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Warning: Contains Boy's Love and vulgar language.

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Chapter 2: Little Black Heart


The perfect moment—the one between having forgotten about a bad memory and unfortunately having to recall it at a later date—was ruined when a certain freckled boy entered the Student Council room at the beginning of lunch.

Elliot looked up from his work when he heard some of the Student Council members suddenly burst into frenzied conversation. A familiar but unwelcome name passed someone’s lips and it dawned on Elliot what all of the buzzing conversations were about. He frowned and turned his head towards the door, any question of whether the freckled boy was actually there or not soon quelled.

“Great. Now he’s strutting around like he belongs here,” Elliot grumbled. From a desk just across from his, Jacqueline, one of his best friends since childhood, smiled at him and shook her head.

“Aren’t you being a tad mean, Elliot?” She looked up from some papers on her desk and watched Cameron approach a Student Council member. “I don’t think he’s strutting. He just looks confident to me.”

“Right,” Elliot huffed. “Confident.” Although he was nowhere near as agitated as he had been yesterday, he wasn’t so pleased about seeing Cameron just waltz right in so casually. Twenty-four hours hadn’t even passed yet, and already the KISS club president seemed at home around the council members. Not to mention word had gotten out and around the school after lunch hour the previous day about the club and its president. The gossip had spread faster than wildfire, and like dead and dry grass, the school population let it run wild and rampant. People were intrigued by the idea, just as they seemed to be intrigued by the teenaged boy running the club.

Elliot saw no need to burden himself over the matter for too long, though. The club wouldn’t last long with him watching it. As The President had said, if the club took one questionable step out of line, it would be shut down.

Of course by questionable, The President had meant anything harmful or offensive, but that shouldn’t be difficult. The club was just a group full of dorky KISS-obsessed freaks. How hard could it be to find a fatal flaw?

Elliot watched Cameron talk to a random member, seeming to ask what appeared to be a question. Elliot snorted, and out of the blue he wondered if the boy was looking for him.

Elliot returned back to his thoughts. The only downside to his plan to shut the club down was that, as Elliot had been informed earlier that very morning, he had to go to the meetings and “actively participate in the club’s activities, as if he were a real member.” Elliot shook his head at the memory of when The President had approached him about the matter before first period could start:

“I have to ‘actively participate’?”

“Yes.”

“…And by that, you mean?”

“What the club members do, you do.”

“No.”

“It’s either that, or the deal from yesterday is off.”

“No!”

“Great. Then you’ll do it?”

“…Fine, but I won’t enjoy it.”

“I’m sure you won’t.”

Elliot snapped out of the memory when he noticed Cameron approaching his desk, smiling at him with an overwhelming friendliness that matched the previous day. Elliot’s earlier thought was confirmed: the KISS club president had been looking for him. Elliot stared up at the boy, taking in the unwanted sight of him; Cameron wore the school uniform: a white, buttoned shirt with a black tie, and black dress pants.

“What’re you still doing here?” Cameron said, breaking the silence.

“I work here,” Elliot answered. What sort of question was that? “Unlike some people, I have real work to accomplish around here.”

“Oh.” Cameron rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, are you ready?”

Elliot cocked an eyebrow at the boy. “…Ready?”

“Yeah.” Cameron clapped his hands together and rubbed them, his grin widening. The image of a mad scientist popped almost too vividly into Elliot’s head. “My club is having its first meeting this lunch!”

“Oh.” Elliot heaved a huge breath. And so the game had begun. “Joy.”

“Yep! The President told me that you’re going to be joining in with the club. So, grab your stuff and get to room two-oh-three in about five minutes, okay?”

“…Fine,” Elliot spoke through clenched teeth. As much as he wished he could’ve told Cameron to go shove his enthusiasm and his club where the sun didn’t shine, shutting down the club was a much higher priority. If it meant being like an actual member of the club, then so be it.

“Great! See you in a bit.” Cameron smiled and turned to leave.

The moment he was out the door, Elliot groaned and let his head drop into his hands, his fingers fisting themselves into his wavy dirty-blond hair. Although he didn’t understand why, the image of the freckled boy smiling sincerely and eagerly at him replayed in his head. For the love of God…even his smile is enthusiastic!

Just a few feet away, Jacqueline shook her head with a soft smile. When Elliot lowered his hands and shot a look at her, she gave a silly wave, a simple wiggle of her fingers, and said, “Have fun, Elliot. Bring back a souvenir.”


~+~


With his book bag shrugged onto his shoulders, filled with everything he thought he’d need for the dreaded meeting, Elliot made his way through the semi-crowded hallway. He held his head up high, took long and confident strides towards his destination.

There were quite a few faces he recognized along the way. Growing up in a fairly small town all his life, it seemed only natural to recognize a lot of the faces of the people you’d grown up, whether over childhood or over the last four years. Off sitting on the benches near some trashcans were a group of sophomores; Elliot knew each and everyone of the group. There was a small group of junior and senior girls that stood by the exit, watching their equally aged male colleagues fool around aggressively outside with a football, all of whom he also recognized. There weren’t that many people in the school that he didn’t know of, just like there weren’t that many people in the school that didn’t know who he was, either.

So to call it strange that Elliot did not know that somebody like Cameron now existed in the school was a bit of an understatement, especially with someone as strange and outgoing as him. However, the school year was still fresh and new, and new faces popping up in the small school population of about four-hundred people wasn’t all that strange once he began to think about it.

Elliot came to a complete halt when he arrived at room two-oh-three. The door, as eggshell-white as the hallway walls, was closed. Elliot’s hand reached out to grab the bronze doorknob, but paused, a thought occurring to him. What if he opened the door and some guy or girl, dressed up like some devil-worshipper, jumped out at him and stuck their bloody tongue out at him? Or even worse, what if a whole group of them marched out and circled him, faces covered in black and white paint and chins dribbled with fake blood, while they poked and assaulted him with long and sharp spears, like something from Lord of the Flies?

Oh, hell no.

Before Elliot could have a chance to change his mind and leave while he still had the chance, the door swung open. A pair of listless jade eyes peered down at Elliot. He tilted his head up a little and stared into the girl’s dark brown eyes. He stared at the girl’s azure-coloured hair, which fell over and around her face in odd-cut lengths and layers, some of it pulled to the side with pink skull barrettes. Her mouth, pale in colour, was thin and wide, but that didn’t distract Elliot from noticing that she had had her bottom lip pierced. Three tiny spikes protruded from the skin a few inches above her chin. All at once he sighed in disbelief, unable to believe how liberal their school could be over accessories and hair dyes these days. Despite the unnatural hair colour and metal spikes protruding from her skin, the girl seemed somewhat familiar. A name whispered at the back of his mind, something that began with an “A.”

“Can I help you?” the girl said in a bored drawl, one eyebrow cocked. Before Elliot could answer, Cameron flew to the girl’s side and beamed at him.

“Hey! Come on in, man. Meeting starts in a few minutes.”

The azure-haired girl eyed Cameron. “He’s joining?”

“No,” Elliot answered, shoving past the girl and Cameron as he strode into the room, making sure to keep his head high up. He took a quick look around the room. So far there were not that many people. “I’m here investigating.”

The azure-haired girl said nothing, but the look on her face didn’t exactly portray anything close to amusement. She lowered her face near Cameron’s and whispered something inaudible to Elliot’s ears. He watched them out of the corner of his eye, catching the inquisitive expression that flickered across Cameron’s face at whatever the girl whispered to him. Elliot turned his attention to the rest of the room, eyeing some of the students that were either waiting around for the meeting to begin, or were busy setting things up. A KISS banner caught his brief attention, followed by KISS helium balloons, and black and white streamers. To Elliot’s astonishment, there were even life-sized cardboard stand-ups of the KISS band members all lined up along the wall. He glared at the Gene Simmons cardboard stand-up, the same one with the abnormally long tongue hanging out.

“Classy,” Elliot mumbled under his breath. “Real classy.”

A few more voices filled the room. Before Elliot realized it, even more students entered the room, all laughter and smiles. Many of them seemed young, most likely sophomores, maybe even some freshmen. He even recognized a few juniors mixed in with the group. Elliot counted the new comers along with the people who were already in the room. There had to be approximately twenty people, including Cameron, the girl from earlier, and himself. It might not have seemed like a large number for a club, but at their school of only four hundred people, this was a decent number.

Not to mention that this was only opening day. More could join later on.

But there’d better not be too many people in this club, Elliot thought as he proceeded to take a seat along with everyone else. The fewer members that joined the club, the less resistance there would be when it would be shut down, which meant the sooner things could return to normal.

The azure-haired girl from earlier closed the door to keep noises from the outside from interfering with their meeting. As Elliot waited for the actual meeting to start, he noticed that the club members were glancing at him in surprise, then turning to each other to whisper.

“Afternoon!” Cameron’s voice cut through the whispers and hushed the small crowd with ease. Cameron grinned at the young members while tapping his hands on his knees. He sat on a table that had nothing else on it but for a small stack of papers and a medium sized box. Leaning against the table on Cameron’s other side was the girl from earlier, holding a clipboard in one hand and a pen that she twirled between her fingers in the other.

“Welcome to the first official KISS Fan-club meeting! I’m Cameron, the club president, and this is Alison, the vice president. On behalf of our undying love of KISS, we would both like to welcome you in joining the club, and wish you nothing but joy and fun to come.” Cameron gestured towards Elliot with a jerk of his head. “And over there is…?”’

“Elliot,” he answered for him in a bored voice. Everyone else knew his name. Everyone, except for the stupid freckled-face boy.

“Yes, Elliot from the Student Council. Sorry, I forgot it there for a second,” Cameron apologized, causing Elliot to roll his eyes as Cameron turned back to the group of students and continued. “He’ll be here participating in the club and making sure that everything is top-notch and perfect.”

More like planning your demise, Elliot wanted to counter, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew that he’d have his chance to make his purpose well known at a later date. For now, it’d be best to just play the part of the silent observer.

“First off, Alison will pass this clipboard and pen around. Please write your name, your home-room, and your home or cell phone number in the spaces provided,” Cameron explained while Alison handed said objects to the closest student.

“Why would you need our home number?” a female voice asked from the back. A few students stifled their chuckles at the suggestive undertone.

“In case of emergency,” Cameron answered, sounding oblivious to the girl’s hidden meaning. Elliot sighed with exasperation and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Were these people here for the club itself, or its president?

“Now,” Cameron began while rubbing his hands together, “while you’re all doing that, I’ll explain our current project.”

Elliot lowered his hand from his face, his mouth becoming a tight, thin line. Project? He glanced at the box on the table when Cameron lifted it up and pulled back the cardboard flaps. A freckled hand pulled out a few tubes of what appeared to be paint; face paint to be exact.

Oh. Shit.

“Like any good club, we have to get our name out there, and what better than to dress up while advertising the club?”


A few people in the group of students immediately began shouting for the box, already grinning deviously at the very mention of dressing up. The box went all around the group, eager hands grabbing and taking the tubes of black and white face paint. In the distant background, Elliot heard Cameron explaining his ideas concerning the face paint, but by that point that words became meaningless; Elliot had stopped listening. Instead, numerous key words flashed in his head, each one more panicked and distressed than the last. KISS. Black and white. Face paint. Actively participate. Face paint!

There’s no way! There’s no Goddamned way—

“Elliot?”

Elliot snapped out of his thoughts. Cameron, who held out the box at him, now stood before him with a large, encouraging smiling—that very same earnest and delighted smile from the day before. He wondered how anyone could smile so much, wondered if the muscles in his face ever hurt and got tired.

Elliot could feel his mouth pull in a thin line. “What?”

“C’mon, take some. We’ve already gotten started.”

Elliot crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat, away from Cameron and the offered face paint. “No thanks.”

“Don’t be a party pooper,” Cameron mock-huffed, his grin widening as he shook the box, the plastics tubes rattling inside, and pressed it against Elliot’s crossed arms. He flinched against the cardboard corner that jabbed him in the shoulder.

“Quit it.”

“Only if you give in,” Cameron responded, poking Elliot in the shoulder with the box again. “It’ll be fun. You can do whatever design you want. It doesn’t even have to be a traditional KISS look. It could be a star, or a heart, or—”

“No,” Elliot gritted out, forcing his concentration even harder on the wall. Maybe if he ignored Cameron long enough, the freckled boy would get the hint, or get bored and leave.

After a few moments, Cameron ceased poking him in the shoulder and stared at Elliot with a curious look, as if he were trying to read his mind. Elliot sniffed and held onto his resolve. After a minute Cameron shrugged, turned, and left. The tension that Elliot didn’t know he’d had flooded away from his shoulders, allowing him to relax a little more in his seat. He heaved a heavy sigh and hoped that lunch was almost done. He could go to class, then go home, prepare a nice hearty meal to help get his mind off things, and pretend that—

Elliot jumped in his seat. He slapped his hand onto his cheek and yelped, “Hey! That’s cold!”

“It will warm-up eventually,” Cameron explained, making Elliot jump in his seat again. He looked up at the other boy, instantly noticing the open tube of black paint in his hand. The forefinger of Cameron’s free hand bore the evidence of the crime: black paint.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Cameron grinned from ear to ear. “Getting you ready.”

“Oh, no you don’t. Get that stuff away from me,” Elliot demanded, attempting to wipe away the black paint off of his cheek. Cameron reached out and grabbed Elliot’s wrist in a firm grip, stopping him.

“Hey, don’t ruin my masterpiece before I’ve even had a chance to finish it.”

Elliot stared blankly at the boy for a moment, frozen for a moment. Then, regaining his senses, yanked his wrist out of Cameron’s grip. “That won’t be all I will ruin if you don’t get away from me.”

Despite the threat, it was as if Cameron didn’t hear him—or at least chose not to—because the next thing Elliot knew Cameron had already pressed his black-tipped finger to his cheek again. Elliot froze at Cameron’s touch, his insides seething with animosity, but his body unable to lash out. It would only look bad if he were to give Cameron the pleasure of a black eye; his chances for shutting the club down would be taken away. What would The President say about that, or the school principle? No trouble would await him at home, but the school was like his home. The club was trouble enough for him without a scene to go on his permanent record.

Out of the corner of his eye, Elliot watched the finger move around in what seemed to be curves. The slender finger left his skin and touched the top of the open tube of paint, then went back to his cheek.

“Look, I know you probably want to punch me in the face right now, and that this is probably making you really uncomfortable, but it’s not all that bad,” Cameron explained while he applied the paint. His voice sounded calm and even, different from the energetic tone he’d heard only moments before. “I bet you hate this, but you have to participate.” Cameron’s finger paused and left the cheek. “I also know that the last thing you probably want is to get in trouble, right? That wouldn’t be very good.”

Elliot frowned at Cameron’s words, wishing that he was wrong. He stared back into those blue-green eyes, and something inside him was startled at what he saw. All at once the freckled-boy looked so calm, so certain, and even sympathetic. How he could express any of that towards someone like him, who wanted to demolish his club and end what Cameron seemed to have invested a lot of time into, Elliot hadn’t a clue.

For a brief moment, Elliot understood why some of the girls—who’d probably never even heard of KISS, much less listened to their music—had joined the club. Not that he’d ever admit that aloud. Cameron was still the enemy, with a dumb club, and a dumb smile. With a small huff, Elliot mumbled in the lowest voice he could manage, “Yeah.”

Cameron’s smile, albeit softer and less pronounced, returned. “That’s what I thought.” His finger pressed against Elliot’s face again, and to Elliot’s surprise, the finger no longer felt cold, but warm. “How about this: you leave this paint on and help us advertise for at least a few minutes—just a few minutes, it’s not like it’ll kill you or something—then you can take it off. I won’t say a word to The President.”

Elliot narrowed his light brown eyes. “No.”

“You’d rather a half an hour than a few minutes?”

Elliot’s mouth hardened, his jaw clenching as he fought to keep his voice low. Déjà vu. How easy it seemed for the world to push his buttons and manipulate him to bend to its will. “No.”

Cameron chuckled. “Is this your weird way of saying ‘yes’? Oh c’mon, don’t give me that look. It’s not too bad. I didn’t draw anything horribly obscene on you.” He lowered his finger for good and gazed at his masterpiece for a few lingering seconds. “Not bad looking, either. Black’s a good shade for you.”

Elliot said nothing. He wanted the boy to stop talking and just leave him alone already. As he wished, Cameron screwed the cap back on the tube of paint and wiped his finger off on a bit of paper towel, then told him that they’d be making their debut in a few minutes. He reminded Elliot of their deal before he finally left him alone.

Elliot relaxed in his seat again. Boredom seeping in, he turned to watch the group of students that sat around the room in small groups, laughing while they played around with the face paint, creating eccentric designs on themselves and others. Elliot’s eyes lingered on their smiling faces, on the embarrassed but joyous blushes of others…and for a split-second, he wondered why all of this bothered him so much.

Near the end of lunch, after a good few minutes of trying to drown out the obscene noise of teenagers singing at the top of their lungs “I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night”* while passing out pamphlets, Elliot left the KISS fan club with whatever dignity he had left to go wash his face. He made an unexpected discovery as he stared into one of the mirrors in the boy’s bathroom.

“…The hell?” Elliot breathed, his hands gripping the edge of the sink counter as he stared into the mirror.

…A heart?

Painted on his cheek was a black heart, complete with little devil horns and a curled tail.

Elliot stared at the mirror for a moment before the corner of his mouth twitched.

A black heart!?

“That bastard…!” Elliot hisses. With a swift and forceful hand, he turned on the faucet in a rough manner and reached for some paper towel to clean off the damned paint, all the while continuing to proclaim his displeasure as loud as he could.

“How dare he?! Oh, he’s in for it! ‘Not horribly obscene’, he said. I’ll make him wish he never even heard of the name Elliot Wright by the time I’m through with him!”


~+~


In the midst of handing out flyers to a male student that had been walking through the lobby where the club was advertising, Alison turned towards Cameron, eyes as calm and impassive as ever. Cameron, who had just begun making his third round around the hallway only a short distance away, paused when he caught his friend’s gaze.

“…Did you hear that?” she said.

He scratched his head. “Did I hear what?”

“It sounded like shouting, somewhere over there.” Alison gestured down one hallway, to where twin sets of bathrooms resided near the very end. “I think it’s coming from the boy’s bathroom.”

“Huh. Really? I didn’t hear anything,” Cameron replied, but the twinkle in his eyes revealed otherwise. He stifled a chuckle to himself, unable to help imagining the sheer look of horror Elliot must’ve had when he’d looked into the mirror. Poor guy, but he had it coming. A guy as serious as that should lighten up once in a while, and a little goofy drawing should be a great start in doing in.

Alison shook her azure hair out of her eyes. “Never mind. Must’ve just been my imagination.”

Cameron just smiled.


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To Be Continued