Time Will Tell

OK, this one took me quite a while to do. I hope that you enjoy reading it. Urmm. Can't really think of much else to say so I'll just let you get on with it. Don't forget to write! wanna_get_lucky@hotmail.com

Time Will Tell Chapter 9 - Realisation

"Danny! Hi, are you OK?"

"Yeah, a little bit sore but otherwise I'm fine, thanks for asking Hannah."

"If you feel up to it, I'm having a party this weekend, my place on Friday night. You're all invited but you'll need to bring your own drink, sorry." Hannah was a nice girl from the school up the road, she was in my English group at school and so we often spoke. She seemed to be sort of an outcast in her school though. She was one of those people who are really friendly, but sometimes tries too hard to make friends (probably why she invited all of my friends to her party as well) and comes across as a bit weird. Once you know her though, she is a really great and interesting person. We often spoke in class but should I go to this party, it would be the first time that we would have spent time together outside of school.

"Yeah, well we'll see what happens. More than likely pop in for a while though at least if you really don't mind."

"No, not at all. Well my address is in the phone book, it's a pretty easy place to find."

"OK. Oh, by the way, did Chambers want us to do anything for tomorrow, I can't remember?"

"No, we have an essay from Mr. Bennett though for, urmm, next Wednesday."

"Well, I wasn't back when it was set so I don't think I'll bother!"

"That's a big risk to take, you know what Bennett's like!"

"Yeah, I'll lay on a guilt trip if he says anything. Something like, I haven't felt myself since I woke up from my coma Sir! Or something like that."

"It'll probably be the most original excuse he'll have heard so I guess it's worth a try. Anyway I'll see you tomorrow. Bye Dan!"

"Sure see you tomorrow."

I turned my attention back to my group of friends (minus Scott again) to find them all looking at me weirdly.

"What?"

"What was that about?"

"What was what about?"

"We'll probably pop in for a while. She's so weird it is unbelievable."

"Fucking hell Trix! It's a party, if it's shit we'll head up to a pub or something. Besides she's a really nice girl, I talk to her in English all the time, the only reason she comes across as weird is because she tries too hard to make friends. When you know her she relaxes and acts fine."

"OK. If you say so, I'll trust your judgement of her personality, you're normally right but as soon as she starts chanting or summoning the spirits or any other weird voodoo shit, I'm out of there."

"That's all I ask, she's not in to that stuff really anyway."

"How do you know?"

"I can tell, she enjoys people thinking she's different, but likes to be like everyone else. I don't know why, it's just the way she deals with others."

"OK. Whatever you say."

"Trix, chill, it'll be a good evening."

"I hope so."

Luke and I sat next to each other in Psychology. The teacher hadn't turned up and we were already ten minutes in to lesson time. Everybody was talking amongst each other. I was becoming restless again, getting myself comfortable was proving difficult on the hard school chairs, after a while I would start to ache. I decided to stand up and sit on the table instead so that I could stretch my legs a little. Our psychology group was only a small one and we all mostly got on quite well. People had been asking me all the week so far what it was like being in a coma. I was fed up of telling people the same things over and over again. After a minute or so Scott walked in to the lesson looking worried that he was going to be late. He saw that there was no teacher and began to smile straight away.

"Porter not showed?"

"No."

"Anyone seen him today?" There was no answer from anyone. Scott turned his face towards Luke and I again. "Why you waiting here, come on. Let's sack it, we'll sit in the common room."

Luke and I followed Scott to the sixth form common room and most of what was left of the psychology group followed. As we entered, I saw Kate, Trix and Trace sitting in our usual corner in the room. We all made our way over and explained that our teacher wasn't there so we were just going to join them for their free period. We began to talk about things. Luke finally got bored and pulled out a deck of cards.

"Poker boys?"

"Charming! Sexist pig!" Tracey said jokingly.

"You're no good Trace, we'll tan your ass. And I don't know what you're laughing at my dear, you don't even know how to play Kate." Luke said to his girlfriend in a joking way. Kate wasn't treating it as a joke though, there was more at stake, there was feminism to play for!

"I'd whip you at poker any day darling!"

"Really? We'll see about that!"

"Get your purses girl, I've had my eye on the new Supergrass album for a while now and I shall go and buy it with your money after school!"

"Can we play with something else I'm a bit short." Trace announced.

"Chicken?"

"No fucking way. I just only have like thirty pence and that won't make our betting Las Vegas style now will it my dear boy?"

"Then you don't play unless you can borrow off someone."

"No, I've got a better idea. How about strip poker?"

"You have to be out of your mind Trix!" Luke said, suddenly sounding less sure of himself.

"No man, not me! If you're so sure of yourself, what do you have to lose?"

"OK, girls you up for that?"

"Yeah OK!" Kate replied.

"Sure." Answered Trace.

Luke looked more and more disappointed by the second.

"Danny, Scott, you in?"

"Sure, why not? What you waiting for Luke? Deal then."

"OK. OK we're going to play strip poker in the middle of the sixth form common room are we?"

"Yeah! Come on baby, put your clothes where you mouth is!"

The cards were dealt, swaps with the dealer were made, 2's were wild cards and we were set. The first few rounds were played and we had most of the sixth form who had a free or were in our psychology group surrounding us watching our game.

"This isn't fucking fair! The girls have more stuff to take off, look at how much of their jewellery is on the fucking table."

"Oh don't be bitter Trix, this was your idea." Kate joked.

"Yeah but look at me I'm down to a shirt, trousers, one sock and my belt. Trace isn't doing much better for clothing than me and your sitting there wondering which fucking ring to take off next."

"Don't worry, you're still beating Luke, Trix!" Scott joked, I didn't get him sometimes. This morning he wasn't anywhere to be found, now he was sitting here playing strip poker and having a hell of a laugh about it. He was the most dressed person at the table though. I was second to him thank god.

"OK, we all still in?" The answer was a unanimous yes. We were having a laugh, Trix wasn't though, but he was too proud to pack in now.

The cards were dealt. We went around the table, it came down to Trace, Trix and Luke battling out on their cards. I was keeping a record of what was being betted on the notice board with a board marker. It came down to the point when Luke, had betted everything but his boxers (he already had his shirt off and so it was only his trousers left!) Trace was down to her skirt and bra being left on and Trix would have to lose the shirt. The room was silent.

"OK kids. Let's see those cards I said."

There was a sudden commotion. The people surrounding us players moved briskly away to various seats around the common room and picked up books and work to be getting on with. I knew what had most likely happened and turned my head slowly expecting something bad. There it was! The head of our Sixth Form. Not looking too happy either.

"Can you imagine what would have happened if I would have been showing prospective parents around the school? I just can't believe that upstanding students of your calibre would be doing something so stupid. I mean, what were you thinking?"

We stood in silence, worrying about what our punishment was going to be. I knew that the man liked us, but we had evidently gone down in his estimation. All the teachers liked us really, our little group. We excelled, collectively, in all of the schools extra-curricular activities. Trix had his football and rugby, Scott was the hockey player and swimmer, Luke was a football player too and also was good at cricket and I held the more academic side of the coin, I was good at my studies and was a good musician too. Now we were all in serious trouble though.

"I don't know what else to say, you have all seriously let me down. What do you have to say for yourselves?"

"Sorry sir." We all said at pretty much the same time.

"No, you're not sorry because of what you did, you're sorry because you were caught. I will not therefore accept your apologies. Instead I will accept a five thousand word essay from each of you tomorrow morning detailing the disadvantages of stripping in a sixth form common room. Any objections? No? Good! Get out of my sight, all of you and tell the girls that they will not be getting away with this, I'm going to phone their school now."

We filed out into the common room from the office. Fully dressed now. It was break time and everyone was looking over to us with huge grins on their faces.

"When are you doing the Full Monty?" Someone from the upper sixth shouted over to us, most of the common room burst out laughing, it was quite funny I suppose but with an extra homework to do tonight, I wasn't too pleased. I wouldn't have time to see my man now!

"Come on Danny!" Sean shouted impatiently, "You've got everybody waiting down here."

"Give me a minute will you, I'm nearly ready."

"Are you more nearly ready than you were five minutes ago though?"

"He's a funny guy!" I shouted sarcastically down the stairs starting to get annoyed with my brothers pestering. I took one last look in the mirror as I left the bathroom.

"Finally!" Kate said seeing me coming down the stairs.

"Don't you start as well!" I told her.

"You're worse than me for getting up to go out Danny! Now that's bad!"

"At least I have something to show at the end of it though Claire my dear!" She didn't take my joke kindly and gave me a look that spoke volumes. I apologised sincerely and she seemed a little less angry.

Everybody had come to mine before Hannah's party since none of them knew their way to her house. I didn't really myself but I knew her the best so my friends thought it would be rude to arrive without me. We set off and made it there in fifteen minutes. The easiest way to travel in Parkway was by foot, none of our group was driving yet and the buses were far too expensive to use on a regular basis. And then you have the problem of looking like a complete prick arriving to a house party on a peddle bike!

We found the house with no problems, the phone book address was easy to find and the house was numbered so there weren't any problems. She lived on a really nice estate, quite new, large and each of the houses had pretty big gardens. We made our way up to the front door and I rang the bell, we could hear music playing pretty loudly from inside as well as some shouts. There was no answer after ringing the bell and so I knocked on it instead. Soon after somebody opened the door, he was some kid from our school but that's all I knew about him. He smiled when he saw us and showed us in to the living room where the party was going on, the room was thick with smoke and there was a surprising amount of people there. I looked around and saw very few people that I recognised, even less that I actually knew. Hannah came bounding up to us all and greeted everyone, she introduced me to a few friends that were close by and told me that nearly everyone at the party was from Westmount Secondary. That explained why I didn't know anyone that well. Westmount was a school on the other side of town and so it's students were never really encountered that often at our end.

"She hangs around with the Westmount kids?" Trix asked me sounding quite surprised once she'd disappeared.

"She used to go there until last year, she transferred to our end of town when she moved and started her A-levels here. I guess she still likes to keep in contact with her old friends though."

"That explains why she wouldn't be bothered by the people our schools then! She probably thinks that everyone's really snotty assholes up our end."

"I can see that you're probably right, just about everyone is looking our way as subtly as they can all the time."

We made ourselves at home and had Hannah coming over to us every now and again to check that we were OK and to apologise because she realised how out of place we must have been feeling. After about half an hour some guy about my age came over to us and started talking to us. He was pretty good looking, a bit scrawny, a little taller than me, dark hair in a centre parting cut just above his ear lobes. He had a well defined face and blue eyes which made a beautiful contrast with his dark hair. He introduced himself as Robbie and started to chat with us. He seemed to like our company because a group of who I assume were his friends came over and told him that they had to go. He wanted to stay and talk to us for a while longer, he checked with us that that was OK and we had no objections.

The conversation shifted to different subjects and our group sort of divided it's interests and began to chat in different groups, Conner, Tracey Kate and I were talking amongst each other. Luke, Claire, Sean and Trix with each other and one interesting thing that I noticed was that Scott and Robbie had disappeared. Robbie had given me the impression for the short time that he had spent talking to me that he was gay but I obviously didn't say anything (I'm taken, it doesn't affect me). Plus I don't believe that this Gaydar thing works because it certainly hadn't worked for me as far as Conner was concerned! Time wore on and the two didn't come back. I saw Hannah passing and quickly stopped her to ask;

"Hannah, do you have any idea where Scott went with Robbie?"

"Sorry Danny, I don't."

"Will it be alright if I take a look around for them?"

"Urm. Well I, err, they won't have gone far, they should be back soon." She seemed quite unnerved suddenly.

I let Hannah carry on after that, realising that she was both adding to my suspicions and wouldn't be any help to me in finding them anyway. I tried to figure out where they could be. If my suspicions were right then they would be somewhere secluded but close by, Hannah wouldn't have worried about me looking for them otherwise. That meant they could be in one of the rooms of the house or in the back garden maybe. The only empty rooms in the house were the bedrooms upstairs, but I doubt that Scott would let THAT sort of thing happen the first time he met somebody. So that narrowed my search options (as far as I could see them) to the garden. I told my group of friends that I would be back in a minute and made my way to the kitchen where I had seen the door that opened to the back garden and went outside.

"Jesus Christ it's fucking freezing out here!" I whispered to myself. I heard movement from behind me and quickly turned around startled.

"Oh, it's alright, it's Danny." I heard Scott's voice say. My eyes finally found him and Robbie sitting on a bench to the side of the fenced garden. I heard Robbie whisper something and Scott whisper a reply. I made my way towards them. As I got closer I could see that they were holding hands, only with Robbie looking rather nervous of my approach.

"I wondered where you two had gone." I told them.

"We came outside so that we could talk without having to shout."

"Don't look like talking was the main reason for coming outside." They both smiled but blushed still kept their fingers intertwined. "So! You gunna be bringing Robbie out with us sometime?"

"I don't know, not everyone in our group knows I'm gay yet. I'm still a bit scared that they'd be weird about it."

"What? There's no need to think that though. They're not bothered about Conner and I are they?" Robbie looked up at me in surprise at that point.

"Conner's gay?"

"Yeah." Scott answered sounding a bit disheartened suddenly.

"Wow! I never thought he would have been."

"Neither did I but we've been going out for nearly two months now. What I want to know is how did you figure out Scott here is?"

"I had a suspicion and so I told him that I am and so he had nothing to worry about."

"That's a pretty big gamble to take isn't it?"

"Everyone knows at my school so that isn't a worry. I don't really even get that much grief about it actually. There's the usual kids that are assholes about it but I just ignore them as best I can. Most people got bored of the idea when they realised that it didn't bother me."

"Jesus. I don't think I could face that."

"It does show you who your real friends are though!"

"I can imagine. Oh look. I'm sorry, I'll be heading in now. Leave you get some peace and quiet, it's too cold for me out here. I'll see you boys later then."

"See you later." They both said together.

I headed back into the house to find Hannah standing in the kitchen on her own smoking a cigarette. I knew that she smoked but since I only really saw her in lessons I had never seen her smoking before. I let myself in surprising her. She looked at me quite worried and said;

"Danny, hi. Did you find anyone out there then?"

"Yeah, Scott and Robbie are out there holding hands." She fell silent and looked kind of worried at me. She was obviously worried that it would bother me.

"It's alright I knew Scott was gay before tonight."

"I hope you're not angry with me for this."

"For what?"

"For the party thing."

"I'm not following."

"Oh, OK. Well Robbie wanted me to invite you and your friends so that he could get to talk to Scott. He's liked him for a while and so he wanted me to get him here for them to meet."

"No that doesn't make me angry, I think it's kind of sweet really."

"Yeah? That's OK then." Hannah appeared to start smiling normally again now.

"Is there any chance you can spare one of those?" I asked pointing to her pack of fags (what cigarettes are called in Britain in case some of you Americans don't realise, there is no cheating going on!)

"I thought you gave up years ago?"

"I did, but I don't know. I kind of just started smoking socially again. The others don't know so don't say anything will you."

"Sure thing" she said handing me a ciggy and lighter. I lit up and leant against the kitchen work surface.

"So how long have you known that Scott is gay for?" I thought about my response for a moment and decided that it wouldn't matter if she knew my secret.

"Since I started going out with Conner." Hannah looked up at me quickly in amazement.

"You what?" I simply smiled back at her. "I had no idea. Wow!"

"Don't talk about it with people though please. I'm not outting myself yet, only to people who are friends or I can trust."

"I'm honoured then!" Her comment made me laugh.

"If you want to look at it that way."

It was about that moment that Conner walked into the kitchen. I hid the cigarette behind me and looked at him worriedly hoping that he wouldn't realise what I had.

"I wondered where you'd gone! What? What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost. Oh! Give me some credit! I know you smoke."

"How?"

"You had a packet in your jacket after your accident."

"Oh, I'd thought that they'd fallen out on the road or something."

"No, I took them out before your mum found them."

"Are you angry with me?" Conner looked at me as if to say 'Hannah will be suspicious'.

"I hope you don't mind but I told Hannah about us. She knows. You see this party was arranged so that Robbie from before could make a move on Scott." Conner looked at me a bit apprehensive still with a hint of anger too. Then he sort of half smiled.

"OK then. Give me your cigarettes."

"I haven't got any, Hannah gave me this one."

"Oh, well can I have one off you too Hannah?"

"Since when have you smoked?" I asked astonished.

"I used to at my old school but gave up when I moved here." Hannah handed him a cigarette that he then lit up.

"I don't want you to smoke just because I am Conner." There was something wrong with the picture that was being presented before me. I didn't like it. I didn't like Conner smoking, it bothered me. I didn't want him to risk his health, let alone for my sake, if that's why he was. I decided that now was the wrong time to say something. I just stayed where I was as Conner started chatting away to Hannah.

We all finished our cigarettes and headed back into the living room. I was surprised to find that everyone except for my group had left. It was only my friends left over now. They looked at Conner, Hannah and I come into the room.

"Where the fuck have you been Danny?" Trix asked.

"Looking for Scott. He needed some fresh air, he's outside. Robbie's keeping him company though." Claire looked at me quickly with an inquisitive look on her face. I smiled at her, I think that confused her more than anything else.

"Where did everybody go?"

"I don't know. Everyone left at pretty much exactly the same time. It was pretty weird really, they all up and left and we were sitting here wondering if there was a fire or something."

"They probably moved on to Eric Fisher' party! Oh well, please don't feel that you have to leave. Your welcome to stay if you like."

Nobody seemed to want to leave anyway. I sat in a space in the sofa that was left next to Kate. Conner looked around and seeing no spaces left, I motioned for him to sit in my lap. He smiled and planted himself down on me. I held my arm around his waist once he had made himself comfortable and he leaned his face against my own. We looked forward towards the others. Trix immediately got my attention with the look of shock on his face. He obviously knew that Conner and I were going out, I realised that this was the first time that he had seen us being affectionate though. I smiled at him, a look of disgust began to spread across his face.

Kate whispered to me warning me about Hannah being there and I told her not to worry because Hannah knew, but I was more concerned with Trix.

"Trix you know that we're going out, weren't you expecting this sort of thing?"

"I don't know, it looks so weird! It just sort of hit me, truly that you're gay."

"How does it make you feel?" I asked tentatively worried about his answer but I needed to know. He fell silent for a while then answered.

"Sick. It looks fucking disgusting."

That' it! What is Trix's response going to lead to? Will Scott have found happiness outside the arms of Danny? When will you find out? Time Will Tell. Shouldn't be too long till I get the next chapter out though. Write to me, go on! wanna_get_lucky@hotmail.com