19 The Buzzing

"Give that back," I said, trying to keep cool and level headed.

"Give what back?" Decker replied, leaning back in his chair with a smirk on his face.

"Micheal," I ground out, trying not to let the anger or the fear show, "Give me my sheet back, please."

Micheal turned his head toward me, slow and deliberate, with no sign of a smile or a smirk on his face. This was the guy that all the girls wanted to date. The guy that everyone wanted to be friends with. He was looking at me like I was nothing more than a piece of crap on the bottom of his shoe.

"No one's talking to you, Tristan, so butt out yeah?" He said, his voice laced with menace.

That was the end of my hard work, then.

I could always go ahead and talk to Mr Kamoga, but that wasn't really an option. The second I raised my grief with him both Decker and the whole of Micheal's group would turn on me, painting me to be the crazy bad guy. Then, after school or at lunch, Micheal would make whatever he had planned for me about ten times worse.

That wasn't even the worst of it, either. After Micheal got hold of my work, Dan was basically inconsolable. He apologised every few minutes and wouldn't take part in the discussion at all, and considering Lisa looked like she was asleep and Decker was still talking with Micheal's group it just left me on my own, stewing in my own anger.

In the end, time ran out, and Mr Kamoga picked people from each group to stand at the front of the class and go over everything they'd come up with.

Inevitably Mr. Kamoga didn't end up picking me. He picked Dan instead, which ended up being just as disastrous as it sounded. In fact, it was so bad that Mr. Kamoga didn't even let him finish, he was asked to sit back down long before then. What caused the teacher to pick Dan I'll never know.

This was compounded by the fact that, when Micheal was chosen for his group's work, he pretty much only read from the list that I had written as part of my homework.

By the time the presentations came to a close it was clear that my group wouldn't have won anyway, one of the clothes were named the winners thanks to how many that they had come up with. The challenge prioritised quantity of changes over quality of changes, though he did give Micheal an individual shout out for the work that he did, which definitely rubbed me the wrong way.

With the contest over Mr. Kamoga moved the class on from the presentations and into his lecture.

However, I was so angry that I could barely focus on anything.

As my emotions swayed and gained more control of me my mind tended to wander under the influences of my power. Like the crafter urges in me just got more and more powerful. It buzzed in my brain, causing my fingers to twitch and my foot to tap on the ground. I could barely sit still, I just wanted to build something.

I could, with a metric ton of effort, just about manage to block it out. But all that extra concentration, as well as the anger I still felt toward both Micheal and Mr. Kamoga, was just distracting enough that I had no idea what the man was talking about.

Instead, I took some inspiration from Lisa and rested my head on my desk. Thanks to my secretive nighttime escapades I was tired enough that I just about slipped into unconsciousness, and was then startled when chairs started to scrape back away from desks as people started to filter out of the room.

Unfortunately, I wasn't going to be allowed to make the escape that I'd been planning on.

"Tristan, I'd like you to stay for a few minutes, if you don't mind," Mr Kamoga said, walking up to me.

I nodded, he was probably going to give me an earful about falling asleep in class, and resumed packing my things.

Eventually, when everyone else had left and it was just me and Kamoga in the room, he walked back over and simply said, "If you need help, you can talk to me, you know?"

I blinked, shocked.

Of all the things I'd expected him to say, that was probably the farthest down on the list.

"I'm uh… I'm not sure what you mean, sir," I responded.

"Look, Tristan," He sighed, "I do know what goes on in this classroom, in this school. While I don't exactly know who it is, I know that someone, maybe multiple someones have been bullying you."

I didn't respond that time. This was not the conversation I wanted to be having.

"I saw that your arm seems to be in pain. I remember not too long ago, when someone put juice all over the chair that you usually sit on. And then, there was that thing that happened in January. We all had a meeting about that."

I swallowed thickly at the mention of that particular incident. I really really didn't want to be having this talk.

"There's more too, I bet, stuff that none of the teachers know about, right?"

"I uh… Yeah," I said when it became clear that he wasn't going to let things go.

"We can help you Tristan, we can help you push past this, but you have to open up to us," Mr Kamoga said, a sad smile on his face.

"You… You can't help," I all but snapped. "We live in a walled… A walled community, remember? It's not like you can kick them out… Out of school, or anything like that. This is the only one available. Maybe they'd get suspended or something, but then they'd be back. Then they'd be even worse."

He didn't respond to that, but to be honest, I didn't expect him to.

What I did expect was Micheal and Decker, waiting for me in the hall.