I sit on the grass between the daisies and dog excrements. I’m not sitting in shit. I checked multiple times before I sat down. I can still smell it though.

I try to focus on the beautiful things, like the one late-blossoming tree whose shade I’m stealing. It doesn’t help. As I look around at the people crowding the benches, or sitting on the field in large groups I can’t help but feel desolate. The weather is nice, and everyone is enjoying it, so why can’t I?

I get the plastic bag of sandwiches out of my bag and eat one. It tastes like a dry sandwich with a slice of withered cheese, because it is exactly that. I don’t know why it disappoints me. I put it in my bag myself this morning, and I’m not so delusional I’d think it would have magically changed into something delicious.

I should have put chocolate flakes on it.

No, I shouldn’t have. Then my whole plastic bag would’ve been a mess of squished and half-molten chocolate, and my bread would’ve been empty. Cheese is easier.

I want to buy a Mars bar in the cafeteria, but I won’t. It’s too many calories. I’ll get even fatter.

I close my eyes and pretend the sandwich contains creamy salted butter and dark chocolate flakes, the extra thick ones from De Ruijter, not the cheap household brand my mother buys.

While I’m fantasizing anyway, I pretend I’m not sitting here by myself, but that I’m surrounded by a circle of friends. Abby’s there, obviously. Sitting to my right, doodling in het black notebook instead of making conversation. Her long brown hair falling over her face as she’s bent over her work. She’s an introvert, but being in a large group of people doesn’t bother her, as long as she can just withdraw in her own private fantasy world made of drawings.

To my left is Daniel. He’s sitting close to me, his fingers secretly touching mine behind his leg. I shoot a look at him, he returns my gaze for a second, his blue eyes radiant with mischief, then returns to the discussion at hand.

“If the economy goes down the drain, we’d have no money to invest in green initiatives.” He says to Victor, who frowns at him.

The black-haired boy sighs audibly, then states: “Oh great, the VVD youth club has fed you their idiotic ideas. I guess you believe in trickle-down economics as well.”

“Obviously.”

“You know it doesn’t work like that. 1% of the world population made two thirds of the money in the past years. The wealth gap is only getting bigger and bigger everywhere. And twelve years of Rutte didn’t do much to battle that. The only thing that man did besides hiding in the closet was give tax breaks to overseas multimillionaires and call it economical progress.” Jax comes to Victor’s aid.

“Rutte is not gay.” Kevin intervenes defensively.

I smirk. “Oh really? He’s an intelligent man who never openly had a relationship, a family that’s deeply conservative and religious, who wants to be takes seriously by all countries over the world as our president. Of course, he’s in the closet.” I agree with Jax.

“Or he’s ace.” Daniel shrugs. “Does it matter though? We’re a successful country and he’s been leading it most of our lives. How could you say he’s not doing a good job? Do you know what financial crises other countries are in post covid?”

“Yeah, we’re not officially in a financial crisis, because the rich are still getting richer. Meanwhile there is an abundance of homeless people, people in debt, families unable to make ends meet because of the gas prices and inflation.” Tim interjects, adding: “fuck capitalism!” with a huge grin.  

I laugh, because I agree. I’m all for the short blonde’s punk attitude. Daniel isn’t happy with it, obviously. But I know I’ll make it up to him later. I slide my fingers to the inside of his wrist to let him know I appreciate him even if his political views are elitist.

“Speaking of capitalism…” Daniel smirks. “Ravi, it’s almost your birthday. Let’s have a party at my house. With this weather, I think we can make it a pool party. My parents will be on a business trip and my brothers can buy us booze.”

“We’re not supposed to drink at our age. Alcohol stunts our mental development.” Victor says. Wow he’s even a party pooper in my imagination.

Is it sad to imagine having a political discussion with my classmates in which my crush suddenly decided to throw me a birthday party?

It probably is.

I open my eyes again. Iggy is laughing at me. “Lemme guess: Daniel confessed his love?”

“Threw me a birthday party.” I tell him, annoyed by his pierced grin.

“Never gonna happen.” He shakes his head.

“I know.” I sigh.

“Why do you even bother? Your classmates dislike you. Daniel is a homophobic stuck-up idiot. Don’t you have any self-respect?”

“Apparently, I do not.” I shrug.

“If you’re fantasising anyway, why don’t you pretend your spoiled rich-boy prince is sucking your dick instead?

“And get hard in the middle of lunchbreak? No thanks.” I roll my eyes. But now I thought about it, and blood is running down anyway. Damn my hormones.

I bet no one in my class is even thinking about getting laid. They’re all so perfect. I bet they’re all waiting until college to start dating and doing interesting stuff. That’s VWO apparently. Smart people don’t feel the need to get laid before they’re eighteen.

Guess I’m not that smart then.

“You know you’re not like them, right?” Iggy tells me.

“I know…” I sigh.

“Then why even bother? Why don’t you just be you and tell all of them to suck it. Why do you care what they think about you? They don’t want you. Their loss. Fuck ‘em. You have other friends. Better ones. Ones that are not judgemental fucks. The only thing you need to do now is find a hot guy and get laid.” Iggy tells me.

Like any hot guy would want me. Iggy has it easy. He looks like a goddamn model. A rough unpolished kind, but a model all the same. He’s got the height, the bone structure, the abs, the cocky smirk and the attitude for it.

The bell rings and I get up to go back to class. Iggy immediately disappears, as he always does.  It’s not like he has any classes to attend.

We have math in B06 with Mrs. Vermeer. I drag myself to the room, merging into the stream of my chatting classmates in the hallway. Tim and Jax are having a discussion about whether or not something is dangerous. I don’t know what, but Tim thinks it’s fine and Jax is being a coward. Or Tim is an idiot and Jax is being the sane one. Both theories are equally valid in my head. They push past me and sit beside their respective deskmates, still in conversation.

As I walk over to my desk I catch Daniel’s eye. I forget myself and smile at him. His blonde eyebrows raise as his face contorts in disgust. “What are you smiling at, faggot?”

“He wants your dick, obviously.” Kevin croons beside him.

“Ew.” Daniel replies. It hurts, though this isn’t the first time.

“I was asking myself how the world had become such a nasty place, and then I saw you and found the answer.” I say to Daniel. “Also, I think Kevin’s jealous. You should give him a reach-around sometime.”

I slide into my seat co I can comfortably turn my back on them. The second I sit down something hits my head. It bounces off and skitters over the floor. It sounds like a pencil, but I don’t bother to look.

Instead, I take out my stationary and my notebook and start doodling.

Mrs. Vermeer starts the lesson seconds later, and the whole class falls silent. She’s explaining logarithms again. I already read about that, made the assignments and got it. So I continue drawing on my sheet.

After ten minutes of monologue, she tells us to start on our homework.   

I’ve always thought it’s idiotic that you get time to do your homework in class. It’s homework, right? You should make it at home. If they just skipped all the parts where we’re not getting any instructions from the teachers, school days would be so much shorter.

They had it right with the whole covid thing. Just instructions through Teams, then online help sessions for any issues you might encounter when working at your subjects solo. In your room. Not that I needed any.

No classes, no other students, no wasting time on stupid group projects. None of that. The only focus on learning, which is what a school is ultimately for. Boring, but necessary.

But no. Now the whole pandemic is over and done with, we’re just sitting in class like idiots, doing math sums we could’ve done at home. And I’m forced to sit through all of this, seeing my classmates flaunt their perfect lives. Having fun, ignoring the freak.

Maybe I should just be the one that works from home, so I won’t disturb their perfect world with my annoying presence. Like they banned me from the communal showers after gym class.

If I told the head office, they’d be sure to get punished for that. But I won’t. Not because I don’t like to see them punished, but because I don’t want the school to alert my parents.

They think I get along swimmingly with my classmates. They think Daniel, Kevin, Justin, Victor, Jax and Tim are my friends. As if they’d ever be my friends. Or even risk being seen with me. Those popular straight boys look at me like I’m contagious. And sometimes I wish I was.

Statistically, there should be at least one other queer person in my class. But none of the boys exhibit any signs of being in the closet. On the girl’s side, I was slightly suspicious of the relationship between loud-and-proud popular sporty girl Liz and the bookish and shy little princess Julia. They don’t look like a set that would be attached at the hip just because they are so similar. But nowadays Julia’s always blushing when Victor gives her any attention, and Liz is winking at guys, so I’ve reconsidered my assessment.

Then again, I shouldn’t assume anything. I hate it when people assume things about me. So if I were a good person, I wouldn’t do unto others what I do not wish done to myself.

But I’m not a good person. I'm a spiteful bitch that still resents the whole world for knowing I’m gay without me ever saying or doing anything about it. It must be written all over my face.

So I desperately seek meaning behind the overly masculine banter between Justin and Tim, the tactility between Jax and Victor, the mutual admiration between Sara and Elianne, Ben’s shyness in his conversations with Yevon, Kevin and Daniel’s blatant homophobia…

My best friend Abby once told me about this guy in her class that was teasing her to no end. Her mom told her that boys tease the one they like. Oh, I wish that was true for Daniel.

I don’t just wish it. I dream of it. I have all these scenarios in my head in which the tall blonde roughly pushes me out of the showers, calling me all sorts of slurs, only to drag me into the bathroom where he assaults my lips with his.

Too bad for me only the first part is a true story. Instead of making out with me, the entitled prince ended up closing the door in my face, as I stood soaked and naked in the locker room with shampoo still running down my curls. Yet, I still fantasise about that moment regularly. I truly am as pathetic as they say I am.

“Ravi, would you care to explain how these doodles are relevant to today’s subject?” Mrs Vermeer startles me. I didn’t even notice her looking over my shoulder just then. I was busy drawing an incubus that may or may not have Daniel’s features.

“I have demons.” I answer. “I have also finished my homework.” I flip the page back to show her the last couple of sums. I only did the last ones, as usual. Because if you understand those, you don’t need the ones that came before. But it’s not like she’s going to flip back pages to see if I actually did all of them. Not with my grades.

“I see.” She nods, clearly disappointed that she was wrong. It’s a bad sentiment for a teacher. She should be happy that at least some of her students are still on par with the materials after the whole covid debacle.

“Then I suggest you help Joukje with her work.” She states, gesturing at the mousy girl that shares my desk. She ticks off every box needed to fall into the nerd category, yet she doesn’t have the brains that should accompany that whole shebang.

“Isn’t that your job?” I pointedly ask the teacher in return. Her neck instantly flashes red in an ugly, blotched way.

“Out Ravi. Report to the head office while you’re at it.” She tells me sternly. I roll my eyes and get out of my seat. I was bored anyway.

As I head out of the classroom, I hear several students snicker. I turn, in the hope to find some acknowledgement that some of them found my remark amusing. But no one’s looking at me. They’re all covertly chatting with their deskmates, or fiddling with their phones.

Fine. I slam the door and walk into the large hall. I take one glance at the head office, and decide not to go there. I won’t go to our next class either. It’s a Tuesday. I have people to feed.