Zac's day had dragged by. "When the minutes seem like hours and the hours seem like days..." Zac quietly sang to himself as he lay in his bed, Gareth sleeping soundly. He reckoned that he must've spent at least three hours in Russell's classroom today, and as they didn't have PE or Games on Thursdays, he felt he'd hardly seen the light of day!!

"Zac, you awake?" came Gareth's whispered voice.

He took a deep breath. "Yeah," he sighed, bracing himself for another verbal assault.

"Look, I'm sorry for what I said... I... It... It's not fair on you... I was just jealous... We never said that you couldn't be with anyone else... I guess I was just jealous. I... Sorry, man..."

Zac turned onto his side, propping his head up with his arm, just being able to determine Gareth's outline. "Gareth, I..."

"Don't bother," he sniffed, fighting the already lost battle of holding back his tears. "It wasn't your fault. Don't be unhappy because of me. If I'd have been Jon, I would have done the same..." His last word was drowned slightly as his voice portmentaued up a couple of octaves as the tears broke through his depleted barrier of self control.

Zac thought about his situation and for a moment wished he could just escape - leave everything behind and start over. Then he realised he'd be leaving the love of Gareth - the love he had simply overlooked - taken for granted - until now. He never wanted to do that. He'd seen Ike get messed up by this "love" thing before, and it had managed to change him into an unhappy, unpleasant person that was all to quick to chastise and recriminate. But it had happened to him without him really knowing it, and there was nothing he could do.

In the split-second it took for Zac to think all this, he recalled all the fun he'd had with Gareth in their trailer at the NEC, how much he'd felt for him.

Zac threw his covers back and walked over to Gareth's bed, slipping in beside him. He felt Gareth tense as he did this, so he put his arm around him and kissed him on the cheek.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his breath moving a wisp of Gareth's hair, causing Gareth to smile as it tickled his cheek. "I shouldn't have let it happen. I was too dumb to realise how I felt for you... Sorry, Gareth."

Those few words from Zac made him drop all inhibitions towards him, and even though he knew in his heart that Zac would never ever be able to behave himself for any period of time, right then he didn't care as the hot body of the stunning twelve-year-old pulled itself against him. Gareth breathed a long, contented sigh, the anguish of the day having taken a toll on him both mentally and physically.

"See you in detention tomorrow," he whispered to Zac. He kissed him gently on the cheek, and the two reconciled boys gradually drifted off into the solace of sleep.

"Deadliest," exclaimed Tay.

"What? You can't get 'deadliest' from Dean's name!"

"You sure can," he said as I fed him another bite of his pizza. "You could have 'deadlines' too, but 'deadliest' sounds cooler..."

You can tell how boring evenings can be when stuck in a field with practically nothing to do, especially when five lads are reduced to trying to find the longest anagram from each others' names. Usually, cow-pushing was the main attraction but that was out of the question as there were no cows in the vicinity...

"I got a good one for Triv," grinned Jamie. "'Teeniest'!"

"No - that's you, bare bone boy... Besides, I don't think you can live up to your anagram!"

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"'Creamier'."

"Hey, just coz I can still have multiple orgasms..."

"I can't get anything out of Tony's name," I said, scribbling out my scrawl for the umpteenth time on the back of the pizza box.

"It's actually 'Anthony'," Spider sheepishly admitted.

"Anthony?" questioned Jamie, bursting out into fits of laughter.

"What's wrong with that?" he asked, his face starting to go into 'kick the shit' mode.

"Nothing. Just wanted to see your reaction!" grinned Jamie.

"Well, that helped a bit, Spidey, the only problem is I now get 'Hootenanny'!"

"Or 'hothead'," chipped in Tay, peering over the now very congested lump of cardboard.

"How the hell can you do that?"

"What?"

"Just look at a word and see anagrams like that?"

"Uh... I dunno... Just can. More pizza, please," he said, holding his mouth open.

"You, Mr. Hanson," I said, gently feeding the corner of an exceptionally large slice into his mouth while I ran my free hand through his hair and up the back of his neck, "are getting a little too big for your boots, me thinks!" and with that, I smeared the contents of the slice all over his face, causing him to fall backwards off his log with surprise. Never one to miss an open opportunity, I leapt off my log and landed on top of the now pepperoni-smelling Hanson.

The sight of my favourite pop star covered in my favourite pizza topping looked good enough to eat, so eat I did, licking the spicy tomato sauce from his face and gently nibbling along his eyebrows.

"Fuck it: who needs the pizza?" exclaimed Jamie as he jumped on Triv and began licking his face in earnest, initially to Triv's disgust, but gradually becoming more and more appreciative, he in turn licking back at Jamie. Of course, the licking for both parties naturally escalated to kissing and finally to a full-on snog.

"Friggin' hell! Would you guys PLEASE cool off just a bit? Its bad enough a STRAIGHT couple doing it in front of you, but... well..." Spider looked quite pissed off.

"Just coz you ain't gettin' any!"

"I don't fuckin' want none of that shit, ta very much!"

"You're gonna have to put up with it, I'm afraid," smiled Triv. "You're sleeping with us!"

"Oooooooh no - I AIN'T sleeping with you arse-bandits. No way!"

Tay and I sat up from our reclined position and disentangled our limbs from one another as we watched the show.

"So where are you gonna sleep then?"

"I can tell you where I AIN'T sleeping!"

"Awwww - come on, Spidey - we're only fooling around..."

"That's what's worryin' me!"

"Triv, Jamie - would you mind if Tay and I spent the night with you in your tent - that way Tony can have ours to himself... If that's OK with you, Tay..."

"Yeah - sure! The more the merrier!"

"Triv? Jamie?"

"Yeah - sounds cool..."

"Spider?"

"Uhh - yeah, I guess... Sorry, guys, I'm not kinda queering out on you or anything... Just that I wouldn't feel comfortable with... You know..."

"Hey, no problem, Tony... Just don't make a mess on the groundsheet!"

"Heh, no I... DEAN!!"

"I'm kidding!"

We doused the fire down in the only way five cola-filled lads knew how and went to our respective tents. Triv and Tay dived in first, Jamie and myself following closely, both sets of partners immediately engaging in the compulsory snog. As things slowed a little and we lay there, gently kissing, licking and groping each other, I decided I had to know how long Triv and Jamie had been "at it", so I asked them.

They smiled gingerly at each other. "Ever since the world cup thing, I spose," Triv answered.

"You kept it kinda quiet, didn't you?"

"Yeah... I spose we didn't really want to admit to each other how we felt, although I guess we have done now,"

"Big style," grinned Jamie, rubbing his hand over Triv's impressive bulge.

"Uh, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Does it hurt?"

"Does what hurt?"

"You know... Doing it?"

"At first, yeah. But that soon goes away - you won't believe anything can feel that good!"

"Do you think you could, um... Could you explain how we..."

"We wanna fuck - how do we do it?" said Jamie, exasperated at Triv's floundering.

"We'll do better than that," said Tay, pulling my combats down to reveal my boner sticking through the fly of my boxers. "We'll show you."

Ike lounged in River House's common room, staring vacantly through the TV, oblivious to the programming he was being presented with.

"OK, kiddies, bread's in the kitchen: David, PLEASE wash your knife this time before putting it back in the draw..."

"Yessir,"

"Kiddies?"

"Well, judging by the mess you lot left there last night, I thought the first formers had moved in!" smiled Jaykes.

"That ain't fair, sir! It's only a select few..." said XXXX, poking Dave Marsden in the ribs "...who do that!"

"Yeah, well, perhaps you could lean on those members of the elite to actually clean up after themselves..."

"No problem, sir," grinned XXXX, grabbing a cushion and whacking Marsden across the head with a muffled thump.

"Isaac, can I see you for a moment?"

"Huh? Me?"

"Yeeeeees - no other Isaac here, so it must be you!" said Jaykesie, smiling a gentle, encouraging smile at Ike.

Jaykes led Ike into his private sitting room which was furnished quite lavishly with a decor appropriate to the house's age - big leather sofa, slightly warped oak bookcase full with volume upon volume of title-less, red and gold leaf bound books and a complete panorama of dusty oil paintings mounted upon the Oak panelling.

Ike just stood in awe at the richly furnished room, which was so different from the parts of the school he'd seen to date. This seemed so different, regal almost...

Jaykes flopped down in one of the leather chairs, causing the air trapped in the cushion to hiss noisily from the seams, attracting Ike's attention.

"Like it?" he asked, already perceiving the answer from the look on the eldest Hanson's face.

"This is awesome, man!" exclaimed Ike, gingerly pulling one of the leather bound volumes from the bookshelf, revelling in the near intoxicating smell of the musty, brittle paper. As he gently leafed through the pages, descriptions of life at the school in the last century began to unfold themselves. One section that particularly grabbed his attention came under the heading "How, then, are the dormitories to be organised?"

"Aw man - can you believe this?" asked Ike as he sat himself down on the sofa adjacent to Jaykes. "It says here that 'all boys are to sleep on their side with their under-side leg semi-folded for stability. Sleeping on the stomach and back is forbidden and will, upon discovery, render the boy open to punishment at the housemaster's and / or headmaster's disgression. Sleeping on the stomach impedes breathing and hence the supply of oxygen to the brain, making the boy prone to idleness in both choir practise and morning class. Sleeping on the back had been proven to induce bad dreams and hence may adversely effect a boy's mental and spiritual development.' What a load of shit! Ermm... I mean rubbish, sir..."

"You'd better believe it," smiled Jaykes. "Our great and glorious founder had some very strange ideals back in 1874. I found some of his old notes and journals while I was cleaning out part of the school's attic. He goes into great depths describing how he'd observed that boys that slept on their backs were far more likely to have wet dreams than their peers who didn't. I spose that's what he meant by 'adversely affecting a boy's spiritual development'. Then again he didn't exactly help matters by punishing anyone who had been caught, or even roumered to have been caught, masturbating."

Ike was a little taken aback by the very frank discussion about 19th century boarding school life, yet found it strangely fascinating.

"I just think it was all a clever ploy, though,"

"Huh? In what way?"

"He was a boy lover."

Ike looked at Jaykes in utter disbelief. "But how... How did he get away with it?"

"No real social services back then. Boys were to be seen and most definitely NOT heard. This place was sold to well-off parents as a radical departure from the 'typical' boarding school of the time such as your Etons and Reptons of this world. He believed - or so he said - that a very subtle balance existed between mind, body, soul and the natural world around us - a balance that could be so easily destroyed by over-emphasis on any one of those components. That's why your brother's stuck in a tent in the Lakes! Anyway, he also suggested that the links between each aspect of life should be fully explored, and much to his delight, he got not a single complaint when he decided to 'investigate' the physical-natural link..."

Ike swallowed hard. "Uhh, how ex... AHEM... exactly did he, uh, 'explore' that one?"

"Skinny-dipping."

"Skinny-dipping?"

"Yeah," chuckled Jaykes, standing up and opening one of the cupboards, revealing a TV, VCR and a bank of video tapes. "Kinda funny, you know - ever since I started digging around with all of this stuff, I seem to have been appointed school archivist! One... of... the... other... things I found" he said, tracing his finger over the spines of the tapes, finally selecting one labelled 'Swimming Pool Corner', "were canister on canister of old black and white 16mm cin' film. It was so old and brittle that I daren't play it, much as I wanted to. I eventually hired one of those jobbies you stick between the projector and your camcorder and managed to transfer the whole lot onto video. Lucky, too - the film was so stiff it actually snapped as it went on to the take-up spool!"

He pulled the tape from its cardboard cover and poked it into his VCR, grabbing the remote from the top of the machine. He walked back over to the sofa and sat himself back down next to Ike and pushed the play button.

A slightly off-white screen appeared with a wide white line rapidly leaping up the screen, the strobing effect sending shadows of the coffee table dancing over Ike's feet in the dimly lit surroundings. After a moment, a picture lurched onto the screen and as the camera struggled to focus, Ike began to recognise as Football Lane.

"Wow! Look at the trees!"

Sure enough, the wooded sides to Footy Lane that he'd seen were no more than shrubs - nothing but open fields could be seen as the camera steadily panned round.

"Woah... Can you wind it back a few seconds?"

Jaykes hit the pause button and began to step backwards frame by frame, the camera retracing its steps.

"There! What's that?" Ike asked, walking up to the TV and pointing at a small stone tower about three feet high with an engraved spiral along it's length.

"Oh, that's an Oahkenstone," explained Jaykes. "It was supposed to signify the intersection of four or more lay-lines. Supposedly had some kind of magical properties like aiding fertility and the ability to grant wishes..."

"Is it still there?"

"I don't think so - when the school initially wanted to build a swimming pool, i.e. after skinny-dipping started to become frowned upon, they were going to build it right on top of the Oahkenstone. I'm not sure what happened, but they decided to change the site of the pool AFTER they'd ripped the stone out. You never know, the bottom half of it may still be buried in the ground..."

Jaykes hit the play button again, the black and white panorama resuming its progress and smiled as Ike sat down cross legged on the rug in front of the TV like a little kid. He watched, enchanted, as the camera played across the games fields that he'd been on that very day - everything looked familiar, yet very different at the same time.

He was so lost in trying to determine the subtle differences that he was quite taken aback when the video cut to a full frontal of a rather well endowed boy preparing to jump off a diving board at a bend in the river. He watched, transfixed, as the athletic form jumped once, twice, three times, spiralling into the air, somersaulting, then disappearing into the grey water to join his friends.

"See what I mean? Try a stunt like that now and every child rights agency in the country would fall on you like a ton of bricks, even if all the lads were willing..."

Ike got up and returned to the sofa, his eyes never wandering from the screen. They continued to watch in silence as the swimming and general tom-foolery continued, even extending to the masters themselves joining in with the boys.

The film progressed to document other sports such as tennis and five- a-side football, the only difference being that the team that was playing in "skins" took the term absolutely - not a stitch of clothing to be seen! Ike smiled to himself, the film reminding him of one of those shitty naturalist videos he'd seen once - the only exception being that there wasn't a single overweight or ugly looking boy anywhere to be seen. This struck him as being quite odd as the law of averages simply would not allow it. Then again, between what Jaykesie had said and the wise-cracks that were going round about "Our Glorious Founder", he simply wouldn't have accepted any ugly kids in the entrance exams, deeming them as "incompatible with the school's ethos, morals and ideals".

Ike jumped as he felt Jaykesie's hand brush through his ponytail and rub round the back of his neck. He suddenly felt very scared - trapped, almost - and it was a feeling he had not felt for a long time: he didn't like it a bit.

"Wh..." Ike's voice failed him, causing him to swallow and mentally kick himself for revealing his intimidated state. "What are you doing, sir?"

Jaykes looked directly at him then pulled his hand away sharply as if he'd been burnt.

"I'm sorry, Isaac... I... I wasn't thinking. That was very unfair of me..."

An uncomfortable silence descended upon them, both pretending to watch the video, but neither doing so. After what seemed like hoursm it was Ike that spoke first.

"I think I'd better go," he said, standing up.

"Yeah... I think that would be best," admitted Jaykes, quite obviously regretting his actions.

"Listen, sir, if you're worried I'm gonna say anything, I won't, OK? You seem like a straight... Um... bad choice - DECENT enough guy - it was a lapse of concentration..." said Ike, walking towards the door.

"Thankyou, Isaac - you're a good lad..."

"I dunno, perhaps under different circumstances... 'Night, sir,"

"Good night, Ike. Sorry..."

"Listen, forget it, man... These things happen. 'Sides," said Ike, a mischevous grin creeping onto his face, "If you were as gorgeous as me, I guess I'd have tried something too!"

Ike shut the door just in time to hear the cushon hit it with a thud.


On to Chapter Fourteen

Back to Chapter Twelve

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The Exchange is © 1999 by Dean Lidster. This work may not be duplicated in any form (physical, electronic, audio, or otherwise) without the author's written permission. All applicable copyright laws apply. All individuals depicted are fictional with any resemblance to real persons being purely coincidental.

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