An Ordinary Boy
by Hamster
Chapter 1: Wordle
Mike Carpenter was waiting for his last class of the morning. In a few minutes twenty thirteen-year-old boys would be charging into his classroom, eager to finish the lesson and leave for the half term break. He had no expectations that any of the boys would have the slightest interest in trying to learn anything as their minds would be on getting out of boarding school and going home to see family and friends for the first time in several weeks.
Mike was also looking forward to the half term break. He had plans to go down to Southampton on Saturday evening and go to one of the gay clubs to see if he could hook up with someone for the night. He remembered the last time he'd been able to go clubbing: he'd met Jose, a young Filipino working on a cruise ship that had to stay overnight to get some repairs. Jose was actually older than Mike by a year, but he looked much younger. He was quite small, a slim build without a spare ounce of fat, almost hairless except for a few straggles under his armpits and a small bush of rather straight pubic hairs. But what Mike remembered most was that Jose was almost insatiable when it came to sex. He loved being fucked, and he loved being fucked as many times as physically possible. Mike found himself more turned on by Jose than he had been for some time, and in the end he fucked Jose at least half a dozen times without either of them getting much sleep.
When Jose had to leave in the morning to go back to his ship, Mike was exhausted. But he had happy memories of their encounter. He knew he wouldn't meet Jose again for some time because his ship was off on a series of cruises around the Mediterranean, but he had hopes of finding someone else who would be an enthusiastic partner for the night.
His reverie was interrupted by the stampede of boys coming into his classroom. They all wore the regulation school uniform of dark blue blazers, white shirt, striped school tie and grey slacks. Although Mike was gay and liked people younger than him, thirteen year olds were too young and too immature both physically and mentally for his liking. He found some of them cute but Mike would prefer them to be three or four years older before he thought they would be more appealing.
"Good morning, everyone. I know it's the last class before you all go home for half term, so I'm sure that none of you want to do any work today. But we have to look as if we're working in case the Headmaster does one of his surprise inspections. So get out your iPads and prepare for a spelling test."
The boys all made obligatory groans and took as long as possible to grope around in their backpacks to get out their tablets. Eventually some form of order was restored, and the boys waited for instructions from Mike.
"OK, who knows how to play Wordle?"
Five boys raised their hands.
"OK, you five are going to be the team captains. You can choose between three and five other boys to be on your team. We're going to have a competition between the five teams, and there's a prize for the winners."
"What's the prize, sir?"
Mike opened his bag and took out a packet of Jaffa Cakes.
"The winners get to share this. Now, you've got two minutes to form your groups."
The prospect of a share of the Jaffa Cakes meant that the groups formed pretty quickly. After all, greed is a strong motivator for pubescent schoolboys: when they manage to think at all, it's likely to be about either food or sex.
More quickly than Mike expected, the boys had formed into five huddles scattered around the classroom.
"If you open up your Google Classroom you'll find an assignment called 'Wordle'. You'll find five squares, and you type in the letters of the word you think is hidden behind the squares. There are always five letters in each word you have to guess. There are two rules: no plural words ending in 's', and no proper nouns. You know, no names or place names. When you've typed in your five letters then hit 'enter' and the squares will turn into three different colours: green means you've got the right letter in the right place, yellow means you've got the right letter but it's in the wrong place, and grey means that letter isn't in the word you trying to guess. You get six tries to guess the word. Your captain can help if you don't understand as he's supposed to know how to play. Any questions?"
There was a chorus of 'no sirs' from the class.
"OK, time to start your first guess for the first word I've chosen. Go!"
Mike sat back and watched as each group frantically tried to agree on what would be the best word to start with: the captains knew it should contain five different letters so as to find as many correct letters as possible, and probably contain several vowels because every word has vowels.
When all the teams had made their first guess, Mike let them move on to the next guess, and so on, until finally one of the captains' arms shot up into the air.
"Sir, sir, we've got the word!"
"You've got five green boxes?"
"Yes, sir!"
"OK, what have you got"
"It's 'pussy', sir!"
"Very, good, you're correct! Was anyone else very close?"
"That wasn't fair, sir, we didn't know you could have double letters in the word."
"If it wasn't allowed I'd have said so at the beginning. Better luck next time!"
Mike started them off on the second word. As he did so, there was a knock on the door.
"Come in!"
The door opened and a boy from the senior school came into the classroom.
"Message for you, sir, from the Headmaster."
Mike opened the note he was given, read it through, and nodded.
"OK, thank you. Just tell his secretary I'll be there as requested."
"Thank you, sir."
With that the boy left the room. Mike wondered why the Headmaster had summoned him to his office as soon as the class was finished. He didn't like the Headmaster, and the Headmaster resented Mike's presence at the school. When the regular English teacher for the junior school had been diagnosed with cancer at the end of the Autumn term and had been obliged to stop teaching unexpectedly during his chemotherapy, Mike had taken over the role on a temporary basis for the Spring and Summer terms. The Headmaster, Colonel Carruthers, didn't like temporary staff who he couldn't control as easily as permanent staff, and he was a well-known homophobe. It was no secret even before he took the job that Mike was gay, and the Headmaster only agreed to his appointment because there was nobody else immediately available. They'd hardly spoken to each other for the past five months, so being summoned to the Headmaster's office really surprised and bothered Mike.
"We're ready for the next guess, sir!"
"Sorry, I got distracted. Go!"
The boys all huddled again. As the rounds progressed there were more heated discussions within each group. Mike heard lots of people saying 'no' or 'it can't be' or 'no, he wouldn't allow that' and some saying 'go on', try it' and similar encouragements. Eventually, after five rounds of guessing, another captain's arm shot up.
"We've got it, sir, we've got five greens, but we're not sure we're right!"
"If you've got five greens you must be right! What's your word? Don't be shy!"
The captain looked very nervous, and he turned bright red. He was one of the cuter boys in the class, with ginger hair, lots of freckles, and very green eyes. Mike liked him because he was a bit more mature than most of the boys in the class. Eventually he got up enough courage, and with a couple of false starts, and ums and ers, he spoke up.
"Sir, um, the word we've got, er, is, um, well we've got five greens, sir, and, um, the word, sir, please don't get mad, sir, well, er, it's, um, er, 'penis', sir!"
The rest of the boys burst out laughing. There's nothing like dirty words to make thirteen year olds start giggling.
"That's correct!"
The boys kept on giggling, and whispering to each other, and looking at Mike with big grins on their faces. Another captain spoke up.
"We thought about that, sir, but we didn't dare try it cos we thought you'd be angry with us for saying a dirty word in school, sir!"
"It's half term so I think I can bend the rules a little! OK, we've got time for one more word before lunch. Go!"
Almost immediately the captain of the first group shouted out.
"We've got it, sir, first guess!"
"Well done! I wondered if someone would spot the trend! What did you put?"
"'Sperm' sir!"
The whole class roared with laughter.
"Sir, that was fun! Can we play again after half term?"
"Maybe, we'll see!"
Mike waved the Jaffa Cakes at the winning team and in no time the wrapper was torn off and the contents were gobbled up. Mike let the boys mess around until the bell rang.
"OK, class dismissed! Enjoy half term!"
The boys grabbed their backpacks and rushed for the door. Several of them said 'thanks' to Mike and wished him a good half term. Mike was sure he heard one by whisper 'worldle would be a good nickname for him', and he knew it would stick. He hoped he hadn't overstepped the mark, but with only a few weeks before he left the school he wasn't too worried. He was much more worried about what the Headmaster wanted with him.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
