Welcome to High School by Euphoria Writer (uplifting books for women txt) 📖

In kindergarten I had a stutter. It was because I was so shy and nonsocial to others that made me all tongue tied when having a talk about dinosaurs and G.I. Joes like any normal kindergartener. Because I had a stutter I had multiple curious kids from my class ask me why I talked funny.
In elementary school I carried around a polar bear my grandmother bought me and adapted to another odd social habit. You see, during the summer, before I had started first grade, I went back up to my old home in Toronto Canada with my father and visited grandma. Originally my mother was from California and my father was Canadian and after they got married they moved to Toronto and raised me there until I started kindergarten, that's when we moved to California. Anyways, over the summer at grandma's I grew to admire every little thing she does, especially her Canadian accent, so when we went back down to California I surprised my mother when I started speaking with a Canadian accent.
Of course over the years of elementary school I was picked on for carrying around stuffed animals and my accent so much that everyone just started calling me Canada because of that accent.
Middle school was a lot worse. Elementary took it's toll on me and my shy social problems. Over the summer and after school I would look in the mirror and practice saying things without the accent, just to feel normal? Or was it because I wanted to act normal and stop carrying around stuffed bears in my backpack? Either way when I was able to get rid of the accent I was still bullied, because if it was not the accent nor the bears it was the girls. Now, to be honest I was a very feminem boy, and I shared a lot of interests girls liked so during middle school, girls swarmed around me. There was not a moment when a girl was talking to me, heck I even had a girl helping me pick out my glasses after school once. It was nice to have friends and all, but the down point was that they were all girls. And because of this I got picked on and bullied even more. And when I got bullied, nervous, agitated or even angry my accent slips out and makes things a whole lot worse. The cruel nickname I was trying to wash away came back, the mocking of my accent, and even so, getting pushed into lockers.
But the one thing that truly affected me during this turmoil of mocking and getting tripped was how the bullies decided on my sexuality before I even realized it. They would always call me gay or fagot and some names I had to look up on Google just to know what it was. Middle school was horrible, but leading up to the eighth grade something happened.
You see the new seven chosen high school football recruits from my class treated me like their friend for a whole week. It was the best week of my life, I wasn't hazed, called Canada or even made fun of when I let my accent slip. I felt normal for the first time in a long time. Then one day I was asked to come hang out with them after school on the field. Of course I was too happily naive to ever stop and think if it was a trap.
I ended up getting cornered in the equipment shack and was used as a punching bag and even slightly molested by one of them when it was their turn to leave bruises and kick the shit out of me. I remembered that person's face shadowed by the dark, making it look like he was hurting me while what he did was a whole different thing. I was left there shivering and scar'd more than one way.
I ended up slowly loosing my ability to speak and tried desperately to become invisible. Physical bullying became more distant as I lived throughout the rest of eighth grade, I didn't talk to girls anymore or bothered with anyone. Class clowns joked around with me for a while making me the "butt" of every joke, considering that everyone was still convinced that I was gay. That was why I was trying to find myself and figure things out on my own. But the loneliness gnaws at my stomach every day. Soon, when I found my odd interest in boys than girls, I stopped talking altogether. Teachers never called on me, other students didn't talk to me, I was just silent.
And the only people to notice was my parents.
I had stopped talking to them too and carried around Mr. Kumajiro my stuffed polar bear that was my favorite of my bear collection that I called Kuma for short. I found an odd salvation of comfort from the bear more than the one my grandmother bought me. Anyhow, my parents did not like my socially deprived self I had developed into. They took me to therapy, council sessions and even encouraged me to go to the middle school dances.
That's how I met him.
I had hung around the punch bowl that one night during the last dance of the year, before summer came and school was out, when I soon found myself cornered by those same seven football stars. The images and stinging sensations of that horrible experience immobilized me and I couldn't run or do anything. I felt like a pathetic slab of cement holding onto Kuma like a life line while they pushed me around in a circle getting me to let out a sound. Finally one of them got bored and just punched me and the rest started to murderously advance on me. Until my beacon of light shown, in a heroic light beating the crap out of those jocks like they were just slow slugs and he was like the fast cat that clawed them up.
Alfred Jones.
Yes, I would never forget his name. I had known little of him except that he was the track team's star player and that he liked goofing off, but that was back then when I new utterly nothing about the guy. But I knew one thing though.
I was in love with him.
I don't care how hopelessly romantic that sounded, but it was true. No one stood up for me, not even the girls that crowded me from before. He was my hero and after he saved me from another assault from those jocks he said this:
"Your Matthew right? I'm Alfred, you don't have to worry about that happening anymore, because you've got a hero as your friend now!"
I nearly cried in joy because of how he insisted on being my friend and what happened after that was something I haven't done in a long time.
"T-th-thank you."
I was able to speak again. Thats when I truly knew that I loved him, that I was able to speak again by the same guy who was the first to stand up for me. Alfred and I became real close friends after that and my parents really liked him and his hyperactive attitude towards everything. But while I was friends with him I kept my harboring feelings for Alfred locked up, too afraid to let something like this friendship spoil over possibly not returned feelings. Then good things got better when my father's restaurant business caught aflame as the America's best pancake house by a reporter from NY Times came down to California to interview my father, mother and I and try our dishes. Once the interview got out on print business became busier and money wasn't so tight anymore.
When summer came my parents had a talk to me about different high schools I could go to now. We went through a ton of brochures and options until I told them I would think about it and bolted out the door with an armful of brochures and untied shoes as I ran directly for Alfred's house. When I got there I collapsed on his bed while he was on his laptop and asked him what school he was going to. That's when he handed me the only brochure I wish I had looked at to begin with instead of the thousands I had went through.
It was a school called Powers Academy, an all boys school in San Francisco, where the fee wasn't expensive, the classes seemed neutral and the guys lived in dorms on campus and had school uniforms for only during classes. The background check on the school was as clean as a whistle. Seriously, there was absolutely no student that has been, suspended, expelled or even caught with drugs, alcohol or even bullying on campus.
It was the perfect school for me.
And that's how I ended up going to Powers Academy.

"Mat, Mat, Mat, Mat, Mattie, Mattie, Mattie, Mattie, Matthew, Matthew, Matthew, Matthew, Williams, Williams, Williams, Williams, Matthew Will-"
"What Alfred!" I finally cracked, opening an eye to glower at Alfred.
"Jeez Mattie, I just wanted to know if you were sleeping," Alfred grinned clearly amused at how he had just annoyed me from closing my eyes and falling asleep. Don't get me wrong, I can handle Alfred perfectly fine when he's annoying except for when I'm sleep deprived, that's when I get scary and all cranky. The reason why I was tired was because I could not sleep a wink last night packing and repacking my suit case in excitement to go down to San Francisco and move into my dorm room at a new school, where the most important goal I made for the year was to make sure no one accused or even assumed I was gay. Sadly I was "supposedly" still in the closet, but it's just that I had taken so much crap in Sacramento Middle for "seeming" to be gay that I didn't want to repeat history.
It's a new school, new grade, new city and it's going to be a new experience, so I will try to make it the best!
"Ugh! Why can't this train go any faster!" Alfred whined.
I sighed and held myself back from banging my head against the seat.
"Alfred, for the seventh time, this is a trolley not a train-"
"Hey were we suppose to get off at Lincoln?" Alfred asked suddenly, cutting me off.
"Yeah, I told you to wake me up when we get there."
"Eh, hehehe, we just passed by a minute ago."
My eyes widened and I suddenly sat straight up while catching a glimpse of the new street sign we just passed that said Alp Ave. I suddenly reached into my pullover's front pocket and fished out the fold out map, unfolding it and finding Alp