Page 9

The circle shifted again, and gradually the room softened. Even the boy with the shirt tied around his head stepped forward twice. He seemed cautious, and there was a special kind of vibe I got from him. He liked to stick out, or maybe he didn’t like it but he sure as hell couldn’t help it.

“Name?” I asked him.

“Trevor.”

“Age?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fashion crime?”

He touched the shirt around his head. “I like it.”

“It’s certainly occurring.”

A boy beside him snorted while looking me up and down. His eyes paused on my coral shorts, then the thin gold chain at my throat. “So are you, like, the girl counselor? Playing house for the summer together?”

The laughter came quickly, and it was the kind of laughter kids used when they were out for blood.

Darius’s posture changed beside the chairs and his usual stick-up-the-ass expression got even straighter. I felt it before I saw it. The way his shoulders went rigid, his hands curling in on themselves.

I lifted one finger in his direction without looking at him. Don’t you dare go anywhere.

He stayed put, and I turned towards the little teenage fuck. “No,” I said. “But I understand your confusion. You’ve probably never met a man who moisturizes.”

A few girls giggled into their palms, and the bully-dick’s face flushed.

Another boy leaned towards him and whispered, “He’s gay, dumbass. Clearly a faggot.”

The word hit the room. Oh, what wonderful vocabulary these heathens had learned.

Despite the familiarity I had with it, I felt the slur slip beneath my ribs with its practiced accuracy. The recreation hall blurred, and for one ugly second, I wasn’t standing in front of fifty-something teenagers…

I was sitting on the ground in the rain, blood dripping from my mouth, my ears echoing with the word my dad spewed like poison before his hand tried to strike it free of my soul.

Faggot.

The small window light above me turned on, and it became my damn beacon of hope in that moment.

I didn’t think. I stood from the ground and wiped my bloody face on my t-shirt. Someone had moved in not long ago. And I knew that particular window belonged to the little boy not much older than I was.

Darius’s eyes had sparkled that night. The moon reflecting off those dark pools when he saw me climb into his room.

My chest tightened, and the memory broke as the fan rattled. Someone coughed from the silence around me and I looked down at my hands. No blood. No bruises.

I was twenty years old. Not eight. I was safe-ish. Not trapped.

I lifted my chin. “Correct,” I told the shitty little fuck.

He blinked.

I placed both hands on my hips. “Devastatingly gay, I’m afraid.”

A girl near the window covered her mouth to hide a smile, and bandana-shirt boy (self-identified as Trevor) smirked as he shifted into the back of the crowd.

I continued, my voice growing louder the closer I got to the bullies. “Violently homosexual. Aggressively moisturized and I lost my virginity to my Michael Jackson poster.”

The room broke into wheezes and snorts. Even some of the jocks laughed.