summary:

middle school is not easy. especially after your best friend leaves.

i have nothing to say for myself except that i'm really fucking sorry x100. if anybody still remembers this i will actually cry because i feel so bad for not updating this and leaving you guys hanging. honestly, for a while i thought i had abandoned this fic myself, but it kept haunting me and i had to just dig it up and resurrect it.

so.

i know i didn't update it at all in 2019, but hopefully 2020 will be different lmfao.

we shall see.

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Sixth grade sucked.

Starting middle school was weird and he hated his classmates. They would pick on him for no reason—he was too skinny, he read too much, he was awkward and didn't really know how to hold a conversation. And he danced ballet. Which almost seemed to be a crime, judging by his classmates' reactions to it.

He knew it was ridiculous. That he should ignore them, that they were "pathetic and had nothing better to do"—at least that was what Cynthia told him. He knew that he shouldn't let the comments bother him.

But they did.

He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Shirtless, in his pajama pants. His curls stuck to his forehead, still dripping after washing his face.

He was too skinny.

He did look weird.

His nose was too big, his lips were too thin. And his eye—that weird brown patch. Zoe always teased it and called it the 'poop' patch, and even though he found it funny when he was younger, he had begun to dislike it more and more now. Why couldn't he just have normal colored blue eyes? Why did he have to be so weird that his weirdness actually extended to his eyes?

And his scrawny arms, oh god.

One of the boys during P.E. said he had 'girl arms' and Connor guessed that wasn't so wrong after all.

"Con! Hurry up!" Zoe yelled, pounding her fist dramatically on the bathroom door.

He pulled his t-shirt over his head so he didn't have to look anymore.

Zoe always bugged him every morning about how long he took in the bathroom. He was pretty sure she took at least ten minutes longer than he did. He didn't know why they still had to share a freaking bathroom. If his parents were so rich, maybe they should have invested some of their money in building separate bathrooms for them. It probably would have saved them a lot of time breaking up their arguments.

They'd renovated their house over the summer. Connor had suggested the extra bathroom to Cynthia, but she had said something about the plumbing and piping and that it was large enough for them to share anyway. He didn't know what the hell that was supposed to mean. Yes, it was large enough, but it didn't matter how big it was, they still had to take turns to use it. Most of the time, he got up early enough to use it first, but that didn't mean that Zoe yelling at him every ten seconds to hurry wasn't annoying.

She could probably irritate a saint enough to make him snap.

He didn't know why she was being so annoying lately.

But then, everything and everyone seemed to be annoying him lately.

Maybe it was him.

Maybe there was something that was wrong with him.

That thought annoyed him, too.

He scooped up two textbooks that were still lying on his table and dumped them into his backpack. Zipping it up, he dragged it downstairs behind him, leaving it next to his chair.

"Good morning, Connor!" Cynthia chirped, setting down a plate of piping hot omelet in front of him. "Sleep well?"

"Mmhmm…" he mumbled, attacking the omelet with his knife and fork. Cynthia was always so lively and energetic in the morning, he still didn't know how she did it. He just wasn't a morning person. He took a bite of the egg, before grabbing the salt shaker and generously sprinkling salt over it.

Cynthia frowned. "Con, please don't take your food so salty."

"It's really bland, mom," he muttered, slightly irritated.

"It's meant to be healthy, Con," she chided, busying herself with the coffee pot.

He rolled his eyes but didn't reply. She was recently obsessed with eating healthily, even more so than ever. And the worst thing was that she decided they should "cut down the sodium in our diet", which she seemed to interpret as "make everything really bland and boring". Half the time he'd ended up throwing his lunch away at school and spending his allowance on snacks from the vending machine. Which ironically, probably contained double the sodium a normal home-cooked meal would have, so her plan was kind of backfiring. He felt a little bad about it, since he knew that she put a lot of effort into it, but maybe if she actually tried to make their meals actually taste half decent then he wouldn't be doing that.

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The school bus ride to school was the same as always: finding an empty seat somewhere in the middle of the bus, next to a window, so he could just bury his nose in a book and ignore everyone else. When he first started school, he'd always looked forward to sitting at the very front, just behind the bus driver, so that he could see how the bus was driven. But now, it was too close to the door, and he didn't want to be the first thing people saw or talked to or made fun of when they first got onto the bus. The back was too noisy. So the middle it was. It wasn't ideal, of course, but at least most people left him alone on the bus ride. Most of them probably were only half-awake then, anyway.

God.

He missed Luke like hell.

Ever since he had moved to New York, Connor felt like they had fallen more and more out of touch. They had spoken over the phone a few times, but it felt weird. Distant. It wasn't the same as face to face, and Connor had suddenly felt like he had nothing to say to Luke. It wasn't like they could play video games or Nerf guns. And the awkward silence that kept coming up didn't help. It felt like they were completely different people. How could they have gone from friends who chattered away over Legos to two boys who felt almost relieved when they broke the silence by saying goodbye and putting down the phone?

Before Luke left, they had promised to call each other every day. Now, he was pretty sure the last time they had talked was nearly four weeks ago.

Luke was doing pretty well, he had been accepted into a prestigious ballet school and seemed well adjusted to life in the Big Apple, at least that was what Connor gathered from the pictures Cynthia showed him from Facebook.

Good for him.

But Connor couldn't seem to shake the vague feeling of jealousy that kept nagging at the back of his mind. He knew he should be happy for his best friend, but it almost made him angry that Luke had moved to New York City with his supportive family, dancing his heart out and living his dream, while he was stuck back home with his annoying family and shitty classmates who thought he was a gay sissy. Of course, none of that was Luke's fault, but they had always been together. It was always "Luke and Connor" or "Connor and Luke" and it didn't matter if someone called one of them a name, they would always laugh it off at dance class together.

He was so tired.

Not just physically. Just. Tired of everything.

He wished he could take a break—from school, homework, whatever. Even from life.

How was he even supposed to keep going on like this?

The bus stopped in front of the school, and somehow, Connor managed to drag himself into the classroom before the bell rang.

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anyway! i don't want to sound desperate but if u like this chapter pls comment bc i literally read them so many times and would sell my soul for some validation

also, i'll be starting college in a month so i won't be updating weekly like i used to when i first started this fic but i'll try to update it at least regularly,,,, hopefully like. every 2-3 weeks.

my tumblr is thewickedverkaiking if u ever wanna talk or yell or leave prompts or whatever ((: