Friday On My Mind

January 1969

Friday afternoons, Kieran MaCauley figured, Should come a lot sooner.

A strong hand grabbed the collar of his shirt in a tight grip and pushed him against the wall of the quickly clearing B hallway, his head bouncing against it. He looked down longingly at Lymington's The Coming of Strangers, a loved book now crushed under the weight of Jensen Cartwright bending untold amount of pages in ugly creases. He sighed. And he had gotten it on sale. He decided the only way this situation could get any worse was if he picked it up. If he left it on the ground, he's just get his encyclopedias and flatten it out again.

Kieran looked up and caught Jensen's smirking face (a combination of eyes glinting in a dangerous light and self-righteous half-grin) before the jock, hand still in place, pulled the book from under his mud stained All-Stars.

Kieran grimaced at the sound of ripping pages.

Jensen stood back up and dangled the open book in front of Kieran's expressionless hazel eyes, the smell of leather from his letterman jacket making the smaller boy feel like gagging.

"Where's my money, MaCauley?" Jensen demanded loudly in all his Jersey-accented glory. He leaned down into Kieran's face in a play at intimidation. Kieran supposed he could count all of the jock's freckles at this distance. And he would have if he didn't feel completely confused at what the hell this skuzz was going on about.

"I don't owe you any money," he said, frowning. He glanced up at the hallway's lone clock and watched a girl in a polka dotted dress dash down the hall leaving fallen pens clattering in her wake. He was going to be late for class.

"Yes you do!" Jensen shouted with conviction. Kieran noticed that all the doors were closed and there was no chance anyone would've heard his outburst. Maybe he'd get lucky and an administrator would walk by. "The test you gave me gave me a C! That, that's barely passing, y'know!"

Kieran was aware. He was also aware that athletes wouldn't be able to play if their grades were as low as Jensen's had been for a while now. He was currently aware that sitting in the back row of the classroom in an attempt to escape the teachers' questions (which was partially a plea by three of his teachers Sophomore Year who explained his answers to chemistry questions about heat didn't need an extension of the temperature needed for human muscles to begin melting- 44 degrees C- nor do questions about Columbus need a speech about the torturing and enslaving of millions of the Natives followed by an intensely uncomfortable staring contest in which there were no reports of him blinking in six minutes). He was now aware that Jensen had 37 freckles on his left cheek.

Kieran, however, was not aware of owing anyone any money. His father taught him when he was younger that being indebted to someone was the worst thing as they now have some form of control over you.

"I don't see how that means I owe you money."

"Your test answers weren't good enough!"

"I wasn't offering it to you out of kindness, Jensen."

"I need," Jensen squeezed his eyes shut trying to think of a word. He snapped his fingers with his other hand. "Compensation," he finished.

"I still don't understand."

"Word has it you have a job." Jensen was unyielding.

"Millions of people across the United States have jobs." Kieran even more so.

"Don't fuck with me, MaCauley!" Jensen grip on his collar grew tighter, knuckles turning white.

"I'm not fucking with you," Kieran responded in a deadpan. "I don't fuck with anyone. Although, I'm not sure if you mean literally or figuratively."

Jensen's eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement before they widened. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Are you a queer, MaCauley?"

Kieran thought briefly on whether or not that would mean he would finally let go of him. What's being queer to being a Satanist, as people already believed him to be. What's one more lie, even if this was one he knowingly started. "You got me." He allowed a rarely used grin to stretch across his face.

Jensen frantically let go of his collar-

Finally, Kieran thought.

-before ripping his book down the middle and throwing it at his face. "You fucking sodomite."

Down the hall, another letterman-donning figure walked out the bathroom wiping his hands down his pants. "Hey, Cartwright!"

Kieran thought his name was Donald Olivers. Funny how he knew the names of people he didn't know.

When Jensen didn't answer, eyes wide with anger and body leaning against the opposite row of brown lockers in an attempt to distance himself from the smaller auburn haired boy, Donald ran down the hallway to see what was going on.

Donald closed the distance and his laugh abruptly stopped as he saw Jensen's pale figure breathing hard and turned to Kieran who was currently kneeling and picking up the pieces of his beloved book which had somehow separated into three parts although being initially divided into two.

"I think he's worried about being infected." Kieran wanted no further conversation.

"My God, it's the Satanist," Donald said in awe.

"That's what they call me," Kieran answered, standing up. "I think he thinks he's infected with homosexuality."

Kieran didn't have the best way with words so, when Donald drew his fist and punched him in the jaw, he halfway expected it. He was, however, mildly surprised that he even got this much attention in one day from two of the school's best ball players. Usually, he was a social recluse on account of him being in a relationship with Satan. He touched the right side of his jaw and felt a bruise beginning to form.

He shoved the book (or what remained of it) down his messenger bag, straightened his father's dark green sweater, and walked three classrooms down into the Current Events, his last class of the day of which he missed the first 18 minutes, leaving the situation behind him.

He opened the door and closed it behind him, greeted with the smell of ozone from the open window and the sight of twenty six pairs of eyes causing his skin to crawl.

"Would you like to explain to the class why you were late, Mr. MaCauley?" his teacher's, Mr. Lake's, reedy southern voice greeted him.

"I wouldn't like to, Mr. Lake, sir," Kieran said honestly, his hands folded behind him. A few students gasped and giggled.

"That wasn't a suggestion." His teacher, with a hump in his back, thinning hair, and a tendency to look like he may keel over any second, produced an edge to his voice akin to authority.

He answered without hesitation. "I took a large shit in the toilet, Mr. Lake, sir," Kieran answered not so honestly to a murmur among his classmates. He thought it was better than the alternative. He usually answered with the expected "I was sacrificing the newborns to my Lord and Savior Beelzebub". It helped feed his role of a Satanist. Of course, he didn't mean a word of it.

"I'll deal with you and your parents after school." He pointed his finger, mangled with arthritis, at Kieran. "They should know better than to let the likes of you run amok." He gestured to his seat in the back of the class.

Kieran stared at him with a blank expression for fifteen extra seconds before making his way down the classroom, all twenty six pairs of eyes on him. He considered making a remark about how all he had was his grandmother, but he decided it wouldn't make a difference anyway. There were plenty of kids who had fathers in the war and plenty more who were raised without mothers. He just wish it hadn't stung so much.

He slumped into his seat and took out The Coming of Strangers, now in three parts. He wasn't planning on participating in class today. He read the newspaper. Plenty of people read the newspaper and Time. Why was Current Events even a class?

"Pssts, hey!" he heard someone whisper.

Kieran turned to his right and watched the student seated next to him touch his own jaw and point to Kieran's. His name was Pietro Sorenson.

"Does it hurt?" he asked. Kieran figured his eyes would look as sad as his voice sounded. He wouldn't know, though. Pietro's long black hair covered his eyes at all times.

It did hurt. Kieran shrugged. Pietro Sorenson had three out of six classes with him. They had developed a strange sort of relationship, passing food to each other and making non verbal jokes. Sometimes, the hippie would offer him a joint after school to which Kieran would constantly decline but appreciate it anyway.

"You shouldn't let them do that to you, dude," he continued.

Kieran shrugged again. "It doesn't matter."

"What? Of course it matters."

"No, it really doesn't." Kieran looked at him in the eyes, or where he hoped his eyes were. "I'm leaving for camp today."

Pietro brushed his hair away from his eyes and Kieran was surprised that they were a bright shade of green. "That's off the wall, man. Who goes to camp in the middle of January?"

"Me, turns out," Kieran answered. He wasn't going to go into details. And, as much as he liked Pietro, there were more exciting places to be. There were more exciting things to do than learn about the newest president of the United States.

-break-
Here's the resident weird kid, Kieran. I tried incorporating some 60s lingo (all from the interet since both my parents were 70s teens) and current events-ish. The first few chapters will be more character introductions than anything else.
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