Beautiful Graffiti

It was only the second week into Mattie's first term of year Eleven that he gave up completely on the canteen.

It wasn't like he brought school lunches, in any case. That would probably be inadvisable, considering that ninety percent of the time the meat was undercooked.

But not having any specific friendship group, or any friends at all apart from his brother and cousin (probably down to his small invisibility problem), meant that Mattie didn't have to stick around whilst everyone else threw food at one another.

It was freezing cold for September, so that ruled out anything even remotely pertaining to the outside world. Mattie would usually head for the library, but the recent influx of idiots to the school just made that former haven a painful place to be.

Back to the bathroom it was, then.

Mercifully, said bathroom was completely empty. Mattie half-expected to see his brother trying to get into the pants of some poor kid from year Nine, but he was spared that sight, thank god.

The bathroom was miraculously clean, so Mattie sat down in the corner furthest away from the door, taking out his English book, opening it to a random page and laying his head against the wall.

At least this way he'd have some warning before anyone came in.

The Canadian looked down at his open English book and blushed, snapping it shut again. How preoccupied had he been in that lesson? Thank god the object of his doodles sat right on the other side of the room to him.

Speaking of which...

Mattie got to his feet again, abandoning his bag in the corner, walking over to the opposite wall, tilting his head and sighing at the messy chicken scratch scrawled all over the white paint.

It was definitely new. That much was for certain. The Canadian closed his eyes, a little, not entirely irrational, anger rushing over him. Why did this always seem to happen in his school? They seemed to have a higher homophobe population than most high schools, to the point where being gay was the biggest insult someone could be given.

Maybe it was because he had spent a long time awkwardly sketching the guy whose name was scrawled all over the wall, but Mattie knew that he couldn't just let that stay there, like that.

He pulled out a Sharpie from his pocket, normally used to highlight passages on handouts from teachers, and uncapped it.

The Canadian knew that he was doing something that could be grounds for exclusion, if a teacher caught him, so he made sure to check the area around him, just in case.

Then, right under the offending phrase, Mattie carefully marked another, before quickly recapping the pen once more and slipping it back into his pocket.

He didn't want to hang around to see how people would react to the new graffiti, so he picked his bag up once more, slipped his English book inside and quickly left the bathroom.

Nobody was outside in the corridor.

/

"Hey, hey Matt!"

Mattie looked up from his Maths homework, giving Alfred a curious glance. "Yes?" he asked, closing his book and walking over to where his brother was hunched over his laptop.

"Some guy..." Alfred pressed a few keys on his keyboard and beckoned Mattie a little closer. "One of the dickheads in our year, sorry, wrote some shit about the Norwegian dude you like on the bathroom wall."

Mattie flushed, quickly hiding his face from Alfred's view. Alfred angled the screen of the laptop so Mattie could see the picture on screen better.

"'parently some guy thinks he's hot," Alfred smirked at his brother. "You have competition."

The American double clicked on the photo so it enlarged, and placed the laptop in Mattie's hands. "I'm going to get a Coke," Alfred grinned.

Alfred left the room, leaving Mattie with the laptop and a slightly cloudy head. And all Mattie could concentrate on was the words he'd written, just earlier that day.

Lukas would be sure to notice him now, right? Especially after someone wrote

"Lukas Bondevik is gay as fuck."

All over the boys bathroom wall, and someone else added

"I hope so, he's fucking hot."

Right underneath.

Even though Mattie was barely noticed, even though the most he'd ever spoken to Lukas was to borrow a pen, for the first time he felt something a little akin to hope.

Especially as Lukas himself had been the one to post the picture.