The Guitar Tutor

Fucking hell. I was dreading the bell going at the end of the day. Jamia was so preoccupied with her plans for revenge that I swear she was going to explode along with the chemicals in the lab. I sat there nervously tapping my pen to my paper, trying to take notes but I couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not Jamia would actually beat Brandon up. This was just going to make everything worse. By the end of the lesson I was begging her to not do it, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“The lil’ bitch gets what he fucking deserves. Frank, from the minute I became friends with you and realised what he was doing to you, I swear to fucking god I was about to kill him. This is just what he’s been expecting for the past three goddamn, fucking years.” She packed her books away and stormed out of the lab.
We rushed out of the science block and into the courtyard.
“Jamia, please don’t do this. You’re only gonna make everything worse and get into a fuck ton of trouble.” I begged. She didn’t answer, her face taken up with rage.

Brandon and his whores were standing to the left of the entrance to the music and performing arts block. Jamia panned the surroundings and locked her eyes on her target. She was like an apache helicopter pilot on a search and destroy mission; she had found her target, now all she needed to do was destroy.
She was completely silent, her eyes brewing like a storm. She stomped over to the group and Brandon saw her approaching.
“oh hi Jamia, fancy seeing you-“ his sentence was interrupted by Jamia’s fist meeting his jaw in a strong right hook. Brandon’s whores stood there gawping and Jamia pinned Brandon against the wall with her forearm.
“if you lay another fucking finger on Frank I swear to fucking god I'm going to rip your dick off and feed it to my dog.” She screamed in his face.
He gritted his teeth and chuckled, “still hanging around with Frank, J? You stupid bitch, I knew you couldn’t resist-“ his sentence was interrupted by Jamia kneeing him as hard as she could in the balls. He groaned and fell to the floor, Jamia sprinting away and me following her.
“Do you always get girls to fight for you, Frankie?” one of the whores screeched.
Jamia was about to turn back around until I grabbed her waist and dragged her back.
“Calm the fuck down!” I whispered, dragging her out of the school gate “What the fuck were you thinking?! You just made everything worse! They’re going to beat the shit out of me even more now!” I started walking up to the bus stop.
“Frank, calm down. He got what was fucking coming!” she tried to grab my wrist and I shook her off.
“Go fuck yourself, Jamia.” I started walking even faster.
“Frankie don’t be like that.”
“don’t ‘Frankie’ me, J.”
“Fine. Just strop around. I don’t give a fuck.” She walked the opposite direction. I wasn’t sure if it was the bruised ribs or Jamia now hating me, but whatever it was it fucking stung. It fucking stung so fucking bad, but I just kept walking. I wished I could have walked forever, walked away from all the shit in my life.

I unlocked the door to my house. My mum was sitting on the sofa, watching some bullshit soap.
“Have a nice day at school, Frank?” she called.
“yeah.” I mumbled.
“oh, I got an email from Mr Down, he said another teacher’s going to take his place from now on. I think he said he was called Mr Way or Mr Ways or something like that.” She said.
I stopped, my ribs starting to throb. All I could think about was Mr Way. What the fuck did I even feel for him? I was just being stupid, I couldn’t feel this way about a teacher and I’d probably just fuck it up in good time. Then I realised that if Mr Way was going to be my guitar tutor from now on, I’d be spending 40 minutes with him, completely alone in a soundproof practise room.
Soundproof. I liked that.
I laughed at myself. Now you may want to fuck Mr Way’s brains out, but that’s not gonna fucking happen I thought. I laughed even harder, my ribs throbbing even more but I was trying to ignore it.

I went upstairs to practise some more of my grade 5 pieces, not really bothering with homework. Playing guitar was the only thing that could make me completely forget about school. It was either that or I could relapse.
Don’t you fucking dare I thought to myself. I’d come so far, I hadn’t cut in five months and that was my record so far. I wasn’t going to shit on that again.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Jamia.
Hey, sorry abt what I did. If they lay another finger on u I'm gonna fuckin kill them but I just want it to stop. I don’t want u to go through this anymore. Ily dude
I gritted my teeth.
Don’t turn this around and make it look like u were doin me a favour. U just made it worse and now I'm fucked s thank but no thanks I replied
My phone buzzed again. I couldn’t be bothered to answer her texts. I just wanted to sleep. Sleep forever and never wake up. My life would be so much better if I wasn’t born.

My alarm shrieked. I groaned and slammed my hand down on the snooze button. I didn’t want to deal with the aftermath of Jamia’s shitstorm, I didn’t want to deal with Jamia raging against me because she thought she was doing me a favour. I just didn’t want to deal with life.
I got up, put on my school uniform and dragged myself out of the house. I had just accepted my fate and got ready to get beaten the shit out of.
I walked into my form room. It was completely silent and everyone was staring at me.
Shit.
What the fuck had happened?
I slowly took my seat, looking around the class suspiciously. Jamia was pretending to ignore me.
Someone knocked on the door. The soundless classroom jolted and someone opened the door. It was our head of year, Mrs Fischer.
“Can I see Frank Iero, please?” she asked, briefly smiling.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.
I walked out of the classroom.
“Just come with me, sweetie.” She said. We walked down the corridor into her office. She gestured me to sit down on one of the chairs opposite her.
“Frank, if anyone is bullying you, that’s a serious issue. You need to tell us as soon as it happens so we can deal with it.”
I looked down at my feet.
“Mr Naresh told us he saw Brandon Chesterfield, Tolu Adebole and another boy chase after you and one of the English assistants told us they were hitting you. Have they been bullying you?” she asked, her face softening. I was silent. If I told her, It would just make everything worse. Fuck my life, fuck this shit, fuck everything.
“We’ve already detained those three boys. All you have to do is tell us what happened and we’ll make sure it’ll never happen again.”
I stuttered. I didn’t know what to say. I opened my mouth to say something, but thought better of it.
“it’s ok frank, nothing bad will happen to you.”
She didn’t know that. She didn’t know what they would do to me or even Jamia. Oh god, not Jamia.
“They-they’ve been saying stuff for a while now.” I murmured.
“What have they been saying?” she asked.
I stopped. I don’t fucking deserve Brandon giving me that shot every day of my life I thought, this is the best chance I have in stopping this shit.
I told her everything.

Notes

hmmm soundproof practise rooms might come in handy in the future ;)