Blackmailed by a Bully
13

When Nathan turned up at school, he was still half-expecting Damon to turn around and tell him the whole thing was a joke. He didn't.

He met Damon and the others at the gates, and they were as friendly as yesterday.

They treated him like one of them, and the weird thing was, other people were treating him differently too. When he walked into Scott Andrews by accident, instead of shouting obscenities at him, Scott put his hands up. "I'm really sorry, mate," he said quickly.

'Mate?' Nathan thought. 'That's a new one.'

He took a seat in the classroom and Chelsea chose the seat next to him. She was sitting so close her knee was touching his, and it was hard to concentrate on anything else. When Damon offered him some chewing gum, he popped it into his mouth and started chewing without thinking.

The school had a strict no-gum policy, and Nathan had never even once broken a rule before.

"Nathan," Mrs Pierce said. "Are you chewing?"

"No," he lied.

"Well your mouth is moving," she pressed.

"So is yours," Nathan shot back without thinking. "Are you chewing?"

Her face turned red with rage.

"Get out of my classroom," she ordered, pointing at the door.

"Yeah, yeah, I've not forgotten where the door is," he muttered with an exaggerated eye roll. If he was in for a penny, he might as well be in for a pound.

Damon and the others were in absolute stitches, which made the whole thing worth it. He liked to make people laugh but figured his sarcastic humour was only funny to his nerdy mates.

Apparently, it wasn't. His old friends were all just looking at him like he'd lost his mind. Then swiftly averted their eyes when he noticed them.

He sat outside until someone took him down to an area called Pastoral--the place they took naughty kids who got removed. Nathan had never seen it before.

"Are you new?" the woman asked him when he got there.

"No." Nathan frowned. "I got a new haircut."

"Nathan?" she asked, looking through the school system database. "Oh my... you look so different to the picture they have on here."

"Better or worse?" he asked, just to make her uncomfortable.

"Better," she said with a shrug and no hint of guilt.

He was starting to like this woman. Ciara was young, cooler than any of the teachers and talking to her was like chatting to a friend. He told her the whole story, and she was sympathetic to his situation. "Just don't change too much," she said. "Not for a guy like Damon. I know he's being nice to you right now. But that guy is dangerous."

Nathan nodded. He knew how volatile Damon could be. But when Damon was nice to him--it was the best thing ever. People respected him. People acted as if they liked him, and while Nathan was aware they were probably faking it--it didn't matter. It felt real.

Ciara gave him a generic speech about the importance of good behaviour and let him go at the end of the lesson.

It was now break time, and Nathan had no idea what to do.

'Should I look for Damon?' he wondered. He was suddenly scared that his new friends would reject him as his old friends had.

As he left the pastoral building, Damon was standing on the steps, blocking the people as they tried to leave the adjacent IT room. None of them said anything to him. They just stood there like idiots, gorming. Nathan couldn't help but laugh. He walked to the front of the human traffic jam and Damon greeted him with a smile.

"Shall we mess with Christian again?" he asked.

Christian's face was already messed up. Apparently, he'd told everyone he'd been jumped in the street, but they all knew the truth.

As Nathan looked at him, his face transformed with fear. He was still for a minute, frozen to the spot by the dinner benches, and then he shot away at top speed.

This made Damon and the others laugh.

"Shall we chase him?" Ron asked.

"Nah." Nathan sat on one of the benches. "Let him sweat for a bit."

'You're truly a sadistic monster, aren't you?' Nathan thought, looking at Damon.

When Damon caught him staring, Nathan felt a wave of terror. Something about the look in his eyes chilled him to the bone.

Then Damon smiled, and his face changed completely.

"Don't you think he deserves to suffer just like you did?" Damon asked.

Nathan nodded. "I do..."

He didn't add the rest of what he was thinking. That Damon and his friends were even worse bullies to so many people, and nobody ever gave them their comeuppance. Damon stared at him, his grin widening. "I know exactly what you're thinking, Nathan."

"Oh, what, erm... I" Nathan stammered.

"It's okay," Damon assured him and snickered. "If anyone wants to get revenge on me for bullying them all I have to say is... come at me, Bro."

Damon and Ron exchanged looks and burst out laughing. There wasn't anyone big or scary enough to take them on, and they knew it.

'It must be nice,' he thought.

"Go get us some snacks," Damon said to Granger, who took a mental list of what everyone wanted.

Then Granger turned to Nathan, waiting.

"Oh, erm." Nathan scratched his head, feeling awkward. "I'm good."

He'd never noticed that Granger was kind of the bitch of the group until now. It was a weird group of friends, with a sort of hierarchy that he'd never been a part of before.

'Am I above Granger in the pecking order?' he wondered. That felt weird to him--as if he had some sort of power. It was not a feeling he was used to and he couldn't decide if he liked it or not.

As the conversation moved on, Nathan couldn't help but wonder why this was happening. Why had Damon decided to go from beating him up every day to being his new best friend?

He had the sneaking suspicion Freida had something to do with it but was scared to ask her.

'She's a secretive one,' he thought, remembering her affair with Mr Preston. He'd literally had no idea about that. But when he thought about it more, he remembered he'd seen Mr Preston with a girl from his class--Lily Marie. He glanced over his shoulder at the canteen and saw Mr Preston talking to another girl he didn't recognise.

Pfft... is he sleeping with all the students?' he wondered.

"Yeah," Damon whispered in his ear, leaning over him. "I spotted that too."