Monday

My eyes unwillingly opened at the shrill sound of my alarm clock, 6:30 on the dot. I let the noise ring in my ears for a while, bringing my brain back to reality. As I became more and more conscious, the black abyss that I called my life came more into focus, and I felt like vomiting. That was usually how the morning went. I turned the alarm clock off and squeezed my eyes shut one last time before getting up and heading for the bathroom as quietly as I could. If I woke my dad up this early, he would scream at me all morning, and continue to scream at me the next weekend I stayed.

            Mondays weren’t all that bad, because they meant that I got to go back to my mom’s house. I suppose I had that to be optimistic about, but the optimism was canceled out by the mere fact that that was the only thing I had to be optimistic about.

            I quietly closed the door to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Too pale, too skinny, dark circles under my eyes, too girly looking…The internal hits to my nonexistent self esteem was endless. I ran a hand through my stupid, boring brown hair and rolled my eyes.

            I had to time myself perfectly so that my dad and I made absolutely no contact whatsoever before I left for school. If he saw the clothes I wore… I double checked my outfit in the mirror: red and pink plaid button-down, black skinny jeans, blue boating shoes. He’d probably threaten to set the clothes on fire with me wearing them. I grabbed my backpack and cell phone and dodged out the door just in time.

            I walked through a lot of alleyways and backstreets to get to school, in order to put off any more contact with the kids from my school than was completely necessary- especially the lacrosse team. Except for Collin, obviously. He was the only person on the lacrosse team (and virtually the only person in the whole school) who was voluntarily friends with me. I didn’t understand it, but Collin and I had hit it off from the first day of the 6^th grade (he was in 7th grade) when he started tutoring me in English- we hit it off right away. Our friendship was extremely weird, but it worked. The problem was, it didn’t work in the eyes of his fellow teammates. They thought it was the funniest thing in the world that big, tough lacrosse star, Collin Drake actually liked to hang out with little queer Tony.

            “So, he sucks you off so that you’ll say you guys are bro’s, right?” they love to ask Collin. He’ll say no, and tell them to stop, and even yells at them sometimes, but they only laugh more. That situation was about #1 on my list of things I’d given up hope on.

            As I approached the school, I heard Wyatt Roben call over to me as if he could read my mind.

            “Aisely! Doesn’t your mom get mad when you wear her clothes?” he and his primitive group of friends laughed. I kept walking, but turned back around when I heard Collin’s voice, trying to shut them all up.

            “F**k you, dude,” Wyatt said to Collin as he left the group and walked toward me. He flipped him the bird as he smiled and joined me as we entered the building.

            “Aren’t you worried that someday, they’re going to, I dunno, reject you from the group and never talk to you again?” I asked.

            “I don’t know. I guess I don’t really care… I mean, I’ve got you, so,” he shrugged.

            “Oh no,” I chuckled.

            “What?” he asked, turning to face me.

             “The gayness… it’s contagious,” I joked. He shoved my shoulder slightly.

            “Shut up, no it’s not,” he frowned. I raised my eyebrows at him. “F**k you!” he exclaimed jokingly. I laughed, but it was cut short.

            I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I just about tripped and face-planted the floor as the sensation of needles in my stomach overwhelmed me. Did I dare turn my head and look at him? I took my chances, and tried to play it off as just cracking my neck.

            There he was, Ryan Lane, in the flesh. I could feel it- for a split second, it was as if there was no one else in the school except for him. The crowded, busy noises of the hallways were gone, and the stupid, insignificant teenagers were completely invisible. There was only him and every perfect detail that made up who he was.

            “Tony? Hello?” Collin said, bringing me back down to Earth. “Are you going to open the locker, or…?”

            “Sorry,” I mumbled, proceeding to turn the dial in the right sequence of numbers. It was hard to focus on anything else with him lingering within such a short distance from me. I was only hearing bits and pieces of what Collin was saying.

            “…at your mom’s house tonight?” I heard him say.

            “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” I asked,

            “Jesus Christ Tony, you literally never listen to a goddamn thing I say. Are we hanging out at your mom’s house tonight?” he repeated himself, raising a dark eyebrow at me.

            “Yeah, I guess,” I said, closing the locker and glancing over at Ryan again. He was talking to a fellow junior and the guitarist in the band he was in, The Revenge. He was smiling and using his hands a lot as he spoke. The late bell rang, and he touched the other guy on the shoulder before he turned and walked toward the art studio. I briefly wondered what the other guy’s name was before heading to my own class.

            Being a freshman, I didn’t really get to take any fun classes, just a lot of boring, required classes. That made school even more synonymous with torture, if that was possible. We were only about a week and a half into the school year, but I couldn’t stand it. I caught on to the whole “high school” thing way before my fellow classmates, since I hung out with Collin and Annie who were a year older than I was, and taught me the tricks of the trade.

            I didn’t stop thinking about Ryan for the rest of the day. I saw him again, as always, between 4^th and 5^th period, walking with his brother, Matt. Collin had a few classes with Matt, because they were in the same year, but he was a “blend into the background” kind of guy. I, of course, respected that.

            After the final bell rang, I met up with Collin and Annie in the courtyard. 
            “Hey Tony,” Annie greeted me, smiling.

            “Hi,” I said to Annie and nodded to Collin, who was staring off into space with his weird expression that he got from time to time. He never used to do that up until the previous summer, and it sort of freaked me out. Annie and I looked at each other and glanced back at Collin, knowing what the other was thinking: “What the hell is going on with him?”

            “Should we go? We should go. Come on, Collin. I bet Tony has pizza rolls,” Annie said, tugging on Collin’s tee shirt sleeve. I nodded.

            Annie told us about her Social Studies class that she was excited about as she and her strawberry blonde curls bounced alongside us. I nodded and smiled at her every once in a while, but my mind was in a billion different places. What’s really wrong with Collin? What would he think if he found out about Ryan? What is Ryan doing right now? We walked through the driveway of my mom’s big brick house and hopped up the back porch stairs. I frowned as I noticed the flowers in the pots on the porch were beginning to wilt, and I could already hear my baby brother crying from inside the house.

            We dropped our backpacks in the den and walked over to the kitchen.

            “Hi mom,” we all said, almost in unison. My friends liked to refer to my mom as their mom also, because of her all-around motherly nature towards everyone. She was trying to get something out of the garbage disposal with one hand, and console my crying 1 year old half brother in her other arm. Annie quickly took the baby from my mom and bounced him on her hip.

            “Hi Alex! Aw, baby, shh,” Annie said, brushing a tear off of Alex’s face. He shut up almost instantly, putting one of Annie’s curls in his mouth and making happy gurgling noises.

            “Thank you hon,” My mom said to Annie, pulling the chicken bone out of the sink that she had been searching for. “How was everyone’s day?” she asked. We all responded with some form of a groaning noise as I took the pizza rolls out of the freezer and put them on a plate. Annie walked over to where Collin was sitting on a barstool, and he helped remove her piece of hair from the baby’s mouth. I put the plate in the microwave.

            “You look cute today, sweetie,” my mom said, smiling and kissing the top of my head.

            “Thank you,” I mumbled, feeling a bit of happiness sneak into me. 

            Annie returned Alex to my mom, and the three of us went up to my room to eat and watch TV.

            “Tony, why do you keep pens and pencils underneath your pillow?” Annie asked, holding up the writing utensils she’d just discovered.

            “I-I dunno,” I stuttered, feeling my face heat up. I couldn’t very well tell her, “I keep them there to write letters to the boy I’m in love with every night because I can’t talk to him, because he would think I was a freak, so I just write him letters that he’ll never know about.” I felt my face heat up a little.

            “I-I dunno,” She said, mocking me in a nasally, high-pitched voice. She put the pen and pencil on the floor, and turned her attention back to the TV. I exhaled.

            No one could ever know, and so far, I had maintained that. Annie especially couldn’t know. If she found out about how pathetically obsessed I was with Ryan Lane, she would ridicule me. I wouldn’t be able to handle that.

            After Collin and Annie left for dinner, the darkness inside of me really started to set in. I ate, did my homework, and laid in bed, looking at the ceiling and thinking about Ryan.

            I thought about what it would be like to touch his silky, perfectly messy raven colored hair… what it would be like to touch every inch of his flawless body… to press my lips to his, and for him to touch every inch of me back. Even as I slid my hand underneath the waistband of my pants, the darkness still hovered over me.

 

            Dear Ryan,

            When I saw you this morning, for some reason, I thought back to the first time I ever saw you. I was in eighth grade, you were a sophomore. I guess it was just a year ago, but most of the time, it feels like it was a hundred years ago.

            I remember seeing you, and almost wanting to cry. It felt like I was being electrocuted or something. Your band was playing the annual talent show over at the church by my middle school. I went with Annie just for the hell of it, even though I knew I’d be the only person in middle school there. We walked in and mingled with some people while the s****y opening band played. I remember I was about to say something to Annie, but the words I wanted to say disappeared from my brain completely because I looked through the crowd, to where you were over by the staircase, and all of the air in my lungs was suddenly gone. When they introduced you on stage, your name rang in my ears for the rest of the night.

            It’s still ringing in my ears now.

 

            Love,

            Anthony

Reviews

[buoyantMaureen]

Me again! Thought I would get a look at your second chapter too!

Tiny note: I don’t think that anyone with self-esteem issues would describe their hair as “golden brown”, well, not golden anyway.

Sorry, I don’t think someone who describes themselves as “tragically mature” is very… mature. He’s acting perfectly for his age. I mean, physically, yes, I understand. But using phrases like: “the darkness inside me”… be careful not to use those too often.

You said that Tony, a freshmen, hangs out with Colin, a sophomore, but you also said they were in the 6th grade together.

You got me hooked on the Colin staring off into space thing. I’m totally looking forward to hearing about that.

Here’s an example: ““Thank you,” I mumbled, feeling a bit of happiness sneak into me. I was just so relieved to be away from my dad.” You don’t need the second sentence. We’ve been with Tony at his dad’s, we’ve heard him said a half a dozen times that he doesn’t like being as his dad’s. We understand the implication: you’re setting up a contrast between the two homes. That’s good, but don’t feel the need to explain it to us, ok? We’ll get it. so you don’t have to mention Tony’s relationship with his dad so often.

Tony’s a cutie. I hope everything works out for him!