan?”
“Uh-huh.”
“The cardinal sin is being a fan of Manchester United,” she confided. “It’s not allowed. And rugby you can support England or Wales, nobody else, and especially not Scotland.”
“And if you ever say anything nice about France, we’ll fob you off on 10A and you’ll be their problem.”
“And everyone in 10C is a prick.”
“No, Ems, a douchebag. A are the pricks.”
“Oh wait, yeah, A’s the form with that retard Barnes in it…”
Anton fell into step between them, still staring at the card, and let himself be guided to history without paying much attention. He just stared at signatures—most calling him nothing, some calling him Williams, the odd one calling him Anton—and took a deep breath.
He could do this. He could totally f*****g do this.
- Writer
