What We Hide Read Online Free PDF Page B

mouth devoured mine, tongue everywhere. Dickie’s watch flashed and he shouted out, “Thirty seconds left!” I moaned and someone snickered.
    He never got inside my boxers, but we were clamped together, and I came hard. He licked my lips and then licked my ear and whispered, “Not bad for a yob, eh?”
    “Time!” yelled Dickie. The lights slapped on, my eyes snapped shut against the clapping and raucous laughter. I felt like a kid caught peeing in the teacher’s garden.
    “Way to go, Robbie!” Someone poked me.
    “Your face , man!”
    “He got you good.… ”
    Felix was heading up the cellar stairs, chugging a Coke. I tried not to shake, surrounded by a crowd of grinning faces. Abigail shoved a makeup mirror into my hand and I saw my face, like a baby’s after eating spaghetti.
    “That was wicked,” said Abigail. “Can’t wait to tell Simon.”
    I wanted a blanket to wear over my head. They were having a big cackle, calling me queer boy and poofter . I laughed along, letting Abigail rub off the red smears, and I knew it was true. I was a queer boy. I’d just found an unimagined bliss.

    As promised, Abigail told it all to Simon. Did she think she’d score points for making him laugh? Simon smacked her, I heard later. “You think it’s a joke?” he’d hollered. “My brother acts like a fairy and you think it’s funny ?”
    He thundered home and slammed into our room, knocking his football trophies off the dresser top.
    “I should cut your measly prick right off,” he said. “It’s not to be used for boys .”
    “What do you care? You use yours like a flippin’ stir stick.”
    He came at me, only I ducked and he cracked his head on the bedstead. I was out of the room before he stood up. I came back the next day to hear from Auntie Pat that Lanny Giles was knocked up and Simon was on the hook to marry her.
    I saw Felix from time to time, but only at a match or in the pub, always in a swarm of yobs. He never looked in my direction. I tried not to look in his.
    After Felix I only kissed girls. Passing the time with girls was no problem. If Felix could disguise himself amongst the yobs, so could I. My mate Alec was reliable cover, always on the prowl. The boarding school girls were his idea. One little hussy named Penelope could wank us both off at the same time and never stop talking.
    Then came Mint Boy.
    I liked him. We chatted, me wondering when he’d figureout there was nowhere I could be going, his school being the only destination.
    He’d been there two years, starting in third form, his sister went there too, yes he knew Penelope, his dad was boss of some slogan-writing business, his mum was tired of her husband never being home, the history teacher was a tosser, the food was foul, he liked Procol Harum too, and then, “Where are you going, anyway?”
    We’d cut across a field, one of Daisy Danforth’s, and I had no excuse. It was getting on dusky. We were past the pond area, alongside some kind of a shed. I leaned against it, giving him the gaze, cupping myself for an instant, just long enough for him to notice. His pretty eyes went wide and he flinched. Blew that , I thought. But then he didn’t move and I saw the flush creep up his neck. He glanced up at the school, as if to check if we were being watched from a window. I stepped around to the blind side of the shed, heart drumming. He followed.
    “I never …,” he said.
    One second later, we were kissing like crazy, hot mouths, teeth gnawing lips while we grabbed each others’ bums and rocked and humped all the way to rocket launch.
    I wanted to cry, I truly did. Better than winning a football match, better than any music, better by far than a girl. I held on to him for a minute more, and he was hugging me too, our faces buried in each other’s necks, sweaty as hell.
    A solemn gong sounded in the main building. He cursed and peeled himself off me, yanking his clothes straight, swiping his crazy hair off his face.
    “Gotta