Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Flies.

Eric still couldn't understand what had happened. At night he heard his brother twisting and turning in his sleep, sometimes Sam even screamed. Erics belly turned when he heard his brother's screams. He shouldn't have to feel that way. It happened that he went to Sams room when it was really bad. First he went to his room every night, but he stopped after about a week when the screams had calmed down a bit. But one night, when Sam was screaming "I want to die!", Eric couldn't fight it anymore. He carefully sat up in his own bed, and tip-toed to Sams room where he found his brother twisting and turning and whimpering in his bed. Eric got a lump in his stomach of pity, because he was going through the same thing as his brother and understood what this was all about. Eric then sat down on Sams bed, and shaked him a little, so that he would wake him up.

"Sam, it's okay. Wake up, please wake up." Eric whispered. Sam opened his tearfilled eyes and looked at Eric, he flinched, didn't know who was sitting on the edge of his bed in his newly awakened state.

"It's me, Eric. It's okay Sam", Eric said and bent down to hug him. Sam accepted the hug and let the tears fall. When Eric felt his shoulder become wet of Sams tears, he couldn't stand it. He let the lump in his throat turn in to salty tears that slowly made their way down his cheek.

There they sat, in the middle of the night, and cried together. Their parents never knew.

School was the worst place Sam could imagine. After they came home from that horrible island, all the kids asked the strangest questions to Sam and Eric. Questions like "What did it feel like when that fatty died?" could be asked, and Sam never had any sensible answer for that kind of questions. What it felt like? The feeling was indescribable. A mix of hatred, sorrow, happiness, disgust and God knows what came to Sam when Piggy died. Could you really feel all feelings at the same time? Sam didn't know that before. Now he knew - and it was horrible that he knew. No child should have to go through such things. Sam and Eric were now thirteen years old and in seventh grade. Their lives was almost only school and homework. And training. Eric loved soccer and trained almost every day, while Sam was more into boxing. Boxing took very hard training, so he couldn't be too lazy.

Eric opened the door to Sams bedroom.

"Ready to go, brother?" He asked.

"Fuck no", Sam answered, looking at the floor.

Sam had made a mistake - ONE mistake - and after that he got bullied by almost the whole class.

He accidentely told someone one of the popular girls secret. It wasn't that big of a secret if you ask Sam - that she sometimes could watch cartoons when she was bored. But appearently it was very nerdy to do that, and that's the way the bullying started. It wasn't that obvious to start with - some avoiding here and some cold looks there - but that hurted too.

Sam felt that something was not right. One week later they called him names. The guys called him gay, and the girls called him ugly and stuff like that. The fun part is that the girls thought Eric was hot, even though he looked just the same as Sam. Sam couldn't understand that. Eric couldn't understand it either. Sometimes, when the girls just called Sam ugly and then turned to him and said "Hey hottie", Eric could get so pissed off that he told them to go to hell. And sometimes, or mostly, when he caught the boys pushing Sam into a corner and calling him names, he'd punched them away and said "don't you know better than this? How the fuck could you be so damn immature? Grow the fuck up!" and pulled Sam away from there. And if one of the boys were alone calling Sam names, it could go that far that Eric hitted him.

"Come on, I'm with you", Eric said encouraging to Sam. Sam looked at Eric that smiled at him. Sam gave him a half-smile back, not really convinced that they wouldn't say anything just because Eric was with him.

But as soon as they entered the school yard it started.

"Nice shirt, Sam, did you buy it at the dump?" one of the girls cried out.

"There goes that fag Sam!" one of the boys called.

"Don't mind them, they're just bullshitting", Eric said when he saw the look of sadness on Sams face.

In history class they were working with the second world war, and right now their teacher was talking about the holocaust. Eric couldn't help to hear the talk that was going on behind him. Chris and Michael, two of the bullies, were talking shit about Sam, and it made Eric so damn pissed off. But then Michael uttered a statement, that made Eric go. It was the worst sentence he'd heard in his entire life, not even on the island had he heard something like that being mentioned.

"We should destroy Sam", Michael whispered.

"The fuck you will!" Eric screamed turning around.

He started to feel like Roger, the sadist on the island. He looked Chris and Michael straight in the eyes. The whole class was staring at them.

"Excuse me, Eric?" their teacher said. "Why do you get so mad?"

"Because they're sitting here saying they will destroy Sam! Of course you get fucking angry!"

Angry was an understatement. Eric slammed his history book shut and threw it at he stormed out of the classroom. It was the worst thing he'd ever heard. Sam, who got offended, ran after his brother. Eric sat on one of the benches in the hallway.

"Did they really say that, Eric?" Sam asked and looked at him with wondering, sad eyes.

"Yeah, bloody idiots", Eric answered. Sam sat beside him and buried his face in his hands. Eric felt pain when he looked at his brother. It really hurted him to, when Sam felt this way. Eric put his arm around Sam.

"Sam...", he started.

Sam sobbed.

"Sam, don't mind what they're saying, it doesn't matter. Nothing of it is true. What they call you isn't true, Sam", Eric said comfortingly. Sam turned to Eric and leaned his face on his shoulder. Eric put his arms around him.

"I'm here, Sam", he said quietly. "I'm here."

TBC