FINALLY. With this chapter, year one is over. (happy dance) :D

Over 100 pages in the Word file! (gasp) This calls for a celebration, I say! CHAPTER EIGHT! For some reason I think this chapter is lacking something. It's definitely not my best, I'll say that much about it…but things get much more complicated next chapter, so yay.

Chapter Eight

On Tuesday night, Gregory was moved back into Cabin H, where he slept in his old bed facing away from a still-angry Mole (who had not come to visit him on Monday or on that Tuesday during lunch). On Wednesday, Gregory woke up with the other campers and got dressed with a dull stiffness in his ankle, and the nook between his and Mole's beds was completely devoid of the French boy. Gregory scowled to himself and mussed his own hair, tying his boots and stomping out of the Cabin with clenched fists. He had never felt so indignant before in his life. What the hell was The Mole trying to pull?

He stopped and breathed in the morning air, staring over at the showers where Mole was leaning against the wooden panels with a Camel held carefully in his mouth, his head tilted at a rather vulnerable angle as he listened to that older, African-American boy talk. They laughed together at something, and Gregory felt the rage swelling within him, his upper lip curling back in disgust. For some reason, the way that Mole's neck was tilted made Gregory think that those boys would not hesitate to run the blade of a knife over the skin and spill all the blood in his French veins. Mole was being played for a fool by those older boys, Gregory thought to himself coldly, and he was too blind to see it. Gregory marched bravely over to the showers, fueled by some invisible force that perhaps wanted to keep his friend's neck intact, and sat down beside The Mole.

All boys present immediately stopped what they were doing and stared at him. A pale boy with a beard scowled furiously at him after the initial shock of being intruded on wore off. "What the fuck do you think you're doing here, asswipe?" he growled. "This is our turf, you little shit!" Mole said nothing, did nothing to show that he was in any way adversely affected by these words. Gregory kept his poker face and returned the glare as best he could. It registered, ever so distantly in his mind, that perhaps he had learned something here at the Academy; how to be angry and opinionated at the same time. How to get over a bit of his fears, if nothing else.

"I'm sitting with my friend, you Neanderthal," he spat back. This time, Mole's stormy green eyes flashed dangerously. Their gazes met, and Gregory stared intently into the dirty face of his best friend. The Mole's chin trembled slightly, his nostrils flaring as he breathed hard out of them. His hair was so long that it hung in front of his eyes in natural, spiky sections.

"…Go away and eat your breakfast. Eet eez for your own good zat you listen to me," Mole murmured, turning back toward the dark-skinned boy. The blonde sat frozen for a moment, in disbelief, and he just stared at the back of the French boy's head for what felt like hours. The Mole would not look back at him. He narrowed his blue eyes into slits and felt the tears threatening at the base of his throat.

Bugger…don't cry, Gregory, you cun do this without crying…

"…Fine, Mole," he leaned forward and breathed into the mousy ear, trying to sound vicious but only half-succeeding. "…I'm not good enough for you, then. That's it, isn't it?"

A long, uncomfortable pause. With each second that passed, Gregory's anger began to subside and replace itself with common sense, and he began to realize that these older boys would probably not hesitate to kick the shit out of him. They would do it just as those other boys had done on Saturday…only this time, Mole would most likely not step in and save him. The brunette took a long, sinful drag on his cigarette and breathed the smoke out, long and hard, into the air before him. He did not meet Gregory's gaze again as he sighed.

"…Go and eat breakfast, Gregory," he hissed. Gregory's pale, gloved fingers clenched into a fist, and he—for the first time in his life, with his teeth digging painfully into his lower lip—punched The Mole in the jaw.

He punched quite hard, too. The brunette let out a yelp of surprise and fell over into Rodney, and Gregory sniffed loudly before getting to his feet and marching quickly away. He paused for a moment once he was a few feet away and turned to face his friend, his face screwed up in rage.

"You are so full of sh-shit, Christophe. And y-you know it, don't you?" he asked, so quietly that only the brunette heard it. The Brit then turned on his heel without an answer and stomped out of the boys' line of sight. Rodney pushed Mole, who was now nursing his jaw with his head bowed, back up into a sitting position and gave him a confused look.

"What the hell was that, man?" the older boy asked, trying to find Mole's eyes. The French boy turned his face away and shook his head.

"…Nuhsing…'e…'e eez just angry with me…"

"No, I mean…you're just going to let him get away with slugging you?"

"…"

Gregory's pace gradually slowed, and his fingers closed around the fabric of his shirt above his stomach as he blinked away tears. He walked past the closed doors of the cafeteria, dragging his feet over to the first-aid Cabin, and he knocked on the door with a trembling fist. The nurse opened the door and gave him a confused look, asking him if his ankle was still bothering him.

He opened his mouth and promptly threw up all over the front of her clean white uniform.

Mole knew that Gregory was right. He would never say it out loud, of course; he wasn't the kind of person to admit that bad things about him were true. But he went through Wednesday thinking only about what Gregory had said to him that morning, hardly noticing the fact that the drills they were doing got more and more strenuous as the hours dragged on. He did the stretching and the sprinting and the obstacle course almost without blinking, and Wilma seemed more furious at him for this reason than anything else. He was supposed to be in pain, damnit.

Gregory joined the other boys in the field after lunch, looking very pale and sickly but doing the drills, anyway. He did them very slowly, but worked through all of them, about two minutes behind The Mole all the way. The French boy felt those melancholy blue eyes on him all through the afternoon, and his teeth ground against the inside of his cheek when he tried to will the gaze away. It did not leave him, and his cheek was raw by dinnertime. As they headed back for the cafeteria, Mole gave Gregory a pained look, and Gregory looked back, in just as much pain. Neither of them really understood that the only reason why they were hurting inside was because they were both quite sorry for fighting with one another that morning.

They needed each other. They just didn't realize it, yet.

They both sang The Anthem without much enthusiasm and sat in their usual seats all during dinner, which surprised the Brit; the other boys had said that usually, Mole would skip the second half of the meal and go outside to have a cigarette. But tonight, the brunette stayed, and they both ate their Salisbury steak and broccoli in complete silence for most of the meal. Gregory poked at his vegetables with his fork and sighed quietly on occasion, leaning his chin against the heel of his hand, not quite sure as to exactly what he was waiting for. Once he realized he didn't plan on eating any more food, he chanced a glimpse over at his brown-haired friend. Mole looked over at exactly the same time, and they simply stared at one another for a few moments. Then Gregory's chin trembled, and The Mole's lips separated.

…I'm sorry, he mouthed, and, Gregory believed, he truly looked it. He smiled weakly at his French friend to show that the apology was accepted, and he put his fork down in favor of placing his palm carefully over Mole's knuckles on the bench beside him. Mole sighed in relief, and the two of them left the cafeteria together, neither of them casting a second glance over toward the showers, where the older boys were watching them in awed disgust. Once they were safely back in Cabin H, they sat cross-legged on their beds, facing one another. Mole raked his fingers through his hair before peeling his gloves off. Gregory marveled at how Mole looked so much older than he really was; three or four years, even. Nearly a teenager.

The green eyes fixed themselves on the brunette's own leather-booted feet, the thick eyebrows furrowing beneath the bangs. "…Do you…forgeeve me?"

"Yes," Gregory answered quietly, without any hesitation whatsoever. Gregory expected his counterpart to heave a sigh of relief, but The Mole still looked rather dissatisfied with the situation. He blinked slowly, and Gregory watched him carefully.

There was a brief pause in their conversation. "…I…can't really explain why I do zeese sings to you, Gregory…" the smooth voice confided, the shaggy French head shaking slightly as Mole spoke. "…I…I mean…I don't want to 'urt you…"

"I know you don't…"

"…I love you, mon chéri…p-please understand…zat I don't do zeese sings eententionally…I just…'ave such a 'ard time…with feeling accepted…"

"Well, you're the only person I'll ever need to be accepted by," Gregory replied simply. He smiled at the brunette, hearing laughter outside as the other boys began heading for their Cabins to retrieve their nightclothes before showering. Glancing around quickly to make certain that they were alone, he got off of his bed and pressed his lips tenderly into one of The Mole's eyebrows. "And I love you, too. No matter what you do or say," the blonde whispered, grabbing his sleep pants from beneath his pillow and a pair of underwear from the tiny dresser between their beds. When he looked back at Mole, the French boy's eyes were sparkling, a smile brightening his tired, filthy face. Gregory reached forward instinctively and brushed the chocolate bangs out of the pretty green eyes, grinning as he did so. "We're best friends, Mole. People forgive their best friends for everything."

Especially when their best friends are as lovely as you are.

…Gregory's face flushed violently. He hadn't meant to think that…in fact, he didn't even know where that thought had come from! It had just played suddenly in his head, without warning, without provocation. He stood stark still for a moment, his eyes glazing over, his face beet-red, and The Mole just stared back up at him, greatly confused.

"…What eez wrong?" he asked. Gregory shook his head, and his golden locks bounced around his ears.

"Nothing, nothing, I…I'm g-going to take a shower now," he announced, clutching his clothes to his chest and turning quickly away from his oldest friend. He nearly tripped over his own feet as he left the Cabin.

The other first-years had congregated around the showers already; there was a group of them standing aimlessly off to the side of the stalls, chatting away, while they waited for one of the current occupants to finish bathing. Slightly put off by this, Gregory found his own quiet spot beside a rather out-of-place patch of grass and sat down on the wooden elevation. He gazed off into the distance, into the bluish-purple flush of sky on the horizon; it still got to him, he realized, not having any mountains or trees around. Out here in Nevada, the universe was a vast, vicious wasteland, and he was just a little speck of nothingness, lost in it all. He swallowed thickly and tried reminding himself that he would be leaving this terrible place in only three more days, but it didn't help much.

He couldn't deny it, really. Something awful had happened here over the past four weeks; something that had affected both himself and young Mr. Delorne. He wasn't sure just what had started it, nor was he certain exactly what it was. The fact that Mole had become Mole in the first place; the fact that he had found something he was very good at, something that people respected him for; the fact that Gregory had finally been labeled as a nerd in society…all of these things could have been to blame. But whatever had caused it, it had happened, and now the two of them were being drawn into it against their wills. Find your place, join the conga line. Gregory's face screwed up just thinking about it. He didn't want to be looked at as "just another part of society". Being in a place like this, though, that basically forced you to be labeled…he rested his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms as he thought of it. Society was ruthless, wasn't it?

He didn't yet realize that it would always be that way.

The wood beside him creaked with added weight, and he sighed as The Mole took his place beside him. Gregory cocked his eyebrows and looked over at his friend, now over his little embarrassment from a few minutes before. "…Hey, Mole?" he asked softly; Mole looked up at him to show that he was listening. "Do you think…that we'll always be friends?"

In response to this question, the French boy looked, much to Gregory's distress, as he often did after being "lectured" by his mother. The green eyes filled with a dark sort of knowing, as if he was aware of something awful that was eventually going to happen that Gregory hadn't the slightest clue about. Sometimes Gregory found this little detail about The Mole to be interesting and mysterious, but on occasions like this, he found it quite unattractive and almost frightening. He tried to fight a shiver that raced down his spine, but he couldn't, and he had to fold his arms around his body to comfort himself.

"…God, Mole…" he breathed, pulling away slightly, "I wish you wouldn't look at me that way…"

"What way?" Mole asked, sounding honestly confused. Gregory closed his eyes and shook his head, and The Mole leaned gently into his shoulder. "…I…Gregory…I sink zat we will always care for one anozar. I can't yet tell whezer or not we will care more or less for each ozar as ze years go by…but I do believe zat zer will always be some level of fondness between us…"

"Then why are you looking at me like that?" the blonde asked, feeling the urge to cry, suddenly, for a reason neither of them really understood. Mole's face was blank. "…It's like…like you're predicting your own death, or something, and you just don't want me to know about it. It's really scary, Mole, and I wish you wouldn't do it…"

An eerie second of silence as a few of the shower stalls were exchanged between their fellow seven-year-olds. "…Gregory, I really do not know what you are talking about," Mole said softly. Gregory let out another wavering sigh, realizing that his friend was telling the truth.

"…I just…I just want to go home, Christophe…I hate this p-place…"

He didn't look, this time, but he felt the gaze on his face fill with grief as these words passed through his lips. The pressure on his shoulder increased slightly, and Mole's thick fingers curled reassuringly around his forearm, the other hand running up his spine and resting on his opposite shoulder. Gregory leaned into the embrace, a strange sort of sickness—very different from the one he had felt that very morning—racing suddenly through his veins. The brunette pressed his forehead Gregory's hair, his breath running over the Brit's ear as he first searched for the words, then found them.

"…What deed we just talk about, Gregory?" that smooth, beautiful voice asked. Gregory swallowed painfully. "…Mmm? I just told you zat I love you. I'm telling you now to nevar believe anysing else zat you evar 'ear about my feelings for you. Okay?" The Brit nodded and let out a wavering breath; The Mole heard it. "…Please…please don't cry, mon chéri…eef you cry, zen I will cry, and I know you 'ate zat as much as I do…"

The blonde decided to say nothing. If he spoke again, he knew he would almost certainly burst into tears, and he couldn't risk it, now. He wondered dimly, though, why Mole was holding him now like he was. There were people all around them; people watching them, people whispering. He could hear them. He didn't care, but he knew that Mole had developed a very strong sense of self-consciousness over the course of the past month…surely it was bothering the young Frenchman?

Who cares?

He's offering it.

You want it?

You take it.

He sniffed and loved the darkness that his eyelids provided, curling into his best friend's accepting arms. The Mole pushed Gregory's hair out of his face; smiled into him. And it was in that moment that Gregory realized that he would never feel that way toward another human being again in his entire life.

Some of the showers stopped, and for the first time in nearly a month, Gregory found himself smiling a pure, genuine smile.

For the first time in his life, he was happy with the truth.

Thursday.

The first-years went out to the field after breakfast (Gregory and the Mole walking side-by-side) and found that it had been sprayed quite relentlessly with water before their arrival. Wilma was standing at the beginning of the obstacle course with a stopwatch clenched tightly in her hand, that malevolent, not-quite-human air still about her. Her lips curled outward into her idea of a smile.

"I like to think that little boys are like cars," she said loudly, and the Brit and the French boy exchanged a very meaningful glance. "You pump them full of fuel, and then you expect them to get over all of the terrain you place in front of them. You expect them to perform to the best of their ability. And they do, or else you get mad." Her fist tightened, stretching the skin of her knuckles almost to the breaking point. Gregory noticed that the riding crop was still strapped firmly to her waist, and today, it looked especially threatening. "The only difference between little boys and cars is that you can train little boys, just like you can train monkeys. So boys, you have exactly three minutes to get through this waterlogged obstacle course." She hit a button on her stopwatch and her eyes glistened evilly. "…Go."

They all went, for fear of facing the business end of that riding crop. Legend had it amongst the second-years that she had actually used it last year (the first day of camp, so that his parents would have no evidence) on a now-graduate for something he had done his very first year at the Academy. She did not forget you, the older boys had said, nor did she forget anything that you did to piss her off in your younger years. That boy had done the drills and been in misery for nearly two weeks, covered in abnormal cuts and bruises from that horrible thing. By the time camp was over, the cuts and other wounds had disappeared, and the boy had been left with the sick longing for revenge as his bus had driven away. Gregory believed the story, of course, but he also thought that whatever that boy had gone through, it couldn't have been half as bad as the torture that young Mole was forced to endure in the supposed safety of his own home. Every time they heard the story, The Mole had always kept a careful, calculating smirk on his face, like he was thinking the same exact thing that Gregory was, and Gregory loved him dearly for that.

…The obstacle course was much more difficult when it was as slippery as it was, the boys soon found out. The Mole whispered to Gregory: "go slowly…eet eez easier to stay on track zat way." The two of them drifted stealthily past the others (slipping and sliding through the mud, coating themselves with filth and making it that much harder to get over the walls and under the wires), and they felt almost like ninjas. Each placement of their feet and hands was most important; if they made one false move, it could mean falling into the mud and sacrificing very valuable time. They spanned the monkey bars and hopped through the tires, their boots squishing in the mud as they struggled to keep their balance.

They both finished with twelve seconds to spare.

…Wilma Williams's face was an amazing spectacle when she was angry. First it went a very stark white, her over-plucked eyebrows burying themselves comfortably in the fat of her forehead, her jowls quivering gelatinously against her cheekbones. Then her chin would tighten up, her lips pressing hard together as they puckered out from her teeth, and her eyes proceeded to sink deeply into her skull when her eyebrows reappeared. Her cheeks would flush pink, then red, then magenta, and a vein would appear at her temple, crawling down below her left eye. If she was mad enough, sometimes you could see the vein pulsating there in her cheek; angry and throbbing and blue, as if it were attempting to force her eye out of its socket. After a moment or so of shaking her head mechanically back and forth in denial, her face would cool back down to red, and she would begin to click her teeth at you, baring the gray-yellow bones through the painted lips while she struggled to think of something derogatory to say in response to your offense (whatever it may have been). And then, finally, she would let out a hiss of a sigh as her face cooled to pink again, like a teapot letting out steam, and she would make her "smile" at you.

"…Well, Mole, it looks like you've finished ahead of the others yet again," she said softly, staring down at the two of them as if she would have very much enjoyed tearing their faces off with her bare hands. "…Mr. Thorne, however, seems to have cheated by copying you. Thorne, why don't you go on back there and try it again? We've got all the time in the world to wait for you to get it right…don't we, Mole?"

Gregory felt The Mole tense in time with him, but the brunette's mouth opened first. "Zat eez not fair, Gregory eez just a smart boy, zat eez all, and besides, wasn't ze point of zees to get over ze obstacle course? Does eet really matter just 'ow 'e deed eet—?"

"All the time in the world, Mr. Thorne," Wilma growled, pointing one mammoth finger over the boys' heads, back toward the starting line. At this point, a few of the other boys had managed to scramble their way over to the headmistress and her companions, and there was a little bit of whispering going on. Gregory's face flushed indignantly, and he cast a thankful glance over at The Mole, who was shaking with fury as he glared up at the evil woman. That riding crop caught Gregory's blue-eyed gaze before he managed to begin his own protest in his defense, though, and he was forced to lower his head shamefully before he murmured an agreement with her.

Mole turned and stared at him, in utter shock. He actually hissed out a, "what?" of frustration, in total disbelief that his friend would have given up on their cause so easily. Gregory simply glanced at him desperately, biting his lower lip so hard that it hurt, and he shook his head before turning around and heading back toward the beginning of the course. Mole stared after him as Wilma sneered in triumph and held up her stopwatch, ready to begin her cruel game.

Adults could be extremely cold more often than not, both Gregory and Mole knew all too well. By the time Friday came and went, and the first-years spent the evening retrieving the suitcases they had brought and hadn't needed at all (the older boys pointed and laughed at them as they went through the startlingly large pile, and there were a lot of embarrassed curses muttered), Wilma had picked on Gregory so much that he felt like a little blonde pimple on a teenage Nevada's face. He had spoken with Mole about it a little, and the two of them had come to the conclusion that Wilma Williams was bigoted against Aryans…and quite bit against plain old Europeans, too.

"Maybe she eez a Jew, and she sinks zat you are a Nazi," Mole had suggested, looking a little guilty about bringing up such a thing but allowing Gregory to consider it, anyway. Gregory had laughed at this idea.

"I doubt it, Mole. Why would she be intimidated by me, anyway? I'm seven years old."

"I am just saying…"

…Gregory slept fairly well on Friday night, regardless, his usually blank sleep disrupted only by the presence of a single, very brief dream. In this dream, he was lying on his back in a field of flowers, with a cloudless blue sky above him and what felt like someone's lap beneath his head. There were fingers in his hair, and as that person leaned down close to him and sighed in his ear, their fingers touched the back of his neck ever so softly. Gregory's eyes shot open with the caress, and he was shocked, for one half-asleep moment, to be met with the surprisingly pleasant sensation of something stewing violently in his lower abdomen. He rolled over onto his side and fell asleep once more almost immediately, though the dream did not come to him again.

When he woke up on Saturday, he found himself sitting through breakfast with a strange sort of thought nibbling at the back of his brain, and he also found himself not wanting to know what that thought was. It was quite strange for him to feel this way about one of his own ideas; usually he took them all in with open arms, no matter how silly or strange or frightening they might have been. But something felt wrong about this thought, Gregory decided dimly; it would have been like seeing an apple with a bumpy, violet peel at the supermarket among the smooth, red ones. It might have been the wrong color, the wrong shape, the wrong size, the wrong texture, smell, taste…but whatever it was, Gregory knew that he didn't want it to come near him or his consciousness. So he pushed it down through bacon and eggs and laughed with Mole and ignored the smell of cigarettes, going on with his life as if the thing didn't even exist. Just as he would have done had he seen a purple apple.

They left the camp shortly after breakfast, post a very long and very boring speech about diligence and integrity from Wilma. Mole let out a startlingly loud dying giraffe call once she had finished, and it split through the halfhearted applause for three eerie seconds before everyone started laughing, excluding the headmistress. No one except for Gregory and The Mole ever knew just who had made the sound, but no one ever forgot it, either. They all boarded the buses wearing their uniforms, laughing and talking and shoving each other about. Gregory and Mole found seats near the front of the bus, where no one could really look at them while they sat there, and they situated themselves as they had on the forward journey; Gregory near the window, Mole in the aisle.

Gregory grunted after about ten minutes of driving and peeled his gloves off, jamming them into his pockets and rubbing his wrists irritably. He examined his palms. He had gained a few ugly, angry blisters over the past few weeks, and he wondered just why; the gloves had been made to protect from the blisters, or so he had thought. He looked over at Mole's hands, still gloved, and he thought of the hard, virile calluses on those palms. He sighed and leaned against the window, staring out at the sky. Perhaps Mole would just always adapt better than he would. Perhaps that was just how it was meant to be.

A shaggy head pressed itself into Gregory's shoulder, nudged against his jaw, and the blonde looked down at The Mole. The French boy's face was dirty, and he looked very, very tired; not an unusual sight, but still, Gregory worried. He slung his arm around his best friend. "…You all right, Mole?" he asked gently, trying to smooth down a rebellious lock of brown hair. It sprung back up. The French boy nodded.

"…Yes, Gregory," came the breathy response, and The Mole embraced him and leaned trustingly against his arm. "…We are going 'ome. I am…so 'appy to leave zat place."

"No you're not, don't say that," Gregory argued. "You don't want to see your mum again yet. I saw the way you stared at the Cabin when we left it."

"I am 'appy for you, mon chéri, I know zat you were looking forward to leaving," Mole replied. "…Soon you will go back to your books, and school, and sings will be back to normal again."

A brief pause rose between them. Gregory adjusted his arm slightly and pulled Mole into him.

"…Normal…"

They both smiled and laughed inside, somehow knowing that there was no such thing as normal when it came to the two of them, even though nothing truly extraordinary had happened to them yet. Mole let out a weary sigh after a few moments, and Gregory relaxed his body to make his friend more comfortable. He let The Mole lean up against his shoulder and close his eyes, and he waited for the brunette to fall asleep with an easy smile on his face. That thought that he had been pushing down all day stayed smoldering in the back of his mind, and at this point, he could only guess what the idea had originally been about.

Something about growing up too soon, he supposed.