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SEBASTIAN AND DANIEL

A semi-autobiographical LGBT coming-of-age story about a pair of social outcasts who find peace within each other’s company. May contain uncompromising real-world situations.

CHAPTER FIVE

It suddenly became clear to Sebastian, whether through logical reasoning or a parade of abstract emotions, that memory was a deceitful thing indeed.

After his troubled mathematics lesson, during which he had been humiliated by Missus Bracken and given quite a collection of bruises on his left arm by his desk-mate, Sebastian had retired to the toilets on the ground floor just below his form room to organise his books and thoughts for the afternoon ahead.

As he began to rummage through his ripped and peeling rucksack, he found not the trusty English and German textbooks, accompanied by their relative workbooks, that his education had timetabled, but a pair of corduroy trousers and a chequered, short-sleeved shirt.

Now this was perplexing.

As he sat alone and shocked and confused in the stall farthest from the piss trough, which would soon find itself loomed-over by adolescent boys competing to break up the withering disinfectant cake with their urine streams, an ominous chord of music rang inside Sebastian’s head.

He, and by “he” the author means Sebastian’s subconscious, had clearly made an affirmative decision regarding his flight from the premises, even before he, and by “he” the author now means Sebastian’s conscious self, had been made aware of it. What mischievousness, the boy concluded, as there was clearly no going back now. Sebastian had nothing to take with him to his next class, but he did have the means to avoid being humiliated and punched in the arm once again.

While most of the communal toilet windows featured a ridged safety lock, making them almost-impossible to open beyond perhaps a couple of inches, all the boys knew that the window directly opposite the stall in which our protagonist now sits was broken. Legend had it, a previous generation of pupils had forced it open proper, surely to aid in the smoking of cigarettes and the acquisition of cheat sheets during exam month.

At this dramatic juncture in our little soap opera, the author wishes not to trouble the reader with excruciating details regarding Sebastian’s heroic escape from the building, which surely would include a florid description of his physical metamorphosis from introverted schoolboy into truant, corduroy-clad ruffian, the super-spy timing of his flight from the confined toilet stall, monumental physical exertion in bounding over the windowpane, and artful ducking from hedge to hedge until he found himself in the long-distance running field.

All that really needs to be said is that it happened.

“Right, so-fucking-now what?!” Said Sebastian, to the far edge of the long-distance running field, which was far too busy being fallow to notice the young boy’s plight.

Sebastian looked about at the topography around him, realising he had never before actually considered the outside world in relation to the school premises. In the immediate vicinity was the well-worn trench of a hundred-year’s worth of reluctant jogging boys, a violently-split football boot, a scattering of discarded cigarette butts, and the wilting pages of a pornographic magazine, complete with a predictable pair of knee indentations dug into the ground around them.

Sebastian gave a fey roll of his eyes at the ridiculous images of large-breasted women, then broadened his scan to the wider landscape, including the industrial park over the north hedge, the main road over the west hedge, and the stream, which lay in a shallow gully, before the east hedge.

On the near bank of the gully, only a metre or so from the babbling waters, the body of one of Sebastian’s classmates lay prone. Not noticing a long-distance running troupe in the preceding minutes, Sebastian was duly alarmed, so clambered down and crouched beside the still form.

“Are you alright?!” He said, daring not to reach out to the boy.

Vicious pranks were often cleverly laid this way.

There was a weak murmur from within the boy’s throat, but no coherent words. Sebastian reached out with his hand and wiped a mop of muddied raven hair from the boy’s pale, elven features. After his initial assumption had passed that the boy was, like himself, playing truant from lessons, Sebastian attempted further communication.

“Do you know where you are?!” He said, monitoring the boy’s lips for movement.

Sebastian knew the boy as Ian, a pupil from the same year but a different form. The two had shared a library desk and piss trough occasionally, but no meaningful bond had yet been forged. After Sebastian splashed the prone boy’s face with water from the nearby stream and stroked his cheek gently, Ian finally began to speak.

“Is it with school?” He said, somewhat meaninglessly.

“‘Is it with school’ what?!” Said Sebastian, once again brushing the boy’s hair out of his eyes.

The boy sat up, looked around at the gully, down at himself, then up at Sebastian.

“Did I fall again?!” He said, an embarrassed hand clasping his wryly-amused mouth.

Sebastian nodded.

“Yes, has it happened before?” He said, laying a supportive hand on the boy’s bare knee.

“A few times, I go to the doctor about it,” said Ian, plowing through his memory for the full details, “but mum knows all about it really.”

Betraying his will to continue on his adventure and avoid being caught in casual clothing, Sebastian relaxed into a more well-suited attitude of caring.

“Shall I take you to the nurse?” He said, wiping some of the mud from Ian’s PE uniform.

The prone boy shook his head.

“No, it’s alright, I don’t need anything.” He said, then scrunched up his face with awkward reticence. “But, can you not tell anybody you found me here?”

There was a moment of thoughtful silence, as Sebastian attempted to decode the boy’s concern.

“I tell you what,” said Sebastian, with a friendly grin, “you don’t tell people you caught me skiving, and I won’t tell them you passed out. Deal?!”

Ian held out his hand for his new partner in crime to shake.

“Deal.”

Despite the teenage boy code of not showing platonic affection under any circumstance, the two wayward boys hugged in a gesture of camaraderie. Sebastian pulled Ian to his feet and set him off roughly in the direction of the school buildings.

What an odd diversion, Sebastian reasoned. And yet, there he still was, playing truant and not doing very well at it. A decision of action had to be made and a direction plotted.

It was time for true adventure!

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