They got to Westfield at 7:12 and Theo parked in the teachers’ lot, far corner, next to a rusted Camry that had no business sitting within 50 feet of a car like his.
Kota leaned across the console and kissed Sebastian goodbye, slow, one hand on his jaw, and Sebastian made a soft sound into his mouth before pulling back with his glasses knocked crooked.
“Right,” Sebastian said, straightening them.
“School.
I’m going to go be professional now.”
Kota climbed out, hooked his backpack over one shoulder, and headed for the side doors.
Halfway across the asphalt, Theo caught up with him.
“Kota.”
He turned.
Theo was standing there with his hands in his pockets, hair perfect in the morning light, watching him with a look that wasn’t about school at all.
“Lunch,” Theo said.
“My office.”
“What for?”
Theo stepped in closer, close enough that Kota could smell the mint on his breath, and let his voice drop into the low, breathy register he only used when he wanted something.
“You’ve made me wait twice this week, darling.
I’ve been very good about it.
So at lunch, you’re coming to see me, and I’m going to have you bend me over my desk and remind you what happens to boys who make their principal wait.”
Kota felt his ears go hot.
“That sounds like a punishment.”
“It’s whatever I say it is.” Theo tilted his head and smiled, slow and pleased with himself.
“Do we have an appointment?”
“Yeah,” Kota said, and his voice came out lower than he meant it to.
“I can’t wait.”
“Good boy.” Theo patted his chest twice and walked off toward the admin wing, hips swaying, not looking back.
Kota stood there for a second with his heart doing something dumb, then went inside.
“Since when was he like this?”
The hallways were still half empty, the early crowd drifting toward first period with their heads down.
He cut past the water fountain, past the trophy case, and made it to his locker with 4 minutes to spare.
Riley was there.
Not alone.
He had some senior backed up against the lockers, one hand flat beside the guy’s head, leaning in with that easy grin like he owned the whole building.
The senior looked like he couldn’t decide whether to run or drop to his knees.
“Damn,” Riley was saying, looking him up and down, slow.
“I’ve never seen you around before.
That’s crazy.
Where’ve you been hiding, huh?
You got a name?
You got a free period?”
Kota rolled his eyes and walked right past them.
He spun the combination, pulled the door open, and stopped.
Someone, or a lot of someone’s, had been folding paper and shoving it through the vents all morning, and now that the door was open, the whole thing avalanched onto the floor at his feet.
Folded squares.
Sticky notes.
Loose sheets torn out of notebooks, some folded down so many times they were the size of his thumb, some with his name on the front in careful loopy handwriting and little hearts in the corners.
There had to be 30 of them.
Maybe 40.
He picked one up at random and unfolded it.
Phone number, no name, one line underneath in block letters: “heard what you’re packing.
i can take all of it.
call me.” He picked up another.
It was a sticky note shaped like a heart, and all it said was: “your ass is flat and i want to sit on your face anyway.” (son im crine)
Kota sat back on his heels.
He’d known the pantsing was bad.
He’d known the videos were everywhere.
He just hadn’t done the math on what that meant for a guy everyone now knew was walking around with 8 inches, a flat ass, and no shame about either.
He’d been thinking about it like a thing people laughed at.
He hadn’t been thinking about it like this.
He gathered all of them up, fanned them like a deck of cards, and shoved them into his backpack.
First period was English.
Mr.
Rupert…
well just seb was already at the board with his back turned, writing something about unreliable narrators in block letters, and half the room was dead.
Riley had his desk dragged up next to Kota’s before Kota even got his bag off his shoulder.
Kota dropped into his seat, pulled the stack out, and started with the one on top.
It was 2 pages, front and back, in handwriting so small and tight it looked like it hurt to write.
The kid said his name was Toby (not the one from the band), that he was sorry for the note, and that he knew there were rumors going around that Kota was dating the principal.
He said he wasn’t trying to start anything.
He just thought Kota should know that if the rumors weren’t true, or even if they were, then Kota could have him.
Whenever.
However.
He said he’d never done anything with a guy before but he’d thought about it a lot, and he thought Kota would be gentle with him.
He said he’d send his address if Kota wanted it.
He said sorry 3 more times.
At the bottom, almost too small to read, he’d written, can you be mine?
Taped to the back were 5 polaroids.
The kid had light brown hair, soft and fluffy, grown out long enough to hang in his eyes.
He was standing in front of a mirror in his bedroom, naked, one arm bent up to hold the camera and the other hand clamped down over his crotch to hide the little soft nub there.
In all 5 pictures he was in a different pose and wearing the same expression, the one that said he was 2 seconds from deleting every single one.
Knees together.
Hips turned just far enough to show a curve and no more.
In the last one he’d turned around, and you could see the back of him, and he was still covering himself with both hands like he couldn’t stand to look.
Mr.
Rupert was still talking up front, his voice drifting over the room about narrators and truth and whatever else, and Kota kept his forearms flat over the pages so nobody walking past could read them.
The rest of the stack was a mix.
Phone numbers.
A pair of lace panties taped to a page with a lipstick kiss on it.
One from a guy in Kota’s gym class who wrote that he’d been jerking off to the memory of Kota swinging free in the locker room 2 times a day, and that his hole was already stretched and waiting whenever Kota wanted it.
One page was just a photograph of a hand holding a plug, with an address and a time under it, and Kota shoved that one to the back so Riley wouldn’t see.
And one that was 3 pages of a guy describing, in detail, what he wanted Kota to do to him in the parking lot after 5th period, which was thorough enough that Kota folded it shut halfway through and set it aside.
Riley reached over and slid the notes closer with two fingers, reading them sideways.
“You’re not gonna answer any of these?
Look at this one.
This dude drew a picture.
That’s commitment.”
Riley leaned over and plucked the polaroids out of his fingers before he could stop him.
“Ohhh my god,” he said, pitching his voice up high and cutesy.
“Kota.
Kotaaa.
Go slow.
Please.
You’re so biiiiig.
Ohhh no, that’s too much, I can’t take it, ohhhh.”
“Give those back.”
Riley was already flipping through them, grinning.
“This guy’s cute.
Look at him.
Look at how red he is.
This is a cry for help.”
Kota took the polaroids back and stacked them with the letter, and sat there for a second looking at nothing.
2 months ago he was just some guy.
He went to class, he ran track in the spring and lifted the rest of the year because his dad wouldn’t hear otherwise, and he came home and ate dinner and slept.
Nobody wrote him anything.
Nobody looked at him twice.
Then he got his pants yanked down in a hallway, and now there was a pile of paper in his backpack from people who’d spent their whole evening thinking about him and writing it down, and a soft little guy with hair in his eyes was asking to be his.
He turned to Riley, and he could feel his face doing something dumb, but he asked anyway.
“A-am I popular?”