Hope, Charity & Faith Ch. 02

Our first week of high school had the other guys questioning his gender when he ventured into the boy's locker room. After a nervous shuffle, side step and verbal drubbing, Rob Mackenzie rewarded my best bud with one of his many monikers "titty" which unfortunately stuck.

"Whatever, do you mind?" Ricky worked to appear unfazed by his forced nickname.

"Uhm, we were having a private conversation." I added in measure tone due to his status as a third generation gang member.

Both of us received dual hard slaps on the far sides of our cheeks as he suddenly released me to cinch in a tight headlock around my friend. He wrenched hard enough to make my friend double over into his bare chest as I toppled onto the concrete floor looking back. Rob didn't seem to care that he was just wearing his boxers.

"You ain't shit man, ain't nothing but a fucking trick!! Don't you ever buck up to me again, fat bitch!! I'll fuck you-UP titty!! Hey nigga what size are these anyway; feels like a goddamn C-cup. What size bra you wear, bitch meat?!!" I glanced around at the other laughing faces finding a few anxious ones in the crowd as Rob roughly pinched one of my friend's man boobs. Luckily, we were still fully dressed.

"HAHA, VERY FUNNY!!" Ricky played it off struggling futilely against the muscular jock, finding himself with nowhere to go. I got to my feet ready to commit suicide by planting my fist right between Rob's evil eyes.

"WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?!!" Coach Rice appeared in the boy's locker room almost out of nowhere. His presence was enough to send scores of students scrambling out of the locker room to the gym floor as his gaze settled on us as a trio.

"LET THAT BOY GO, AND CUT THE SHIT, MACKENZIE!! ALL THREE OF YOU GIVE ME FIFTEEN LAPS AROUND THE GYMNASIUM!!" Two out of the three of us were relieved to be running laps, but Rob bristled. I don't know if coach realized what was going on, but he made sure to keep Rob back while me and Ricky filed out onto the gym floor.

We ran those laps happily, but Ricky looked shell shocked. Since Rob was a jock, he was forced to run laps around the outside of the gym. This meant that both of us were likely marked for further bullying by Rob.

"Hey, you wanna hang at my place after school?" Ricky asked as we completed our last few laps around the gym floor avoiding numerous attempts to trip us by peers.

"Sure." He still looked shaky.

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Kimberly was sitting there in the first desk adjacent to the door with that motherfucking Jay Stello's letterman jacket draped about her person as a badge of honor. She was writing notes from the board as the class began to settle down. One of her legs was folded over the other as she glanced in my direction.

She seemed to sitting at a forty five degree angle with her butt pushed towards the edge of the seat. This allowed her to fold one leg over the other making the blue jean mini skirt ride up until the bottom of her panties were plainly visible. She gave me a knowing smirk as I walked somberly to my desk in the center of the classroom.

"Fuck." I mumbled under my breath so low, no one seemed to hear it.

Charmaine was sitting in the chair right behind my assigned seat. The morbidly obese girl who usually sat there was occupying her seat in the last row. A few other girls from the cheerleading squad were sitting sporadically around my seat as well.

This didn't bode well and as soon as my butt touched the seat, the girls around me starting making these crying noses at a whisper while some of the other students snickered. Another eponymous note suddenly popped down in front of me obviously thrown by one of the cheerleaders. I went to toss it off my desk when someone slapped the back of my neck.

"OW!!" The class giggled drawing the attention of our teacher who was preoccupied with her phone.

"What's going on?" She looked directly at me blinking profusely.

"Uhm, nothing ma'am."

"What's that in your hand; is it a note?" I thought I'd hidden it in my palm quickly enough, but Mrs. Oderkirk noticed.

"No ma'am."

"What is it, Jaleel?"

"Uhm, just some trash, Mrs. Oderkirk."

She'd been hunched over her desk which was piled on one end with copious amounts of books that didn't look like they originated from our school. Mrs. Oderkirk was a substitute teacher covering for our original who was on maternity leave. She reached down for her personal wastebasket loudly placing it on the top of her desk with a metallic clank.

"Up here, right now Jaleel; toss it." The class was giggling as I got up soberly walking to the desk. Mrs. Oderkirk was still holding the wastebasket as I reluctantly dropped Charmaine's note into it.

"Uhm, sorry." I walked back to my desk noticing all three cheerleaders staring daggers.

"JALEEL!" I turned around finding Mrs. Oderkirk looking at the opened letter with widened eyes. The brunette thirty something looked like a stern librarian with eyes hidden behind some thick blocky glasses.

"Uhm, yeah?" She didn't look amused.

"A moment outside the class if you will." She stood up motioning towards the door following me as I stepped outside into the corridor. The class found the proceedings hilarious as she followed me out pulling the door up behind us, almost slamming it.

"Ma'am?"

"Explain yourself."

Mrs. Oderkirk shoved the opened note into my hand waiting there with her arms folded across her chest as I slowly glanced down finding something horrific. Two crude penises were drawn in ballpoint pen, one noticeably larger than the other with what looked like either cum or a mushroom cloud emerging from its crown. The other was tiny, and limp. There was a sad face emoji drawn there next to the two illustrated cocks. I looked up from the paper to my teacher's stern face finding her scowling.

"I-uhm, don't know what to say."

"So, I can see you have a high opinion of yourself as compared to your male peers, Jaleel." Her tone needled into me.

"I didn't draw this ma'am." Mrs. Oderkirk half yanked the crude drawing from my hand.

"Oh yeah, who did?"

I looked into the classroom through the window in the door finding Charmaine and friends huddled together. Kimberly appeared uninterested, reading her textbook, unaffected. Charmaine was staring back, looking me directly in the eye as I found Mrs. Oderkirk studying the drawing and the paper itself.

"I really can't say, ma'am." I didn't know if she would believe that a cheerleader would draw something so sexually egregious.

"Alright Jaleel; you will collect your books and report to detention until the tenth period bell sounds. I'm very disappointed in you and hope that our next class session will be more productive."

The class was laughing hard as I walked in gathering my belongings while Charmaine and friends looked visibly relieved. Mrs. Oderkirk retained the dirty drawing placing it in her desk as she began writing on the chalkboard. Kimberly didn't look up as I passed her, actually raising her textbook like she was reading it instead.

I couldn't help but stare back finding even more of her panties revealed, her leg drawn one over the other crossed. Her crotch was plainly visible along with part of the undercuff between her cheeks. My gaze drifted up finding an intentional message from my girlfriend. Kimberly Bivens was giving me the middle finger using her textbook to hide her actions.

I reported to study hall finding a seat in the section cordoned off for student miscreants. I hated study hall because it was mostly occupied with juvenile underclassmen, freshman. Once you became a junior or senior, you tended to drift away from these spaces favoring the gymnasium and cafeteria. Faculty only monitored the attendance of students for the first two years of high school. Five minutes later, Charmaine stomped into detention coming right up the aisle in my direction.

"Fucking snitch." She snarled in my ear, bumping me with her hip before sitting in a desk along the back wall. I glanced over my shoulder finding her texting furiously.

Mrs. Oderkirk wasn't as clueless as she seemed. I'd later find out that after studying the torn paper written on the notebook, she ordered the entire class to place all of their belongings on their desktops. The young substitute teacher walked the classroom aisles going through all of her students mead notebooks until she found the culprit Charmaine.

The notebook paper used to make the dirty pic, was obviously ripped from her notebook. Mrs. Oderkirk took it one step further ripping the page out walking back to her desk where she produced a pencil. She meticulously shaded in the grooves on that paper until she had a copy of the dirty drawing before expunging Charmaine from the class as well. Kimberly Bivens remained untouched, and un-implicated. I suddenly got a text from an unknown number.

"Damn." Several rows of shit emoji appeared on the face of my phone as the tenth period bell signaled the end of our mutual exile. Predictably Charmaine shoved her hip into the side of my head as she angrily stormed out of detention.

I didn't care because school was over for the day and I'd survived. The only thing on my mind was finding Ricky and going to his place to play some video games. It was our refuge, after my own online gaming activities had been cut short by my mother. Incensed that I'd failed a test, mom confiscated my console saying I'd get it back when I passed my makeup test. Incentive provided in spades; I aced the test only to find out that she'd given my console away to some distant cousins as a birthday gift. She said she didn't think I'd pass the test.

I half ran down the congested stairs outside only to be cut off at the entrance to the student parking lot. The sleek Buick Regal was black with a reflective chassis that reflected my own features back at me. It appeared so suddenly at the drive out entrance that I toppled instinctively thinking it was going to hit me. I looked up into the face of that motherfucking Jay Stello. He was smiling down at me, all of his immaculate pearly whites on display.

"Hey, sorry about that little man." I'm six feet and some change.

"Yeah, sure." I recovered my books, standing up to find Kimberly hugged up beside him in the front seat. Her palm was plainly visible on his crotch, a sly knowing smile on her serpentine face.

"Wanna ride?" He asked as my face was blasted by oppressive strains of "Don't Play" by Travis Scott.

"No, thank you."

"Nigga, I wasn't talking to you." Kimberly leaned in further giving him a deep, sensual soul kiss while I watched, frozen again.

"FUCKING SNITCH!!"

A large styrofoam cup of soda blasted me in the chest. Surprisingly, I was somnambulistic wondering if all the jocks and popular people favored this brand of faux orange Crush peddled in the school cafeteria. Charmaine had been sitting in the backseat of motherfucking Jay Stello's ride.

"LATERS!!"

Kimberly shouted as the car turned into traffic speeding off as their laughter echoed lingering behind. I found my best friend Ricky in his car pulling up right behind the departing luxury vehicle piloted by my rival. He took it all in shaking his head as he unlocked the passenger side door.

I was a hot mess, and all I wanted to do was play some fucking video games.

...to be continued.

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