High school is cruel.
Any teenager will tell you that. They'll tell of the bullying and peer pressure, they'll tell of mean and unfair teachers. They'll insult each other openly and secretly.
High school is cruel.
McKinley High is no different.
Especially for the teenage boy walking down the main hallway, towards his locker to grab the spare set of clothes he planted there yesterday. The jocks laugh at him, pointing at his garbage stained outfit and yelling derogatory phrases as he passes. Kurt Hummel is all too used to this.
He'll be late for English, which means that by the time he leaves the boys restrooms, everyone will be in class. That's when he's on guard the most. It's not that he isn't always on guard, it's just that an encounter with a homophobic, football-playing Neanderthal in an empty hallway isn't really the way Kurt wants to spend his Friday morning. No, today Kurt would like to make it home with less than four new bruises. It wasn't going to happen, but hey, sometimes it pays to be hopeful.
Kurt spun the combination that opened his locker just to find that the pants he had stored in there didn't match the shirt he had paired them with as well as he thought they would. Still, he'd rather be unfashionable for a day then walk around school for seven hours smelling like dumpster. He quickly shoved the clean clothes into his bag, which thankfully wasn't tossed in the trash with him, as he headed to the restroom to rid himself of these wretched, smelling clothes.
The jocks continued their wordy assault on him as he passed them again. He heard every word that fell from their foul mouths, and while he didn't let them see him falter, every syllable cut him deep. It wasn't until he was in the safety of the second to last stall in the boys restroom that he actually let some of the tears that he had been holding fall. Was he really doomed to live like this? Being shoved into walls, thrown in dumpsters, slushied, called derogatory names daily until he graduated high school to just be shoved into the real world outside McKinley High School?
He quickly began to change, knowing that he didn't have any time to waste. The halls would be empty by the time he was done and he wanted to make it to English. They were reading the literary classic, The Great Gatsby, and the story intrigued Kurt. There was nothing he loved more then to escape into a romance, especially this one. He loved reading about Gatsby and his lifelong quest to woo back the woman he loves. Yes, Kurt was a sucker for romance.
He finally managed to get all the buttons of his shirt undone, considering some of them were coated in a grimy substance that made them slick and difficult to grab. Pulling the dirty shirt off his skinny frame, he started to fold it while being careful not to let one of the sleeves fall into the toilet. When he went to stow it in his bag, he noticed a reddish-brown blotch and a tear in the clothing. Kurt couldn't imagine how in the world he was going to get that out of a white shirt.
Kurt grabbed some paper from the tissue dispenser and tried to blot some of the stain from it, but hardly managed getting anything out. Whatever the tissue had grabbed was just smaller, orange-toned blots against the white of the tissue.
"Well…shit." Kurt mumbled before shoving the torn and stained article in his bag. He grabbed the cleaner shirt and went to put it on when he felt a small, stinging pain in his back. Carefully, he placed a hand near the source of the pain and drew back to see it lightly coated with a substance similar in color to the stain on his shirt. Kurt just closed his eyes and sighed.
So much for just leaving with bruises.
He must have landed on something sharp in the trash and not have noticed until he stretched to put on the shirt just now. The worst part was that if he didn't clean it out, it would get infected. That would mean going to the nurse and explaining how he had got the injury to begin with, meaning the jocks would find out that he had said something and would more than likely harass him for months, like they weren't going to already.
It wasn't worth it.
He grabbed more tissue and tried wiping away a majority of the blood off his back, which proved difficult since he couldn't see it. He wiped his face with the other hand, still holding on to his shirt, trying to remove the tears before they left tracks on his face. When he finally decided that he had gotten most of the blood off and it wasn't going to flow from the wound in his back anymore, he threw on the cleaner shirt and quickly changed pants, ignoring the stinging in his back and folding them into his bag.
He finally let himself out of the stall and headed towards the sinks, prepared to wash the grime and any trace of blood off his hands, when he heard the heavy steps walking towards the restroom. He panicked. There was only one way out of the restroom, and those heavy steps were walking towards or past it. There wasn't anywhere to hide, except for back in the stall. If this person was a jock, Kurt was screwed.
"Kurt?"
He looked towards the entrance in relief. It was just Finn, his new somewhat-stepbrother/roommate. Kurt released a breath he didn't know he was holding and turned back to the sink, starting to wash his hands. Hopefully, Finn wouldn't ask why Kurt was wearing different clothes then the ones he had left home in. Finn never paid attention to Kurt's dressing choices though, so luck was very much on his side.
"Weren't you wearing a white shirt earlier?" Finn said, walking up behind Kurt, who mentally swore. Even Finn, who was an occasional idiot, could tell the difference between white and black.
"Is there a reason you came to the boys room besides to interrogate me on what I wore when we left the house?" Kurt replied, shaking his hands off in the sink and adjusting his messenger bag on his shoulder. Finn just stood there, arms crossed and giving Kurt the 'Please tell me cause I don't want something to be wrong and then your dad get mad at me' look.
"Finn, I'm fine. Now, please get out of my way, I'm late for English." Kurt managed to get around Finn, who sighed and shook his head. Just as he was exiting the room, Kurt added, "And for your information, this is what I was wearing this morning. You're just really unobservant and couldn't tell."
Just another lie to add to list.