A Boy in Girl's Clothing

Chapter Three: Revelation

"Today's assignment…" The creative arts teacher was writing on the chalkboard, speaking what she wrote aloud. Niklaus sat at his desk, uninterested in the assignment, head falling from its place resting on his hand. His eyes were nearly completely closed. A swift kick in the ankle made him sit up suddenly, snorting in surprise. The whole class chortled.

"Who kicked me?" he scowled. He'd been having an awesome soccer day dream, where he was suddenly the world's best player, with all the qualities his new friends had to stand out; the speed of Embry, the stamina of Benny, the quick thinking of Lysander, and the technique of Kitty. What player would be better than that?

The grinning face of Kitty made it obvious who was the culprit behind the kicking. Grinning wickedly, Niklaus kicked her back, though it was more like nudge, since he was going easy on her. She was a girl, after all… Kitty looked at him, clearly insulted.

"What was that?" she asked him condescendingly.

"A kick, you bitch."

"Felt like a love tap to me."

Smiling at the challenge, he kicked her again; hard. She let out a satisfying yelp, but then the teacher descended upon him. She was tapping her foot, and looking at him as angry as a hippy could manage.

"Ms. Sheridan." She looked down at him sternly.

"Sorry!" Niklaus said, waving his hands and smiling brightly. "Won't do it again."

The teacher pursed her lips, but left it at that. She went back to the board. "Well, the assignment today is to write a poem about your fellow group-mates. One poem for each group-mate."

"Can we write haiku?" a lazy kid in the back asked.

"Yes, you may write haiku, but please don't choose it just because it's the shortest form of poetry."

There were a couple of exclamations of "all right!" around the room, and the teacher sighed, knowing they didn't care what she said, they would always take the easy way out.

"All right, you may begin now." She went to her desk and began busying herself with whatever it was she did when the students were busy.

Niklaus grinned over at Kitty. "I'll write Kylen's first: Ode of the Butthead."

Kylen's violet gaze was on him, eyes blazing, but he said nothing as he began scribbling in his notebook. Niklaus had a feeling whatever poem was based on him and written by Kylen would be just as insulting as what he would write for Kylen. At least the dislike was mutual.

Kitty giggled as she pulled out her notebook. "I'm going to start with you!" she said, looking at Niklaus.

"You gotta let me see it when you're done," he warned.

"Of course."

The group fell silent as they worked on their poems for the next half hour. When Kitty was done with all of her poems, she slid them over to Niklaus for his approval. He laughed when he had read her poems, especially the one about himself, saying, "but she ain't no pansy, no" in one of the lines.

"I'm no wordsmith," she admitted quite cheerfully.

"Me neither," Niklaus confessed. Kitty had a laugh over Niklaus's poems, though she seemed to like Kylen's the best.

"You got him down so perfectly!" she said, between fits of laughter. Since she had read it aloud to the rest of the group, Kylen was glowering at the author, but Niklaus didn't care what Kylen thought anymore. He was just a big jerk.

"Let's see yours, then, Lysander." Kitty turned her attention toward him. Lysander handed two poems over, but told them he hadn't finished Kylen's yet.

"Well, when you're done, show us!" Kitty told him, and she pored over what he had written about her and Nikkie. But Niklaus was still looking at Lysander. Lysander had turned the page in his notebook, even though Niklaus could see that he had already written something.

"Was the first one that crappy?" Niklaus questioned. Lysander looked up in surprise, unaware that he had been watched.

"Uh, yeah…" he said in a regretful tone, though Niklaus could see a blush creeping along his cheeks. "It was really crappy. So, I'm writing a different one."

"Let's see the crappy one," Kitty urged. "It's gotta be better than our best efforts, by the looks of these." She waved his other poems about in the air. "They're really good."

"What aren't you good at?" Niklaus wondered.

"A lot of things," Lysander said off-handedly. "C'mon guys! Lemmee finish this before the bell, eh?" And with that, he was off writing hastily in his notebook in a race against time.

"Well, what about you, Butthead?" Niklaus asked. It was clear they weren't getting anything out of Lysander. "What did you write? Or are you going to go all Mysterious Wonder on us again?"

"I could care less what you think of my writing skills," he informed them. But he didn't hand them anything either. In fact, just as last time, the bell rang before he even had to show them a thing. Niklaus pulled a face on him as they all got up.

"I didn't wanna see it anyway," he said.

Kylen didn't even bother gracing this with an answer. He swept by Niklaus like he didn't exist, slamming his papers on the teacher's desk and beating feet out of the classroom.

"Why is he such a … dick?" Niklaus asked no one in particular.

"A lot happened to him," came his sister's voice behind him as they walked out. Niklaus jumped.

"Wh-what? How do you know anyway?" he asked suspiciously.

"I worked as a peer counselor last year," she said simply. "He didn't say much, but his mother did. She was concerned, which is why she sent him to me…"

"So… what happened, then?" Niklaus asked, genuinely wanting to know. Depending on what he heard, he might lord it over the smug little brainiac.

"Well, it's all strictly confidential. I can't just tell you," she said stuffily.

"Oh, come on," Niklaus whined as they rounded a corner together. "You gotta tell me. You can't just say 'haha, I know something you don't,' then walk away! You hafta tell me!"

Nicolette looked around nervously. God, she must be the worst secret-keeper in the world! "Well…"

"Please? I promise I won't tell anyone!"

"Okay, but not here," she caved. "I'll tell you at lunch."

Niklaus whooped with glee, then hugged his sister. "Thanks a million! See ya at lunch!" Then he took off racing down the hall for his next class, just as the bell rang.

-AGIBC-

Nicolette waited anxiously in front of the cafeteria, scanning the crowd for her brother. He seemed nowhere to be found, but she knew he wouldn't pass something like this up. She felt deadly guilty even thinking about telling him anything… She wished she hadn't said anything at all… She had told Melanie to meet her a little later in the quad, and that made her feel even more guilty; that she couldn't even tell her best friend… But it was best that she didn't, the less people that knew the better.

Just as she was about to lose her nerve and just run off and try and forget about the whole thing, she saw Niklaus running over to her.

"Sorry I'm late!" he huffed. "I got into this awesome conversation with Kitty, and…" he stopped talking abruptly, seeing the look on his sister's face. "Hey, come on. Whatever it is can't be that bad!"

"It's pretty bad, Nik. Are you sure you want to hear it?"

"Of course! Let's go."

They found a quiet deserted place to sit, and Nicolette swallowed the huge lump that had formed in her throat. She felt ill all of a sudden.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know if I can…"

"You can!" Niklaus said urgently. "I won't say a thing! I promise."

"You had better not!" she warned. "This is private stuff, and I know you don't like him. But you can't use this information against him—ever!"

"Okay, okay! I won't! Will you quit stalling and just tell me already?!"

Nicolette inhaled a deep breath. "Okay… It's like this… When he was younger, like, four years old, his father abandoned him and his mother. Money was tight, and they had to scrounge for every last bit of food they got. At one point, his mother even worked in a strip club for a few months and they even had to eat food from other people's garbage at one point. Things started to look up when her mother—that's Kylen's grandmother-- took them in, and she started going back to school. His mom got a great new job at a law firm, and she was making bank. They had enough to move out and get their own place again. But, unfortunately, she didn't have enough time for Kylen through all of this, and his grandmother didn't care for him, because he resembled his dead-beat father too much, so she didn't treat him so great and his mother basically was ignoring him, though not on purpose."

"That is pretty rough," Niklaus said sadly.

"That's not even the worst part. Since he didn't know how to make any friends, he was getting picked on constantly, because of his clothes, or his quietness, or the fact that he read books and was in choir and band. They thought he was a snob or a little nancy boy. So they did really mean things to him; they beat him up a couple of times and left weird things like dirty pictures and sex toys in his locker. And this one teacher of his tried to make it better, but he ended up making it worse…"

"Oh, cause then he seemed like a teacher's pet?" Niklaus said, understandingly.

"No." Nicolette's eyes were wet with tears, and she grew very quiet for a long, long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was all shaky and broken. "The teacher seemed really nice at first, but then he started inviting Kylen to his home, and then…"

She burst into tears, and Niklaus felt his whole body become numb, and in his stomach grew a cold, sick lump. "You're not saying what I think you're saying, are you…?"

Nicolette let out a sniffly sob and tried to wipe away her tears. "His teacher r-raped him, and he didn't even say anything for the longest time. His mom only found out when they were moving and this note from the teacher floated off his closet shelf… She was absolutely horrified. She asked him about it, and he tried to tell her it was no big deal, but she wanted him to prosecute; take the guy to court. He refused, but she made him do the counseling thing…"

Niklaus just sat there, numb. He couldn't quite register what he was hearing. He knew these things happened, but he didn't think they happened to people that he knew... It was like some kind of fictional story he'd heard before, but now it was real.

"I…had no idea…" he murmured.

Nicolette sniffled and wiped at her eyes some more. "I was horrified when I heard it, too… I didn't know what to say… And he didn't seem to want to talk about it; which I can't blame him…"

"When did it happen?" Niklaus asked. "Like, recently? Or…?"

"It was in middle school. He was twelve years old." Niklaus was surprised to see how emotional it made Nicolette, even though he knew she had always been like that. When they were six years old and playing doctor, she had cried when he told her that her baby was dead. She took things pretty hard, and it made him sad to see her sad.

"Hey, it's okay, 'Colette," he told her, patting her back in an attempt to soothe her. "It's not like you could do anything about it. But it does make you a good person to care so much."

"Thanks," Nicolette smiled. "You really won't say anything, right? I don't think he needs that reminder…"

"I promised, didn't I?" He hugged his sister. "C'mon. Let's get you washed up!"

-AGIBC-

Niklaus tried to put all that he had heard out of his mind when he met up with the others for another game of soccer. But it was extremely hard. It was all that he could think about. He wondered how it had made Kylen feel, how he had coped with it, what he thought about it now; or if he even thought about it anymore. Niklaus couldn't even begin to imagine how it would make him feel. He tried to imagine, but he couldn't ever really understand how that affected one's life.

His soccer game was way off as a result, and the others razzed him, but he was too distracted to care. He noticed that Kylen wasn't under the tree today, though.

"Where d'ya think Kylen went?" he asked everyone in general.

"His room or the library," Lysander told him. "He likes his privacy."

"So… then it's not normal for him to be here when you guys play, then?"

"Hell no," Lysander told him, spinning the ball on the tip of his index finger. His tongue stuck out of the corner of him mouth as he stared intently at the ball. The ball's spin died, and it dropped, where Lysander kicked it back up. "I don't know what his angle was yesterday, but it's not normal for him to be here when we are… I barely ever see him outside, as a matter of fact."

"Where's his room, anyway?" Niklaus asked, trying to keep his tone casual.

"It's in the third sector; same as mine. His room's next to mine," Lysander said, giving up on the ball and tossing it Benny's way. It bounced off his fat stomach, and a couple of the guys laughed, Benny included. "He's lucky enough to have his own room."

"Why is that? I mean, why does he have his own room?" Niklaus could guess why, but he wanted to know what the official reason was.

"Oh, there's a room like that in every sector. It's for the head of class. Otherwise, it's always two to a room."

"Oh, I see… So he really is a brain, then?"

"Why all these questions about Kylen all of a sudden?" Lysander asked. "You got a crush on him?"

"No way!" Niklaus cried indignantly. "I'm just… curious, is all."

"A lot of people like him," Lysander admitted. "He's pretty cute… I mean, if you're a girl." His cheeks blazed at his slip-up; luckily, though, Nikkie was oblivious.

"Which I am!" Niklaus glared, thinking Lysander was accusing him of being male (which was true, but it wasn't something he wanted to advertise). Then he realized that it sounded like he was admitting to a crush. "But I don't have a crush on him!"

"I believe you," Lysander said, but his tone was way too amused for Niklaus to buy it. Well, whatever. Let him think what he wanted. It would make his disguise as a girl all the more better.

Niklaus stood and swept dirt and grass off his shorts. "Well, I'm going to see what Nicolette is up to. See ya!" He waved, then hastily ran off.

Lysander watched, amused.

-AGIBC-

It was evening, and Lysander was in the library, sitting at one of the long tables. He had a book set in front of him, but he wasn't reading it. Kylen, who sat four seats away and on the other side of the table, was seething. But there was nothing he could do about another person being in the library. There had been a girl for a while, but she eventually left, her homework done. Kylen looked up and Lysander's heart stopped and his breath caught.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm researching." He recovered enough to at least speak.

"The life cycle of the trout?" Kylen asked dryly.

Lysander turned the book around, and it was indeed The Life Cycle of the Trout.

"It's a science thing," he announced.

"I have your science class."

"So? I'm studying ahead."

"We had biology last year."

Lysander threw his hands up in defeat. "Okay! You caught me! I'm here to see you."

Lysander slammed his book shut and stood up. "You're never going to forgive me, are you? I didn't know what I was doing. And I apologized." Lysander slid a hand through his hair, agitated. "I… I dunno what else to tell you..."

Kylen looked at him for a long moment. "Is that all you came here for?"

"Well, that, and I think the new girl Nikkie has a crush on you." He smiled. "She was asking all these questions about you."

"I don't care."

"Yeah, I know." Lysander sat back down, only this time he sat directly across from Kylen. "When are we going to be friends again? Don't you think you've punished me long enough?"

"Maybe. Maybe not." Kylen stood up now. "Good night… Lysander."

He left the room, and left Lysander to drop his head to the table with a loud crack. Damn. Just hearing the bastard say his name made him turn to jell-o. He was sick with love over this guy… and he was so damn cruel about it… Lysander sighed, and ended up falling asleep in the library.

TBC...

Please review.

Notes: Well, now you know about Kylen's past and I'm pretty sure you knew that Lysander was in love with Kylen. Stay tuned for more... It seems they are stealing the show, I know. But I did say I think of this as each character's story, so watch out. Who knows who might be next!