Page 6

After dinner, Zeph went up to his room, sat at his keyboard and plugged in his headphones.

When he needed to empty his head, music helped and so did writing poems. He’d chosen a difficult piece by Chopin, so he really needed to concentrate.

After a few minutes, he settled in, gaining comfort from the familiar as his fingers mastered the intricacies of the notes.

He wished he had a piano rather than a cheap keyboard, but his father and Elisa said there was no room downstairs, plus it would be too noisy, and he could hardly have a piano in his room. He had the smallest bedroom, but even if he’d had the largest, a piano wouldn’t have fit.

Zeph built to a crescendo before falling to a mournful sadness.

As the tempo sped up again, this particular section reminding him of a volcano about to erupt, something inside him changed.

He wasn’t sure where the anger had come from, but he felt it racing through him, and the tone of his playing turned aggressive.

He was raging at life, at Rufus and Scott, and most of all at his reaction to Jack Steel.

It hurt. Zeph hurt.

Why had Jack stepped in? I thought you could use a friend .

Why would a guy who a day ago had laughed at the idea of him not fighting back, now intervene to help him?

Why would someone like him want to be friends with someone like me?

Why hadn’t Zeph just said thank you instead of being a smart arse?

He didn’t understand and he didn’t like not understanding.

Unless Jack really did want to be his friend.

Why, when no one else did?

Because they were both good at the subjects they were studying?

Maybe.

Because he likes me in the way I like him? His fingers faltered, wrong notes played. Not that Zeph liked him. I don’t. I don’t. He groaned. Would saying that ever convince him? There was no way Jack was gay. Still… a friend? Was that possible? He was new. Maybe Zeph could be his friend.

The futility of his thoughts broke his concentration again.

Friends with one of those alpha types who always look good, always do the right thing and have the right friends?

The guys who tell jokes people laugh at?

Someone the girls long to be asked out by and gay boys hopelessly lust after?

Boys who get invited to sit on the cool table with the cool kids? No way.

He and Jack had nothing in common apart from being clever.

The guy had no idea how impossible it was for them to be anything more than classmates.

How even that was going to be difficult for Zeph.

Because how could he not blush when Jack talked to him?

Not get that prickling sensation in his stomach?

He was dead if he got an erection and someone saw.

The only way to survive was to avoid him. Not talk to him. Not even think about being his friend.

For two effing years? When all he wanted to do was stare at his face and drool?

For the rest of the week, he was going to do everything he could to avoid him. It was the only way to stay safe and hopefully deter Rufus and Scott from getting their revenge. He’d save his lust for the privacy of his bedroom. And let his heart bleed inside more crappy poetry.

Even though they were bad poems, he felt better after he’d written them.

You think that I don’t matter

You think that I don’t care

You think I’m weak and helpless

But I know that life’s unfair

I’m not the boy you think I am

I’m not the boy I want to be

You’re brave, I’m not, at least not yet

But one day I’ll be free

Hmm. One day he’d read this rubbish and laugh.

Zeph swapped his seats in the classrooms to ones on the front row near the door so he could be first out.

He took sandwiches so he didn’t need to use the cafeteria.

Sixth formers were allowed to leave school grounds, so Zeph found a quiet spot in a nearby park to eat his lunch.

Though one day, when he’d felt he was being followed, he didn’t eat but instead did his homework in the town library.

Success, of a sort, though he wasn’t happy.

Avoidance was such a shit tactic. And paranoia was invasive.

Jack hadn’t spoken to him again and instead of being pleased, Zeph was upset, even though he reminded himself he’d made no effort to be friendly.

Alice was so obviously mooning after Jack, it made Zeph embarrassed.

Rufus and Scott had done a bit of name calling but that was all, and Zeph had hardly said a word to anyone. He was increasingly miserable.

So not a success at all.

“Happy Birthday!”

Zeph found himself facing a chorus of greetings when he stepped into the kitchen on Saturday morning. There were two cards on the table along with a wrapped gift.

“Open the cards first,” Alice said.

Zeph did as he was told. Congratulations on being our Stepbrother! It made him laugh. Inside was a twenty-pound Amazon gift voucher.

“Thanks. That’s great.”

“We didn’t know what to get you,” Georgia said. “Well, apart from a birthday cake. I’m buying that later.”

Oh God. Please don’t let it be something stupid.

The other card said Thanks for being a great son for 1.6 decades, 16 years, 192 months, 832 weeks, 4844 days, 140,245 hours, 8,415,360 minutes, 504,921,600 seconds. It’s no wonder you know everything! He’d had the same card last year based on fifteen years.

The gift was an iPhone, which shocked him. “Wow. Thanks very much.”

“We figured you could use a new phone.” His father patted his shoulder.

Zeph hardly used his old one. He was on a pay-as-you-go deal and hadn’t used up the credit he’d added eight months ago. If he needed to go online, he used his laptop.

“We’ve paid for the first three months,” Elisa said. “After that, you can do extra chores to cover the contract.”

Damn. That was supposedly the basis on which Georgia and Alice had been given their iPhones, which they had begged and pleaded for, but Zeph hadn’t seen them do what they were supposed to.

He put the bins out every week, he did the hoovering once a week, he emptied the dishwasher most mornings.

He’d never asked for a new phone and now he had to act grateful and do more around the house. It annoyed him.

“What do you have planned for the day?” his father asked.

Homework. Extra maths. Playing the keyboard. Teaching himself Spanish. Messing around on his laptop. Watching things on it that he shouldn’t, with the door locked.

“Nothing much.”

“What about him cutting the lawn, Dan?” Elisa asked.

“Oh yes, while we get everything ready for the party.” Alice high-fived Georgia.

Why hadn’t he thought to say he was going out somewhere?

By the time his father and Elisa had driven away, Zeph had mowed half of the lawn.

The day had started off chilly but the sky was clear and the temperature rising.

Alice had hung fairy lights around the patio and along the fence, and Chinese lanterns dangled from the tree closest to the house.

Georgia had gone with her boyfriend Toby to get the cake and snacks, and Zeph was under strict instructions not to go into the utility room when they returned.

Apparently, everyone had been invited to come at seven.

That seemed early to Zeph, but what did he know?

As soon as the lawn was done, he retreated to his room, showered, then did his physics homework.

He had a problem with one question and wished there was someone he could have called to talk to about it, but there wasn’t.

So, he kept working until he figured it out.

Sixteen years old but he didn’t feel any different. Being sixteen didn’t mean that much, though he could now legally have consensual sex in the UK and in thirty-four American states. Whoopee.

Since he’d realised what he was, he’d been so careful.

Never let his gaze linger on another boy, particularly when they were changing for games.

Been sure to join in inane chatter about girls when he had the chance.

He hated feeling the need to do that but it was self-preservation.

There was an LGBTQ support group at school but Zeph wasn’t going anywhere near it.

Once he’d left home and gone to university, then he’d come out.

He was a caterpillar with a long gestation, and one day, he’d become the butterfly he longed to turn into. He’d wear bright clothes and fly.

When his new phone rang that afternoon, he jumped. He’d only transferred five numbers to it. One was stored under the word hospital. That was who was calling. Not the hospital but his uncle.

“Hi, Uncle Martin,” Zeph said.

“Happy Birthday!”

“Thank you.”

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’d tell you if I wasn’t.”

“Good. What are you up to today?”

“Dad and Elisa have gone away and the girls are throwing me a party.”

“Good news or bad?”

“I wish they weren’t but no one listened to what I wanted.”

“If you were living with us, we’d have ignored what day it was and taken you to a car boot sale.”

Zeph laughed. “I’d have enjoyed that more.”

“I’ve put two hundred pounds in your bank account. Buy some clothes or save it.”

“Thank you. That’s really kind. How are you, Uncle Martin?”

“You’re old enough to call me Martin now. I’m good. Paulo and I are planning a holiday to Mexico and he’s in hyperdrive, detailing out every minute of every day.”

“No, I’m not,” he heard Paulo shout. “Only the hours we’re awake.”

Zeph listened as his uncle talked about their upcoming trip and hoped that one day he’d have someone like Paulo in his life. Zeph had been to see them a couple of times in the summer holidays and he always wanted to cry when he saw how happy and openly loving they were.