Chords and Discord

RIVERTON REBELS

Chords and Discord

  They call it “R-SALT,” but in reality it is the Riverton School for Alternative Lifestyle Teens. But, of course, R-SALT rolls off the tongue a whole lot easier. The other name just tried to hide what the new school was. It's a school for gay kids. Built after what had come to be known as “The Lorenze Incident” around our town, R-SALT was mired in controversy from the very minute that it was even suggested.

The LGBT community and the straight community alike were divided. Some LGBT citizens said that it would be a safe haven for the students who otherwise would be bullied into depression. Others said it would only ostracize students and it was an excuse to avoid the issue and the teaching of tolerance in the school system. The straight community argued that it was unfair to build us a school while the other kids were stuck in centuries-old Riverton High. Others were willing to pay extra tax dollars to get the fags away from their precious “normal” sons and daughters.

My name is Liam Vale and, yes, I am gay. But it's not my fault that I had to go to R-SALT in the first place. I was completely and perfectly happy being in the closet, having nobody know that I was gay, and staying at my old school. I would much rather have stayed there with all my friends than uproot my entire school and social system in order to move into a school that I knew next to nothing about. Helen Veltry changed all that for me, though.

I was walking out of my first-hour geometry class when I bumped into another student. Since I was looking down, I looked up slowly and saw a tall, rather muscular guy standing in my way. Tan with dark hair and pretty brown eyes; he was easy to look at to say the least. I stared a bit longer than I should have, lost in a trance, before I heard a shrill voice. “Take a picture, fag. It'll last longer.” It was then that I noticed Helen standing right next to the attractive boy. Since I had Health with her third hour, I was more than used to hearing anti-homosexual garbage coming from her mouth on an almost daily basis, not to mention the numerous other times I had heard it around the small town that I lived in. I shrugged the comment off and walked on, not really paying attention to her.

Second hour, I had Band in which I played the Oboe. I was the only Oboe in either band and, due to it's reputation as the least masculine instrument this side of the flute, I had taken a lot of teasing and bullying over that. I never really cared though. I didn't play music to impress other people. I played music because it was something that I loved. In music, everybody is equal. Age, race, sexuality, and personal lives all get thrown out the window when you listen to or play music. Nobody thinks “oh, this guy is good at that instrument for a gay kid.” Music, for me, has always been a way to forget all my worries and troubles. When I sit in the middle of a good band and am able to play music with the rest of them, it's a bonding experience. My notes connect with the notes of others, creating beautiful chords that weave into tapestries of amazing sound. It's almost like our souls reach out and connect to each other. Without saying a word or making any signs to each other, we know what to play, how to play it, and what to do. It truly is an amazing experience the likes of which I can't explain.

Third hour was always a completely different story, though. I had Health with some of the most obnoxious, annoying, assholes in the history of high school. “Hey, that's the fag that was checking out my boyfriend this morning,” I heard Helen say to her friends as I walked into the room. I looked around hopefully, but the teacher had yet to arrive. I just took my seat, as far away from her as I could, and waited for my friends to sit with me. They took their seats, and I quickly lost myself in conversation with them.

Throughout class, I heard the occasional snicker from the other side of the room as I'm sure a not-so-subtle joke was made about me. I ignored them, though, as I tried to pay attention to the notes that were being presented to me. I never told any of my friends what happened, though. I didn't want them knowing that I was gay.

After class, I left as quickly as possible to beat the lunch rush. It was a proven strategy that worked almost every day. That day, however, was different from any other day I had before, or would have since. “Fag, where ya going?” I heard the screeching voice of Helen call out over the bustling crowd. I just ignored her, until I felt a pencil scrape against the skin just above my ear as it was hurled at the side of my head.

I turned to my left and saw Helen sneering at me from the crowd. “What the hell is your problem?” I yelled at her.

“Don't be talking to my girl like that!” her boyfriend growled at me as he stepped out of the crowd next to her.

“Then tell the bitch to back off of me,” I said boldly. He pushed me against the wall, and I grunted. I was never one for fighting, but I sure knew how to defend myself. He punched towards my head, and I moved out of the way before grabbing his other arm and wrenching it behind his back and slamming him into the wall.

The principal was pulling me off of him within seconds, demanding answers. “He tried to attack me,” I told him, but none of the other students would back me up. We were taken to the office separately and both told that we were both to be suspended. When I told the principal about Helen calling me a fag and that that's what the whole situation stemmed from, he told me that I was still suspended for a week and that he would be giving my father a call.

That call, as a matter of fact, came the very next day. Dad was already in a bad mood when I told him that I was suspended. He didn't blame me for defending myself when I was attacked, but he told me that I shouldn't have argued with Helen. Ever since I had come out to him, shortly after Mom passed away, he told me to keep it secret from school. “I don't have a problem with it,” he had told me seriously. “But we don't exactly live in a gay-friendly town. People aren't going to be nearly as accepting of your lifestyle as I am.” So, when the call came and my principal suggested to him that I go to the alternative school, he was not for it at all.

“Your principal just called me,” he told me as I walked into the kitchen.

“What did he say? Can I go back to school tomorrow?” I asked hopefully. I could tell by his face, however, that that wasn't the case.

“He suggested that you go to the other high school.”

“The...the gay school?” I had heard of R-SALT being built over the summer after what happened to Gabe Lorenze, and had known a few guys before they had gone to it, but had heard nothing of it from them since they went.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “But it's not like you have to go or anything. I don't think that it's a good idea for you to label yourself that way until you really know for sure.”

I rolled my eyes. It was a long-standing argument between the two of us. “Dad, I promise you, I am a homosexual. There is no doubt about it.”

“You can't say that, Liam. You're only fifteen!”

“Dad, why are you fighting this so much?” I asked him. “Is it so bad that you have a gay son? Would you rather me be a murderer or a rapist? As long as I'm raping girls, right?”

Dad glared at me, and I instantly knew that I had gone too far. Ever since we lost Mom four months ago, my relationship with Dad had been strained to say the least. It looked like we were about to launch into another one of our infamous arguments.

“Liam, you know that is not what this is about. I don't care that you're one of them. It's the fact that you have to broadcast it to everybody you know that worries me.”

“One of them?” I asked standing up. “What do you mean by that, Dad?”

“You know exactly what I meant. I didn't want to offend you.”

“Well, I didn't know you were one of them.”

“I am your father, and you have no right to talk to me like that.”

“Stop being such a dictator,” I told him. “You're not this...god that you think you are! You're not any more in control of things than I am. I shouldn't have to hide who I am just because of the way that people think of it. And, for the record, I haven't been acting any differently now than I did before I came out.”

“The way you talk, the way you walk, the way you act, it's all become so...gay,” he said to me.

“What are you talking about dad?” I asked. “I haven't changed at all since I came out to you. Maybe you notice it more, but that's only because you're turning into a homophobic ass!”

“Liam, you stop talking like that this instant,” he growled at me. “I am not homophobic. Maybe I'm not as young as you are, and a bit stuck in my ways, but I'm trying to change. I'm trying to do right by you and Brandon and make you boys happy.”

“Dad, I'm tired of fighting with you.” I took deep breaths between almost each and every word.

“I'm tired of fighting too,” he said calming down slowly.

“If you don't want me to go to R-SALT, I guess I'll stay at Riverton High. But I can't take back the things I said, even if I wanted to. And I'm not going to change for any of them.”

“Would you rather change schools?” he asked.

“I don't know dad. I think it would be a lot easier for me to get along with people and concentrate on my grades and work.”

“Well we need to make the decision by tomorrow afternoon,” he told me.

“I'll give you my decision at dinner tonight,” I told him before leaving the room.

That night at dinner my dad and I had dinner with my 4-year-old little brother Brandon. He was completely absorbed in his chicken and potatoes, and didn't pay us any attention as we talked. “So you're really sure you want to go to the new school?” my dad asked me.

I nodded. “Yeah, dad. I'm tired of those other people. And I don't think I'll have as many problems at R-SALT.”

“You know you're leaving all your friends behind?”

“They're still in town,” I reminded him. “We can still hang out and see each other.”

“But will they want to once they know you're gay?”

I shrugged. “If they don't, then I don't really care about what they think.”

“Those who mind don't matter,”

“and those who matter don't mind,” I finished the quote. “Quoting Doctor Seuss to a high school student?” I asked him.

The next day, Dad called my principal and told him our decision. Dad said he sounded relieved, but I don't know why he would care that much. He told Dad that my schedule would be sent over to R-SALT, and replicated with as much accuracy as it could be. I received my schedule a few days later on Saturday, and was told that I was to start at my new school on Monday.

I felt strange getting on the bus that Monday morning. It was a new bus full of new people, most of whom I had never seen before. I wondered what they saw when they looked at me. I didn't think I was anything special. Short brown hair and green eyes, I was average height at about five-foot-ten and had a non-impressive build. The only thing that could possibly be considered unusual about me was that I had glasses, being unable to switch to contacts due to something that was messed up in my eyes, which I never fully understood.

I took a seat a few rows back, by a very attractive boy with medium-length auburn hair, who was looking out the window. “Hi,” I said in what I hoped to be a cheerful tone. “I'm Liam.” The boy didn't reply. 'Well, that's rude,' I thought to myself before seeing him pull out an mp3 player. He pressed a button and quickly put it back into his pocket. I noticed then a class ring on his finger. He was likely a junior, or maybe even a senior. I also spotted a wire trailing from that pocket up to his ears. He likely didn't hear me.

He stared out the window until we pulled into the school parking lot, where everybody scrambled off the bus as quickly as they could. I was the last one off the bus, following after the boy who I had failed to start a conversation with. I pulled the school map out of the side pocket on my backpack and made my way through the crowd and into the front of the large, newly-constructed building.

The first thing I saw was two boys making out with each other against one wall of the foyer. The boy against the wall wrapped one of his legs around the aggressor's as their kissing reached a new fever. An older female came over quickly and told the two boys to “knock it off.”

“Excuse me,” I said as I approached her. She looked like she would know her way around the school, as she apparently worked there.

“Yes, can I help you?”

“Do you know the way to room number 45?” I asked.

“Well I should hope so, seeing as how I'm the principal.” She extended her round hand to me with a kind smile. “Mrs. Stone, at your service.” I shook her hand awkwardly. “I assume you're our new student?”

I nodded. “Yes, ma'am. Liam Vale.”

“Liam?” one of the kissing boys asked. His head poked out around that of his attacker's, and I immediately recognized the face. He hadn't seemed to grow as much as you would expect after not seeing somebody for seven years. His face was still slightly rounded, and framed by long, dark hair. It fell over one of his eyes and he brushed it back, revealing the bright green orbs that I remembered from my early childhood. He was fairly short for our age, and about as thin as you could be while still being in a healthy weight range.

“Jake? Jake Westwick?”

The raven-haired boy grinned as he stepped away from the one in the backwards cap and embraced me with surprising endearment. “I didn't expect to find you here,” I told him. “Didn't you move to Birmingham?”

“Yeah,” he said, pulling out of the hug after a few awkward moments. “I still live there. Dad still has his job and whatnot, but I come here so that I can go to school.”

“That's quite a bit of a drive so that you can come to this school.”

“Oh, I don't drive all the way from Birmingham, silly,” he responded, touching my chest as he said it. “I live with Tommy and go back up there for weekends.”

“Who's Tommy?” I asked confused, and the muscular boy with whom Jake was making out approached me. He was definitely a looker, almost the exact opposite of Jake. Tall and muscular, with short brown hair and brown eyes, he was one of the more attractive boys I had seen in a while.

“Tommy Reynolds,” he said, offering his hand to shake. I did, and immediately noticed how strong his grip was.

“Do you want to know where that room is?” Mrs. Stone asked me, somewhat impatiently.

“It's ok,” Jake responded for me. “I can show him where it is.”

She looked at me, and I nodded. She walked off, apparently happy so long as I was getting to my class. “So what's new since third grade?” I asked Jake. We had some time to kill before first hour would begin, and I needed to catch up with an old friend.

“Well, obviously, I'm gay now.”

I laughed at that and smiled. “I never woulda figured by the way Tommy's tongue was halfway down your throat.”

“Jealous?” he teased.

“Oh, definitely,” I sarcastically responded.

“So you're gay too, huh?” I nodded my confirmation. “Not everyone here's gay, ya know. Tommy boy here is only bi, as a matter of fact. He coulda stayed at the other school, he's so tough,” the slightly effeminate boy cooed.

“Why didn't you?” I asked.

“Easier to get on sports teams here,” he responded with a chuckle. His voice was octaves deeper than Jake's. While Jake still sounded almost like a child, Tommy was definitely closer to being a man.

“So what's it like here?” I asked the two.

“It's really not all that different from a regular school,” Jake told me. “Classes are smaller, guys are hotter, and you can do things like me and Tommy were, but that's about it.”

“It doesn't feel like I expected it to,” I told him. As I looked around, the population of the school wasn't all that different from that which I was used to. There were a few obviously gay males thrown in, and a couple of girls with crew cuts, but it was hardly the pride festival that I was expecting. There were still your obvious groups of jocks, rednecks, punk kids, etc.

“What did you expect, to walk in and be attacked by Chippendale's dancers who rip your clothes off and have their way with you?”

“It would have been a nice change of pace,” I admitted before turning a nice shade of crimson. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that.”

“Relax, kid,” Tommy laughed. “It's all good here.”

The bell rang, and Jake kissed Tommy quickly on the mouth. “That's our signal that I need to get your ass to class,” he told me. “I'll see you at lunch babe.”

Tommy walked off, and Jake unashamedly hooked his arm in mine. “So what class do you have first?” he asked brightly.

“Uh, it's...geometry in room 45.” I was taken aback by Jake. This wasn't the boy I remembered leaving in third grade to move to the big city. Back then we hardly ever touched. Sure, he'd spent the night at my house a few times, and I at his, but I don't even remember us hugging before he left. Now he didn't even think twice before touching me.

“Ugh, Thompson,” the thin boy grunted. “I don't have a very high opinion of him.”

“Why not?” I asked as we walked.

“He called me a slut once. Not that it's not true, but I don't need teachers saying it.”

I blushed slightly as we walked until we got to room number 45. “Okay, here we are. If you need any more help, just let me know.” He stood on his tip-toes to kiss my cheek before quickly scampering off through the crowd without providing me a way to “just let him know” if I needed any more help.

I touched my cheek where he kissed me, and walked into the class. “Ah, you must be Mr. Vale,” an older male said as soon as I entered the room. He was a portly man, with a mustache that made him look quite a bit like a walrus.

“Yes, sir,” I responded with a smile. “I hope I haven't missed much in the class.”

“We were just covering the pythagorean theorom,” he informed me. “Here's your book.”

I took the book and walked to the seat where he directed me, next to a blonde boy with thick-rimmed glasses. “Hey,” he said brightly. “I'm Landon. Can you banter with me for a few minutes?”

“I, uh...what?”

He used the pen in his left hand to point at the notebook folded open on his desk before him. “I need to get some practice with witty banter to make my characters more believable.”

“I kinda need to pay attention to the teacher,” I told him awkwardly.

“Stickler for the rules, eh?” he had an extremely fast way of talking, forcing me to take a few seconds to analyze his last sentence before I was able to reply.

“I just don't wanna fail all my new classes.”

“Don't worry. You couldn't fail Thompson's class if you smacked him in the face with a fish.”

“Is that something people do often?”

“Only in my dreams.”

“I'm Liam, by the way.”

“Ah, fresh meat,” he replied with a grin. “Welcome to R-SALT after your assault.”

“What makes you think I was assaulted?” I asked Landon.

“Nine times out of ten, people in this school are here for getting their ass kicked. I mean I know that people call school prison, but this is ridiculous. It's like the powers that be say,” he adopted a deeper voice to imitate the school board members, “'how can we punish all the little queers and homos? Send em to a school by themselves so that we can get rid of 'em.' Ooh, that's good!” He picked up his pen and scribbled down a few lines before turning to look at me again.

“I somehow doubt that the school board plans on ways to get us away from their kids,” I told him. “I think it's a good idea that we have this school. It's safer for us here.”

“That's what they want you to think,” he responded, a gleam in his eye. “But it's all just a part of another conspiracy. It all started with Loch Ness.”

I rolled my eyes and turned my attention back to Mr. Thompson, who was going over some theorems that I had learned at Riverton already. I quickly realized that he was as boring as any other teacher I had ever had the misfortune to listen to, and laid my head down on my folded arms. He had a way of not finishing the ends of his words, leaving you with the impression that he was either too lazy to care, or that he was so out of shape that a third syllable was just too much for his old body to handle.

Mr. Thompson talked right up until the bell, and only assigned homework as it was ringing, much to the dismay of the class. “Liam, what lunch do you have?” Landon asked me once the two of us were out in the hallway. I consulted my schedule, and was slightly perturbed to see him reading it over my shoulder. “Oh, you've got the same one as me! We should eat together. Meet me at the table just to the left when you come out of the line.” He was off in a flash before I even had a chance to deny him. I didn't particularly want to eat lunch with Landon, but he was the only friend I had made so far aside from Jake, and I didn't know where he would eat.

The band at R-SALT was not even close to what I was used to playing with. The teacher, a small red-haired man with glasses who I judged to be in his late forties, had control of his class for about twenty minutes of the hour-long class. The rest of the time was spent making random noises on instruments, flirting with each other, or just sitting in chairs staring at the ceiling. Needless to say, I left in a much worse mood than I was in at the beginning.

Third hour passed uneventfully. I didn't know anybody in the class, and it was fairly boring. I had too much free time and, as my mind usually does when it's unoccupied, it wandered. I started wondering if changing to R-SALT was a good decision. I was at a school full of gay teens and their supporters where I could finally be myself, but I had to wonder if it was really who I was. I shook the thoughts from my head as class ended. I had made my decision, and now I had to live with it. No point wondering about the past.

I walked into the masses of students making their way slowly to their next classes. I pulled out the tiny, almost unintelligible map that I was mailed when I enrolled and tried to find my way from my class to the cafeteria for lunch. I was suddenly hit by a pair of arms, which wrapped around my waist from behind. “Hey there,” I heard Jake say in my ear.

“Better watch out,” I joked. “That was almost rape.”

“It's not rape, it's a surprise hug from behind,” he responded with a grin. I just rolled my eyes. “You got first lunch, right? You're totally eating with me.” Before I had a chance to protest, Jake grabbed me by my arm and started dragging me through the crowd. I held onto my falling backpack with my other arm, doing my best to apologize to the people that Jake pushed our way through.

“Jake, this is a bad first impression,” I told him as he dragged me into the large, open building that was the cafeteria.

“Why's that?” he asked innocently. “They won't even remember you here within ten minutes.”

“Oh that's reassuring,” I sarcastically replied. We went to the line and saw Tommy there, a few people from the end.

“Tommy boy!” Jake called out. Tommy pushed a small boy behind him to the side, and the spot was quickly filled by Jake, who dragged me in with him. Jake wrapped his arms around Tommy's bigger frame as we made our way through the line.

I got a slice of pizza and a cup of fruit, two of the only things I could tell what they were, and I followed the two apparent boyfriends to an empty table. I sat across from them and listened to their easy conversation, having nothing to contribute from myself. “Hey, I thought you were gonna eat with me,” I heard a voice whine from behind me as Landon settled himself into a chair beside me.

“Sorry,” I responded. “I kinda got dragged here.”

“Hey,” Jake protested. “You didn't exactly fight it!”

“Hi,” Landon replied animatedly. “I'm Shake, creative genius.” He reached across the table and shook Jake's hand as I wondered if the twitchy teen had ever heard of decaf.

“I thought you said your name was Landon?” I interrupted.

“Real name Landon Isert,” he rattled. “Codename Shake. As in Shakespeare. As in amazing literary mind, the likes of which have never been seen again. Until now.”

“Jake Westwick,” Jake replied. “Sexual genius.”

“I can attest to that,” Tommy submitted.

My cheeks turned a shade of red, and Landon elbowed me playfully in the side. “I think we got a virgin on our hands!” he teased me. He stood up and I heard a large intake of air, but I pulled him back into his seat before he was able to do whatever it was he planned.

“So what if I am?” I asked defensively.

“Hell, if I left you alone for a half hour with Jake, we could change that,” Tommy told me easily. “Tommy Baker.” He shook Landon's hand.

“Wait a minute, aren't you and Jake together?” I asked looking at him.

“Sorta,” Jake told me with a shrug. “But it's open.”

“Oh, ok,” I responded. I was sure my uneasiness played at the edge of my voice.

“What?” Jake asked defensively. “You don't think that it's right or something?”

“No, it's not that,” I told him. I was quickly being put on the defensive. “It's just...I could never see myself being in one of those. I think that if I had a boyfriend, I'd only want to have that one boyfriend.” I looked to my left and saw Landon scribbling something on his notepad. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

“That was a good line. I wanna use it in a story.”

I rolled my eyes and before long the bell rang, signaling an end to the lunch period. We all rose from the table and exited in organized chaos, once again to become mindless zombies as we shuffled off to our remaining three classes of the day. My fourth and fifth hours passed uneventfully, other than the mountains of homework that were piled on me due to the time that I had missed.

My sixth and final hour of the day was biology. When I entered I walked over and met the teacher, a small woman named Mrs. Burke. She told me that I didn't have any work to make up, for which I was thankful, and pointed me to a seat next to a boy she called Kenneth. I followed her finger through the air and saw the mysterious boy from the bus ride sitting alone in the back of the room.

I walked back and sat in the empty seat next to him with a smile. “Hi,” I said to him. He silently nodded his head to me. “I'm Liam Vale,” I responded, continuing my attempt to get this boy to say something to me. My attempt failed. Kenneth never said a word to me for the rest of the class.

The bell rang and my first day at R-SALT came to a close. I joined the crowds as they shuffled one way or another to their destination. I got onto the bus much earlier than last time and actually had my choice of places to sit. I saw the seat next to Kenneth was once again open, but bypassed it in favor of an empty bench seat towards the back. I put my headphones in and turned on Emilie Autumn's “Save You” as I settled in for the long ride home.

As the bus rattled down the roads, I did my best to stare out the window for most of it. Something about seeing Kenneth made me mad. I never considered myself to be egotistical, but I had never been so coldly ignored by somebody that I had tried to talk to. I looked towards the front of the bus once and saw Kenneth looking back at me. As soon as our eyes locked, however, he sneered and turned back towards the front. I rolled my eyes to myself and turned back towards my window, watching the scenery as it passed by.

I got off the bus when it stopped close to my house and started walking down the sidewalk, where I was soon met by Brandon wrapping his arms around my legs. “Hey, Liam!” he said brightly.

“Hey there, Bubba,” I responded as I picked the boy up in my arms. “How was your day?”

“Good,” he told me with a smile. “How was gay school?”

I faltered a bit when I heard him say that. “Where did you hear it called that?” I asked looking at him.

“I told teacher today you was goin to a new school, and she asked if it was the gay school,” he told me innocently.

“Oh, ok,” I told him as I carried him into the house. “Well, that's not a very good thing to call it.” He just nodded as I set him down on the island in our kitchen. “Now, where's Daddy at?”

“He's in his office,” he said. “He says it's ok for me to meet you at your buff stop and said to get me a snack.”

I looked at him suspiciously. “Let me go run that by the boss,” I said as I walked down the hall to my dad's home office. “Dad, did you want me to get Brandon a snack?” I asked.

“If you wouldn't mind, Liam. I'm swamped with cases and whatnot. That Delmore case really got my name out there. Guess it's a curse and a blessing, huh?”

“Yeah, dad,” I said laughing some.

“But wait, how was school?” He swiveled around in his office chair so that he could face me, kicking over a briefcase and spilling it's papers everywhere.

“It was ok,” I told him as I helped him pick up some of the papers. “Jake Westwick goes there.”

“The kid from your second grade class?”

“Third grade,” I said as I stood up with a handful of his papers.

“Well I'm glad you had a good day.” He took the papers from me, and we looked at each other awkwardly for a few minutes. He put the papers on his lap, and pulled me into a strange hug. “Your mom would be proud of you,” he said softly.

I blinked back a few tears and basically let him hug me. “I know Dad,” I told him in an attempt to get him to break the hug.

He let go of me and looked into my face. “You look a lot like her. But she'd seriously be proud. You're taking all these changes really well.”

I just nodded at him. “Yeah, well, I gotta go get some homework done. I'm swamped.” He nodded, and I left his office.

“Is it my snack time now?” Brandon asked.

“Give me a few minutes, buddy. I have to use the restroom.” I brushed past him and rushed into the restroom, shutting and locking the door behind me.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and frowned. I had completely changed since we lost Mom. I used to be happy at least while I was at home. Now I wasn't able to have a single event happen in my life without somebody trying to tell me that Mom was looking down on me and happy, or that she would be happy for me. It wasn't that I didn't believe it, I was Catholic just like the majority of Riverton was, but I didn't enjoy being reminded anytime that something good happened that my mother had been taken away from me due to cancer.

I looked in the mirror at myself and tried to smile. It had been a while since I really smiled at home. Usually it was a forced smile to get my dad to leave me alone about being upset. I hadn't been open about my emotions in a while, either. Any time I went to my Dad feeling emotional, it just got him upset thinking about Mom. Not to mention he was completely stressed with work and trying to take care of Brandon and me, so I felt bad adding onto his already burdened mind. I blinked back my tears once again, and literally shook the thoughts from my mind. There wasn't any time to be sad.

I walked out of the bathroom and back to the kitchen, where Brandon was sitting at the table, looking impatiently out our window. “Ready for that snack?” I asked him, trying to put on my 'bright' voice.

“Yes,” he said jumping out of the chair. “I want graham crackers and juice,” he demanded.

“Now how do you ask?”

“Pleeeeeease?” he said, looking up at me with giant 'puppy-dog' eyes.

“Damn kid, you know how to play me,” I responded as I handed him a couple of graham crackers on a plate and poured some juice in a cup.

Just as I set the cup and plate on the table for him, the doorbell rang. “Be right back,” I said to Brandon and walked to the front door. Opening it up, I saw Jaymes, one of my friends from Riverton High. “Jaymes?” I asked, stepping out onto the front porch with him.

“Hey, man. You weren't at school today.” I had a sarcastic response in my head, but I kept it there and let him continue. “I kinda missed you. Where ya been at?”

“Well I was suspended a week ago. I didn't go back to school till today.”

“I just said you weren't there today, though.”

“I know. I kinda transferred schools. I'm at R-SALT now.”

“What?” he asked surprised. “You're going to the fag school? Why would you do that?”

“Don't call it that,” I snapped at him.

“Woah, Liam, are you one of them?”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” I asked. I was really starting to get pissed that everyone kept referring to me as “one of them.” “Yeah, I'm gay. But I'm not 'one of them.'”

He just looked at me. “Look, Liam, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to come out that way.”

“Well, I didn't mean for me to come out that way,” I responded with a chuckle.

“It's cool, man.” He quickly hugged one of his arms around my shoulders and let go. “So you're really...”

“Yeah,” I told him. “You know, not all gay guys want Abercrombie models to attack them and rip their clothes off.”

He laughed at that. “Yeah, I know. But you always acted so interested in girls.”

“Yeah, that's the thing. I always acted interested in girls.”

“So it was really all just an act?”

“No,” I reassured him. “The only thing I ever lied about was the part about being interested in girls.”

“Wow. You're really never gonna be back at Riverton? You ain't a rebel anymore?”

“Come on, man,” I said with a laugh. “We both know that's a stupid mascot anyway.”

“That's true. It's just hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we won't ever see each other again.”

“Who said that?” I asked. “Just because we don't go to school together doesn't mean we can't hang out, man.”

“Yeah, I guess that's true.”

“But, as for tonight, I gotta go get Brandon a snack and stuff. Wanna hang out this weekend, though?”

“Sure, man,” he said and he walked off.

I watched him go, then turned around and walked back inside.

I sat across from Brandon at the table and got myself a snack to eat with him. “Hey, boys, you wanna order Chinese for dinner?” my dad asked as he walked into the kitchen from his office.

“Sure,” I replied, standing up from my chair. We hadn't had many home-cooked meals lately, due to Dad's overwhelming inability to cook. That was something I always told myself that I needed to change but, like many things around our house, it hadn't been done yet.

I grabbed the phone from the receiver as Dad picked up Brandon and carried him off to play. Things were normal again in our household, but I wondered how long that would last.

I awoke to a start as suddenly I was sprayed in the face by three jet streams of water. Opening my eyes suddenly and saying words unfit to hear, I saw Tommy, Jake, and Landon standing by my bed holding super soaker  water guns. “What the hell is going on?” I sputtered out.

“Good morning,” Tommy answered with a grin. The way he said “morning” sounded more like “moaning,” but I knew what he meant.

“Snow day,” Jake replied with his own smile.

“How did you three get in my house?” I asked looking at them. Then I fixed my attention on my Dad in the background, standing in the doorway with his own mischievous smirk. I simply grinned at him, glad to see him finally having fun with something.

“Get dressed,” Landon ordered me. “We're going to build a snow man.”

The three boys filed out of my room, and my dad walked in. “You mad at me?” he asked, hardly able to hold back his laughter at my surprising awakening.

“Nah, Dad. It's cool. Just a little bit shocking, is all.”

“Oh, well, they seem like nice boys. Don't wanna keep em waiting for too long.”

He left the room and I got out of bed. It had been a few weeks since I had first started attending R-SALT, and the four of us had built somewhat of a friendship, but this was the first time that my dad had ever met my new friends.

Suddenly, the realization of what Jake had said hit me. A snow day? In Riverton? I ran to my window and was shocked to see a solid few inches of white powder covering the ground for as far as my eye could see. I never remembered any snow accumulating in Riverton before, especially not inches. I grinned to myself and started to get dressed for my first snow day.

After dressing myself in the warmest clothes I could find, which was no easy task considering I had never had much of a reason to have winter clothes before, I stormed down the stairs and into the living room. “I'm going out with the guys, Dad!” I called out to him.

“Hold up, Liam. You need boots.”

“What? My regular shoes will work just fine, won't they?”

“You'll track snow everywhere and it'll soak straight through to your socks. You can borrow my boots there.”

Knowing better than to argue, I slipped off my regular shoes and stepped into my dad's boots. Before I could be corrected for anything else, I took off out the door.

I had been outside as it snowed before, but never when it had actually built up on the ground. Apparently the newness of my experience showed on my face, as for the first ten minutes or so, Landon could not stop laughing.”What are you laughing at?” I evantually confronted him.

“Your face,” he said with a laugh.

“Oh yeah, a wise guy, eh?” I asked with a laugh back.

“Have you never been in the snow before?”

“I've lived in Riverton all my life,” I told him.

“This is the first time any snow's piled up since we've been born,” Tommy explained.

“This is nothing compared to back home,” Landon mused.

It was our turn to laugh as Jake filled Landon's hood with snow and turned it over onto his head, causing him to squeal in surprise and dance about like an idiot. “So much for Mr. Tough Guy, huh?” I asked Tommy. I was replied to by a snowball hitting me in the back of the head, obviously thrown by Landon due to his uncontrollable giggling.

The next couple of hours were spent in what had to have been one of the most epic four-man snowball fights in the history of Riverton, Alabama. All four of us were exhausted by the time we finally decided to call a truce, complete with handshakes full of snow.

After the snow-war, we decided to get to work on the snowman that they had originally come over to build. Since the other three of us had no experience in building a snowman, Landon instructed us in what he called “the noble art of snowman-making,” telling us exactly how to roll the snow to get the best parts of it in the right spots. It didn't seem like it was all that complicated to me, but I bit my tongue and let him feel like the master of snow-art.

Before long, Tommy, Jake and I had mastered the snowman and were well into our work. We didn't even notice when Landon slipped away from the group to start a solo project until he announce it with an over-important “Ta-da!” The three of us turned around and saw a pile of snow that came up to about my waist, looking mostly like a mess.

“What is it?” Jake asked curiously.

“It's a snow dick,” Landon replied with a laugh. Upon further inspection I saw that it was indeed an icy reproduction of the male genital system, designed with incredible attention to detail.

“Poor Frosty,” Tommy said with a chuckle.

“He must have made Crystal mad,” Jake replied laughing.

“Isn't it kinda big?” I asked Landon.

“They come smaller than that?” He wiggled his eyebrows at me, obviously trying to imply something about his own endowment, and I hit him in the face with a snowball.

“Just destroy it before Brandon sees it, ok? I really don't need him telling Dad we're out here making snow dicks.”

He walked over and kicked it at the base, causing the snowy penis to crumble into oblivion. “Liam, go get your hose and wet our snowman there. The ice'll make him last longer,” he commanded. I retrieved the hose from the side of the house and handed it to Jake, who did the honors as I turned the water on at the spicket.

From our spot in the yard, I saw a boy walking alone down the sidewalk. As he looked to his side to watch us play in the snow, I saw his face and noticed that it was Kenneth, the boy from my last period class who had ignored me my entire first few weeks. I decided to give it one more chance, and waved him over towards us. “Hey, Kenneth, isn't it?” I asked. Once again, he only nodded. “If you don't have anywhere to go, why don't you come play in the snow with us for a while?”

His eyes scanned the four of us, apparently considering the offer seriously, before his eyes locked on Tommy. “I got somewhere I'm going,” he replied bluntly. His voice was smooth and soft, but there was a certain edge to it that I couldn't quite place.

“If you're sure, I guess I'll see you next time we have school,” I said. He nodded once again and walked off.

I returned to the group and noticed that Tommy was eying me irregularly. “Are you two friends?” he asked looking at me.

“No, that's the first time that we've talked. I invited him to come play in the snow with us, but he said he has somewhere to be.”

“Good. That guy is nothing but trouble.”

“What's the problem between you two? It seemed like you were the reason that he wasn't going to come over,” I said.

“None of your business,” he responded coldly.

“Jeez, no need to be an ass about it,” I said rolling my eyes as I turned around. I felt a strong push from behind and fell face-first into the snow. “What the hell was that!?” I yelled, turning on my back to look up at Tommy.

“I said it's none of your business. Drop it.”

“Is the snowman frozen yet?” Jake asked, obviously trying to diffuse the situation between Tommy and me.

“Yeah, he won't be going anywhere for a while,” Landon replied, his eyes going back and forth between Tommy and I like he was watching a tennis match. He helped me to my feet and brushed my back off for me.

“Let's go inside,” I said, my eyes still on Tommy. “Maybe Dad can make us some hot chocolate.”

“Jake and I have to go,” Tommy replied, the sound of forced gratitude thick on his voice.

“But I wanted hot choco-” Jake started to whine, but he was quickly cut off by the forceful voice of Tommy.

“I said we're leaving.”

Tommy ushered Jake into the truck that was waiting in my driveway. Landon and I walked inside, leaving our respective footwear on the porch out front. “Hey there, Mr Lazy,” I said teasingly to Brandon when we found him on the couch in the living room, watching TV in his pajamas.

“Who your friend?” he asked looking at Landon and me.

“Landon, this is Brandon. Brandon, Landon.”

Landon giggled slightly behind me. “You rhymed,” he told me. I rolled my eyes and lead him towards Dad's office where, sure enough, I found him hard at work over some files.

“Hey Dad, is it cool if Landon and I make some hot chocolate?” I asked.

“Yeah, go ahead, you know where all the stuff is,” he told me, not turning away from his work. “And if Landon needs clothes to change into, you should let him borrow some of your stuff.”

“OK, thanks Dad,” I replied as we turned and left the room. “You wanna change?” I asked Landon.

“That would be nice,” he replied. I walked up the stairs to my room and showed him inside.

“I think my clothes should fit you. We're about the same size,” I said as I went to the closet and opened it up. I found a black shirt from a concert I had gone to long ago, and a pair of sweatpants. “These OK till those dry out?” I asked Landon. He nodded and I handed them to him.

Landon immediately started stripping down and, as much as my mind told me to leave the room and give him some privacy, other parts of my body rooted me to the ground as soon as I saw his body. He was no muscle god, in fact, he was fairly skinny for our age, but something about the way his body was shaped definitely had some major sex appeal. “Do you wanna take a picture before I put these clothes on?” he asked me teasingly as he stood in front of me in only his boxer-briefs.

“Sorry,” I apologized quickly. “I was thinking about...something else.”

“Would you like to put my boxer-briefs in the dryer too?” he asked laughing some.

“In your dreams,” I replied, taking his wet clothes with me as I left the room. I went downstairs to the laundry room and stuffed them into the dryer before making my way to the kitchen and starting on the hot chocolate. After procuring enough to fill two mugs to the very brim, I grabbed the bag of marshmallows and took the two winter-themed mugs up to my room where I found Landon sitting in my computer chair.

“Santa or Frosty?” I asked him.

“What?” he replied.

“Your mug, do you want Frosty or Santa?” I showed him the two mugs, and he pointed at Frosty.

“May as well, after I castrated the poor guy,” he explained.

“So now you'll drink his innards out too?” I asked with a laugh.

He nodded. “I'm just a horrible person.”

I laughed some as I settled on my bed with the bag of marshmallows and took a sip from Santa's head. “Marshmallows?” I offered.

Landon walked over and sat next to me on the bed before putting a handful of marshmallows in with his hot chocolate. “That was pretty intense out there with Tommy,” he said.

“Yeah, what's his problem anyways?” He leaned back against the wall that my bed ran along, and I sat cross-legged by the pillows so that I could listen to him.

“Tommy and Kenneth have some problems that not even I could write,” he explained.

“Like what? What could make them hate each other so much?” I asked curiously.

“Well apparently they had a thing a while back, but eventually Kenneth cheated on Tommy. So when Tommy got pissed, he did everything he could to make Ken's life hell. Vandalism, arson, defamation of character, all kinds of things he could get some serious jail time for. Well, the thing is, Kenneth never had any proof that it was Tommy, except for the fact that he bragged about it to anybody that would listen.” Landon had been calm at the beginning of his story, but by this point he had worked himself up into yet another animated frenzy.

“Calm down, Shake,” I said in an attempt to be able to understand the rest of the drama.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Well Tommy eventually started dating Ken's twin sister. As you can imagine, that didn't sit well with Kenneth, so he got revenge by spreading the word that Tommy is a pedophile.”

“What? Is he?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Landon told me as he took a long sip of his chocolate drink.

“That's pretty messed up.”

“Yeah, well there's more to it than that, but Tommy won't tell me anything about it, and Kenneth hasn't talked to anybody in ages.”

“Doesn't anybody know what it is?” I asked.

“Nah, or if they do, they're very tight-lipped about it.”

“So nobody knows. We're in high school. Nobody can keep a secret.”

“True, but nobody knows more about keeping secrets than the gays of Alabama,” he countered as he finished his hot chocolate and put the mug on my bedside table.

I had to laugh at that. “Well, remind me not to get in between those two.”

“Don't get between those two,” he said with a smirk. I put my mug down, reached out and punched him gently on the shoulder. He punched me playfully back and, before I knew it, we were wrestling on the bed.

I could only concentrate on how good his body felt on top of mine, and he soon had me pinned down to the bed, his knees on my shoulders and the crotch of the sweatpants I had lent him strangely close to my face. I looked up at him and heard a throat being cleared from the doorway. Looking that way, I saw my dad and must have turned a bright shade of crimson.

“I was about to ask Landon if he'd like to go to dinner with us,” Dad said, “but that's pretty obvious to all of us, I think.”

If it was possible, I turned a brighter shade of red. “I'd love to, Mr Vale, but I'll need to call my parents first to make sure that it's OK.”

“Well, why don't you climb off my son and you can use my phone?” he asked, obviously trying to embarrass me as much as he possibly could.

“I have my own,” Landon replied as he climbed off of me and left the room. I laid still, trying to hide my obvious arousal from my father.

“He seems like a nice boy,” Dad said yet again before leaving the room. I felt like my face was on fire, I was blushing so hard.

Landon came back into the room a few minutes later, by which time I was, thankfully, back to normal. “Mom and Dad said I can stay as long as I'm back after dinner. They think that we're going to be back in school tomorrow.”

“OK, cool,” I replied as I sat up. “I guess you'll probably need to change before we go.”

“Any idea where we're going?” he asked.

“Knowing Dad, probably a steakhouse or something along those lines.”

“Oh, that's cool. I like meat.” I wiggled my eyebrows at him and he started to laugh.

Landon and I hung out in my room mostly for the next couple of hours until the buzzer on our dryer announced that his clothes were dry. He changed into them, this time in a different room, as I changed into a polo shirt and some decent-looking jeans.

We piled into Dad's car, Landon up front with Dad and me in back with Brandon, and he started to drive. “So, Landon, tell me a bit about yourself?” Dad questioned. I knew what he was doing but either Landon didn't, or he just didn't care. I sat back and listened as he revealed himself to my dad. I learned some things about him myself, such as the fact that he was a huge Shakespeare fan, his favorite play being Twelfth Night  and that he was a published author online. I made a mental note to myself to read one of his stories later.

We eventually arrived at a small steakhouse where my dad loved to eat, and we quickly got out of the car. Brandon took Dad's hand, and I had a sudden, weird idea that Landon was going to do the same with mine. He didn't, however, only brushing my shoulder with his slightly as we walked into the restaurant. Dad asked for a table, and we were led towards the back of the restaurant. As we walked, I heard somebody say to their table partner, “that's one of the kids from the fag school. Guess Vale's kid is one of them too.”

“Shame the little one's exposed to that perversion,” the woman of the table commented.

I looked to Landon for his reaction, and he shrugged it off. “Sorry,” he said. “But they all pretty much know who goes to R-SALT. Should I leave or something?”

“No, don't be ridiculous,” I told him. “Why would I say that?”

“Well, I don't want anything bad said about your family cuz of me,” he replied as we were seated.

“Those who mind don't matter,” my Dad told him. I finished the phrase.

The rest of the dinner went off without a hitch. Dad sat next to Landon, and I was across from him with Brandon sitting across from Dad.  Landon seemed completely relaxed around my dad and Brandon, even getting very excited when he was asked about his stories. He went into his normal twitchy mode, and started talking too fast for anybody to understand him. Dad laughed and asked him to calm down, causing Brandon and me to start laughing as well. Landon fit in really well and before I knew it, it was time to leave.

We got back into the car in the same positions we were in on the way up, and Landon gave Dad directions on how to reach his house. I don't know what I expected, but the small house that we pulled up in front of was not quite it. The house was tiny and rather shabby, looking like it was lucky to even be standing. I bit my lower lip softly as we pulled up in front of it, and noticed Landon looking straight out the window to avoid eye contact with anybody.

“Thanks for dinner, Mr Vale,” he said softly as he reached for the door handle.

“No problem, Landon, it was our pleasure.”

“Wait,” I said. “I'll walk you to your door.”

“No, you don't have to,” Landon objected, still not looking at anybody in the car.

I ignored his objection, and scrambled out of the car. I walked around to the other side and opened his door for him, allowing him to step out. He looked at the ground now, instead of at me. We walked slowly up the the door of the house, where he stopped and slowly looked up into my eyes. “Thanks,” he said again. “I had a really nice time today.”

“Me too,” I told him honestly. “It's been one of the best I can remember.”

“Sorry you had to see my house like this, I was kinda nervous about it.”

“It's no problem,” I said smiling at him. “It's not all that bad.”

“I was just...I dunno...worried, I guess.”

“About what?” I inquired.

“That you wouldn't, y'know, like me, once you saw my house.”

“Money doesn't have a thing to do with whether I like someone or not,” I told him. I was suddenly aware that he and I had gotten closer to each other with every sentence.

I felt his hands circle around mine slowly and gently, and his mouth suddenly pressed against mine in a quick kiss. I looked at him for a few seconds, then gave him a smile which he returned tenfold. He giggled and rushed inside the house before I went back to the car, grinning but blushing as red as a tomato.

I shut the door and Dad started to drive off into the darkness. He didn't say a word as I leaned my forehead against the window and looked out at the sky. “He seems like a nice boy,” my father said with a chuckle.

 “I'm getting detention today,” Landon announced suddenly, after our morning hug. He seemed excited about it, back to his usual twitchy manner and talking faster than most people could understand. I had gotten pretty good at it by now.

“Wait, what?” I was confused. I hadn't slept much the night before, running over everything that had happened between Landon and me, and if he had any interest in me. I thought maybe I misheard him.

“I'm gonna get detention,” he repeated slowly.

“OK, I got that. Why?”

“Well, the guy in my next story needs detention. Seeing as how I've never had detention before, I figured that I needed to get detention so that I'll know what it's like. Duh.”

“Oh, well that makes perfect sense,” I responded sarcastically.

“You mock me now, but we'll see who's laughing when I'm a famous author,” he quipped back. He stuck his tongue out at me, and I grinned at him.

“I know something that you can do with that tongue.”

“Oh yeah? Maybe I'm interested in that,” he responded suggestively. Before I could respond, Tommy swung his long legs across the chair next to me and took his usual place with us in the cafeteria.

“Hey, Tommy. Jake,” I greeted the two lovers as they joined us before classes started.

“'Sup, Liam?” Tommy asked with a cocky nod. That was one thing I envied about him. No matter what, he was always extremely confident.

“I was just telling him about my plan to get detention,” Landon cut in. I could tell he was trying to keep us from talking so that we wouldn't bust into a spontaneous argument.

“You're getting detention?” Jake asked as he assumed his place next to Landon. The author nodded. “I'd suggest throwing twinkies at that fat ass Mrs Stone,” Jake suggested, “That's something I've wanted to do for a while.”

“I think she seems nice,” I chimed in.

“She keeps rejecting kids from coming here,” Jake told me, “I've heard of all kinds of guys that the principals of other schools wanted to send here, but she says that she won't take them unless it's their decision.”

“I think that's only fair,” Landon added, “I mean, I don't want to be herded up like Jews in the holocaust. That's just creepy.”

“But more guys here increases the probability of landing a cutie,” Jake whined.

“You already got all the man you can handle,” Tommy told him.

“For a relationship, yeah, but there's more than just that.”

I rolled my eyes, and was thankfully saved by the bell that told us to get to our first classes of the day. As predicted, Mrs. Stone came along right after the bell, and hurried us off to class as if our lives depended on it. “Yeah, 'cuz we definitely need ten minutes to get to class,” Jake murmured to himself as we stood up lethargically.

“What was that, Mr. Westwick?” Mrs. Stone snapped at him, “Do you want yet another detention?”

“This is going to be easier than I thought,” Landon commented to me as we walked towards our first class of the day.

“So, are the other principals really trying to force kids to come to this school?” I asked as we settled into our usual seats and resumed our daily ritual of ignoring the teacher.

“Yeah, rounding ‘em up like cattle, basically. Stone's not letting ‘em do it though. She's really fighting against it. She says that it's not a good idea to shove all the gay kids into one school together. Not only does she not want 'her school' becoming a raging sex brothel, she's afraid it's gonna promote intolerance and yadda, yadda, yadda.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Isert, would you like to give us the answer to the problem I was working out on the board just now?”

Shake looked up at the board, adjusted his glasses, and confidently stated, “Seven.”

“That's correct,” the disgruntled Mr. Thompson responded.

Landon turned back to me and resumed our conversation. “That doesn't seem right to me,” I said, “They shouldn't be allowed to throw kids into the school just to get rid of them.”

“I know. So far, it's not been too bad. But Stone isn't going to be able to hold 'em off forever. You were one of those kids, by the way.”

“What? It was my choice to come here,” I told him.

“Oh, let me guess. Your principal suggested you come here to avoid stress or some such shit, right?”

I bit my bottom lip as I often did when I was unsure of myself, and nodded, “Yeah, I guess he kinda did.”

“That's their strategy,” Landon told me darkly, “They make it seem like it's your choice, and then you won't report them for abusing their power like that.”

“I somehow don't think that's what happened,” I told him. I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt.

The rest of the day was pretty much the same boring, monotonous dribble that I had come to expect from R-SALT, and high school in general. Sixth period was a different story. For the first time since I had come to R-SALT, Kenneth started a conversation with me, “So I'm guessing Tommy told you all about me, huh?”

“What? I asked,” my voice showing my obvious surprise. We had been given a worksheet by the teacher, and had been working silently for the past few minutes to get it completed before he brought this up out of the blue.

“Tommy Jones,” he said, “Your best friend. You two probably got to talking about me after I left.”

I couldn't help but laugh at that, for which he shot me a glare. “Sorry, but Tommy is far from my best friend. In fact, he almost kicked my ass after you left. I didn't get the story from him, I got it from…. “ I started to disclose Landon telling me of Kenneth's past, but trailed off before I did.

“From somebody who likely doesn't know shit from the facts,” he said, “How about we hang out after school and I can tell you how it really happened?”

“I would,” I said, trying my best to make up an excuse as quickly as possible, “but I still have a lot of homework to catch up on from transferring schools.” It wasn't entirely a lie. I hadn't done much of my homework that I had been assigned, but it was far from a pressing matter. Something about Kenneth just made me anxious though.

“Oh, I get it,” he said, “You're with that Landon kid.”

“What? Why would you say that?”

“Well, it's either that or you just hate me before you've even gotten to know me. I know Tommy and Jake are together, and that leaves only Landon to be your boyfriend if you're making excuses.”

“I'm not making excuses,” I said. I stopped myself so that I wouldn't raise my voice, “I have homework to do.”

“Yeah, sure,” It was obvious by his voice that he didn't believe me at all.

“You know what? Fine. You wanna explain yourself, we can hang out after school.”

“Good,” he responded with a confident smirk that let me know that he felt as if he had won, “Meet me in the student parking lot after class and we'll go grab a burger or something.”

The two of us didn't talk to each other for the rest of the period, which was fine by me. After school was over, I went to my locker and grabbed the books that I would need for homework before heading towards the student parking lot.

Before I had made it out of the school, I ran into a very excited Landon. “Guess what?” he practically shouted in my face. Before I had a chance to answer, he continued, “I got detention!”

“Congratulations...?” I said, unsure of how to properly reply to so bizarre of a statement.

“Thanks,” he responded joyfully before depositing a quick kiss on my cheek.

I felt myself start blushing from the point where his lips made contact with my skin. I gave him a shy smile, and he ran off. I walked out to the parking lot, where I saw Kenneth leaning up against a black Toyota Camry. He smirked when he saw me approaching, “I was beginning to wonder if you'd show up.”

“My word is my word. One hundred percent.”

He walked around to the other side of the car and opened the passenger door. I climbed in, feeling a bit uneasy to be getting into the car of a boy whom I hardly even knew.

“Any preference on where we go?” he asked me as he got into the driver's seat.

“Nah,” I said with an awkward shrug, “I really just wanted to hear your side of the story, like you said.”

“Well we can talk about that when we get there,” he told me sternly.

I sat in silence for the entire ride over to the small burger joint where Kenneth decided we should go. Once there, I got out of the car and followed him inside. He ordered himself a burger and fries. I just got an order of fries and a drink, which he insisted on paying for. I followed him to a booth at the front of the small store, and took a seat across from him.

I followed him to a booth at the front, and took a seat across from him. (It’ not really a store.)

I suddenly noticed that he was very attractive. I wondered what Landon would think of me thinking that. Kenneth's eyes sparkled as the sun hit them at just the right angle, and the light seemed to reflect from them into the rest of the restaurant. He also had amazing posture for a teenager.

“So, shoot,” I demanded.

“Well that's no way to talk to a friend,” he toyed.

“I'd hardly consider us friends,” I snapped at him.

“Well first I wanna know what you think you know.”

“Well, from what I heard, you and Tommy had a fling. Once you cheated on Tommy, he dated your sister and you called him a pedophile.” I watched Kenneth's face as I told him what I'd heard from Landon. He simply sat there eating calmly, his expression blank and unchanging.

“That's a really one-sided explanation of things,” he said after the awkward pause which followed my statement, “For one thing, you don't even know why I did what I did. For another, I never cheated on Tommy. We broke up before I ever got with Rusty.”

“So you're telling me that everything Landon told me was a lie?” I asked him suspiciously.

“Landon Isert?” I blushed as I realized that I had given him away.

“That's not important, I told him, hoping to make him forget the name.”

“Well, yeah, everything he told you is a lie,” he said boldly, “Tommy is a self-centered, conceited asshole who's only out to prove himself as the better guy. He doesn't think that he can do anything wrong, but he's nothing but a coward.”

“How am I supposed to take your word over his?” I asked looking at Kenneth across the table.

“Why don't you go ask him about it?” Kenneth challenged me.

“He won't talk about it,” I told him, biting my lower lip slightly.

“And what's that tell ya?” he asked, taking a big bite of his burger.

“Thanks for the info,” I responded as I stood up from the booth, “but I better get heading home.”

I walked out of the restaurant with my cup in hand and started the walk home. To say I had a lot on my mind would be an understatement. Tommy wouldn't give me any answers, of that I was sure. The only possible source that I had to go on was Landon. Unfortunately, he was closer to Tommy than to Kenneth. To doubt that that would play into his opinions would be extremely foolish.

Tommy and Kenneth obviously had some problems in the past, and that confused me as I wondered which of them was telling the truth. The other thing that played almost constantly at the forefront of my mind was Landon. Did he like me? Did I like him? What did he see us as? What were we, actually? We hadn't been out on a date yet, so I doubted that you could call us boyfriends. But the way he behaved certainly made me think that he viewed me as more than just a friend. I didn't know at (the) this point how I viewed him, or how I could possibly have a boyfriend if that's what things turned into, but it was certainly something that played at my mind.

The wind chilled my cheeks, and I pulled my jacket up a little over my ears as I walked past my old school. Then, leaning on the fence, I gazed at Riverton High, home of the Rebels. Things seemed so much calmer and easier when I was a Rebel. I didn't even know what the mascot was at R-SALT. I paused to think if we even had a mascot. I hadn't heard of one yet.

I was brought out of my reminiscing by a voice to my left. “Hey, Vale!” I turned in time to see a baseball flying towards my face. I caught it in my bare hand, wincing slightly from the sting that it left there as I threw it back to the guy who had called my name. It was one of Jaymes' friends from the baseball team. I had never been bothered to learn his name before.

“Hey,” I responded after a bit of a pause. Jaymes was walking next to him.

“Where you been at, man?”

“I told you,” Jaymes told him, “He's transferred to the new school.”

“I wanna hear it from his mouth, though.”

“Yeah, I'm going to R-SALT now,” I told him.

He shook his head as if he was disappointed in me. “You know, Vale, I didn't think you'd turn out that way.”

“Come on, man, let's just go,” Jaymes said to his friend. The larger boy didn't move.

“What're you, some kinda fag-lover?” he drawled. I bit my lower lip as I watched Jaymes back down from his friend at the challenge. Things were not looking good.

“Don't use that word,” I said a bit louder than I had wanted to.

“Oh, so you're growing a backbone now?” He took a step towards me, and I flinched automatically. I had never been taught to defend myself. He laughed at me.

“Come on!” Jaymes said, “This isn't funny anymore, man.”

“Look,” the baseball player said to me, completely ignoring Jaymes, “If you wanna hang out with those pillow-biters, that's your choice.” He was very close to my face by now. I wanted to run, but something kept me glued to the spot that I was in. “But don't be showing your queer face around my school again. Got it?”

I nodded meekly, and he shoved through me on his way past the school. I watched the two walk away and saw Jaymes turn to mouth the word sorry to me. I gave him a one-finger salute and walked the rest of the way home.

I slammed the door behind me, and was on my way up to my room when my dad called out my name. “Liam? You OK?” he yelled from his office.

“Yeah, Dad, fine!” I hollered back, stopping on the landing to talk to him.

“Why are you late?”

I huffed slightly to myself, and gave a small smile as I remembered that was something that Mom always did when Dad refused to leave a room to continue a conversation. I walked into his office, and leaned against the door frame.

“I went out for a burger with...a friend.”

“Was it that Landon kid? I hope we didn't scare him too much last night.”

I rolled my eyes since Dad was focused on his work. “No, Dad. I have other friends you know.”

“That's true. I forgot that you all tend not to stick with one friend for very long.” That was all I needed to hear before I turned and stormed my way up the stairs to my room.

I threw myself onto my bed and turned my iPod on to a louder-than-usual volume. I was tired of the way that people were treating me once they found out I was gay. At times I wished that I never had. I could have stayed at the regular school, Dad wouldn't act some of the ways he did, and I wouldn't have to worry about how people would react when they found out about it. Being straight was certainly the suggested way to be in Riverton.

I started on my homework, and must have been a couple of hours into it, when I was tapped on my shoulder by my dad, who was holding our house phone. “Liam, it's Mrs. Isert,” he told me once I had pulled my heaphone out. I hit pause on my machine and took the phone. “Hello? I asked curiously.” I had no reason why Landon's mom would be calling me.

“Liam, it's Mrs. Isert,” she said unnecessarily. “Landon had your number in his cell phone as one to call in case of an emergency, and I wanted to let you know that he's in the hospital.”

Landon wasn't in good shape at all. I walked into the hospital room that Mrs. Isert had told me about and saw him lying in the bed, tubes sticking out of his arms and his head wrapped in some kind of bandage or gauze. I saw a slight red stain on it, and figured that he had some kind of head injury that had caused him to bleed. Even though I knew he was hurt, something about his prone position made him somehow more attractive.

“You must be Liam.” I turned to face the voice and saw a small-framed woman, who looked a lot like Landon, smiling at me kindly.

“Yes, ma'am,” I responded as I shook her hand.

“I'm Mary, and this is my husband Phillip.” She indicated a larger man standing in the corner, his arms crossed on his broad chest. He nodded at me silently, and I responded in kind.

“So...how bad is it?” I asked softly. I turned back to look at Landon, and she placed her hand comfortingly on my back.

“It's pretty bad,” she replied bluntly. “He's got some serious head injuries that I don't understand, quite honestly. He's also got some internal injuries that are likely going to be problematic. The doctors said that if he makes it through this first night, his chances of survival increase dramatically.” She didn't even pause when delivering this news, and I could tell it was something that she was learning  to accept.

“How did this happen?” I asked, still looking at the prone form of Landon as he lay helpless in the bed.

“We're not sure exactly. He was attacked by someone, but we can't be sure who. He was hanging out with a friend after his detention today, and he found Landon outside his house like this. He called 911 and may have saved Landon's life.”

“Do you know who the friend was?” I asked, finally ripping my eyes away from the hospitalized boy to look at her.

“I only know his first name was Jake,” she told me softly.

“Thanks for telling me, ma'am. Would...would it be OK if I stayed here tonight? I'd like to be here for m...Landon.” I blushed slightly as I recovered from almost calling him “my Landon.” He wasn't my boyfriend, nor did I feel like I actually had any claim on him at all. However, something about seeing him injured and hurt made me feel somehow more connected to him.

“That's fine by me, if it's approved by your father.” I looked at Mr. Isert, and he nodded his silent agreement with his wife. I suddenly wondered if he ever said anything at all. I pulled out my phone and called my dad. After a semi-argument that I was embarrassed for Mrs. Isert to hear, he agreed to let me stay at the hospital overnight, so long as I went to school the next day. I agreed, as there were things that I wanted to talk to Jake about anyway.

Nothing developed over the night at the hospital, but I felt better knowing that I would have been there if something had happened with Landon. His mom agreed to call me at school if anything changed in his condition, and she drove me to school after taking me by my house to get a change of clothes and spray on some body spray.

“Jake, can I talk to you for a few?” I asked as I approached the tangled mass of limbs on the floor that I knew to be Tommy and Jake.

“Um, sure,” he responded uneasily.

“Alone?” I asked. I stressed the word while looking between him and his boyfriend. He stood up, and he and I started to wander aimlessly through the halls. “Landon was attacked last night.” I don't know why I thought that could be the best opening phrase, but it was the first thing that came into my mind.

“Yeah, I'm the one who called the ambulance for him.”

“I know that. His mom told me. I guess what I meant to ask is do you have any idea who could have possibly done it?”

“No way, Liam!” He was outraged by the fact that I would imply him knowing anything and withholding the information from the police. “You know how I feel about you guys. I would definitely have told people if I knew who attacked him.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and fell back against a locker. “I know Jake,” I breathed. “It's just...” I trailed off, unable to finish any thoughts that I may have had.

“What is it?” Jake pressed his body onto mine in what I slowly realized to be a hug.

“I don't wanna lose him, Jake. This is all way too similar to what happened to Mom. He's just a few rooms down.” I wrapped my arm around his back. The hug was surprisingly comforting.

“Liam, I know it's hard. It's gotta be bringing up bad memories. But Landon's going to be OK.”

“How do you know?” I managed to choke out.

He pulled away just enough to look into my eyes. “You just gotta have faith in some things. After a lifetime of catching shit, something has to go your way, right?”

I chuckled slightly at that, and nodded. I knew that's what he wanted, and I didn't want to disappoint my friend. “You like him, don't you?” he asked with a devious smile.

I had to nod. “Yeah, I think I do. Is that bad? I shouldn't like a friend, should I?”

“It's never stopped me before,” he replied with that cocky smirk.

I rolled my eyes slightly. “Do me a favor,” he said, again looking deep into my soul. His eyes had no problem holding mine.

“What's that?” I asked.

“When he wakes up, tell him. There's no point in hiding it and you wouldn't wanna lose him before you get him, would you?”

“No, I guess you got a point there, Jake. I'm gonna do it.”

“Good. Now let go of me before I have to file for sexual harassment.” He giggled, and I let go of his thin body with an embarrassed tinge on my cheeks. “Now on to first hour with you,” he said playfully.

“Actually, I have somewhere else that I need to go first. Do you know where Kenneth Anthony's first hour is?”

“Kenneth who? Oh, yeah, that guy. Not a clue.” The way he said it made it sound like he wouldn't say or even think Kenneth's name willingly. There seemed to be a lot more to the story than I knew.

“I guess I'll just see him in sixth hour then,” I responded. I had an odd feeling that Kenneth had something to do with Landon being attacked, and I was going to find out about it. I had told Kenneth earlier that day that it was Landon who had told me the story of Tommy and Kenneth, and then Landon ended up being attacked later that night. Something about that seemed way too coincidental for my liking.

In band, we were told that “in an effort to promote diversity and bring together the town of Riverton,” our band and the one from Riverton High were going to play a joint concert in their gym in about a week. We were to play the pieces we had been working on, and hopefully not suck as much as we had been. The conductor didn't say that last part, but it seemed like he was hinting at it to me.

Lunch was a weird event without Landon being there. While Landon, Tommy, Jake and I were all a group, conversations often existed mostly between Tommy and Jake or Landon and me. It was like we were two groups that had formed together into one larger group. Without Landon at school, though, I felt as if I was left out. Jake and Tommy conversed casually and easily and, while Jake tried to pull me into the conversation on a number of occasions, I felt really awkward. Something about Tommy didn't feel right, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I just assumed that he was mad at me for the whole Kenneth thing.

“I'll catch you guys later,” I told them as I stood up from the table after a long period of not being able to say anything. “I got some stuff I gotta go do.”

They nodded, and I walked away from our table. I made my way out of the cafeteria and towards the soccer field. I sat in the shade underneath a tree, and watched the guys on the field who believed that practicing their shots were more important than eating.

“Hey,” I heard an awkward voice to my right say. For a moment I thought it was Landon, but realized that it was Kenneth sitting next to me.

“You,” I said, more than a bit of confrontation in my voice as I stood up from my spot.

“Me?” He questioned.

“You're the one who attacked Landon!” I accused.

“What? Landon was...?”

“Yes, Landon was attacked,” I cut him off. “Don't play dumb with me. You're the one who did it!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He stood up as he asked me that. “I went straight home last night after our talk, and I never left my house.”

“Bullshit!” I spat at him. “I told you that Landon told me about you and Tommy, and he ends up in the hospital that night? I somehow doubt that's a coincidence.”

“I wouldn't ever attack somebody for something that stupid,” he challenged. “You may wanna take a look at your own friends first, though.”

“Jake was the one who called 911.”

“I'm not talking about Jake,” he told me.

I was at a loss for words, so I said the most hurtful thing I could think of. “I don't blame Tommy for a single thing that he did to you.”

The next thing I knew, I was rolling down the hill that led down to the soccer field. I felt a weight on top of me, and realized that Kenneth had tackled me in rage. We rolled onto the field and continued our miniature brawl for a few minutes until the strong arms of security ripped us apart. I tried to fight my way towards him, and he towards me, but neither of us was a match for the men who were paid to protect our school.

We were taken unceremoniously to Mrs. Stone's office, where we were watched over closely until we were let in to see the overweight Principal of our school. “If you two boys lay another finger on each other in this office, I will see to it that you are both expelled,” were her first words as the two of us took seats in the chairs that were on the near side of her desk.

She walked around the desk and took a seat on the edge of it. I took a brief moment to wonder how it held the strain. “What on earth could possess you two boys to fight on the soccer field? It's things like this that are going to get funding for this school stopped completely! The point of this school is to have a place where boys like you can come to get away from all that...all that crap.”

“Mrs. Stone,” Kenneth replied, “I made a mistake today. I lost my cool and I deeply regret it.” He was trying to sound calm, but I could hear a layer of loathing hidden shortly beneath the surface.

“What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Vale?”

“I said some things that I probably shouldn't have said,” I replied, casting my eyes down to the ground. “And I'm sorry.”

“I'm very disappointed in you,” she responded. “You had such a good record in school, up until recently, when your mom passed away. I'm going to suspend you both for a week. You can use my phone to call a ride for yourselves, and don't come back until your suspension is over.”

That was probably the least desirable phone call I have ever made in my life. To say Dad was unhappy with me was the understatement of the century. The worst part was that he didn't even yell the entire time we were on the phone. He was saving it for when he picked me up from school.

“So, your Mom passed away?” Kenneth asked as we sat in the office, waiting for our rides. Mrs. Stone had left, but there was a security camera perched ominously in the corner to make sure we didn't fight.

“No shit,” I responded tersely.

“I'm sorry, man,” he consoled softly.

“Save your pity party for someone else,” I snapped. “Mom dying has nothing to do with who I am. If you hated me before, you hate me now. Don't try to pretend that you don't.”

It looked like he was about to respond, but he was cut off by the door opening. I gulped as in walked my dad. “Liam, it's time to go,” he told me calmly. I stood up and stared at the ground as I shuffled out of the office and followed him out to his car.

“Dad, I'm really sorry,” I started as soon as we got into the car.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he exploded. “You get into a fight at your old school over being gay, and now you get sent here and you fight again? Why? Why, Liam? What has gone so terribly wrong for you that you've turned out this way?”

I shot my dad a glare. “You know what went wrong, Dad? Everybody I care about is being lost! First Mom dies, and then you get fucking DISTANT and now Landon is lying in a hospital bed, attacked by Kenneth! God forbid I get to act out once in a while to stand up for someone that I love!”

“What do you mean distant?” he asked. “I have been busting my ass trying to get you and Brandon the best life that I can give you, and this is how you repay me?”

“This is the best life you can give us?” I laughed in his face, and I saw him grip the steering wheel in rage. “Dad, I don't give a shit about all the money problems and all that. Did it ever occur to you that I need somebody to be there for me? How many times have we had a real heart-to-heart talk since Mom passed? Maybe I'm going through some things that I don't know how to deal with!”

“Stop using that fucking language!” He yelled back at me. “I don't know how to deal with this either. But acting out and punching every kid who calls you a name isn't going to bring Mom back.”

We pulled into the driveway and we both got out of the car, the shouting match continuing as we made our way into the house. “I'm not acting out to bring Mom back! I know she's dead. I'm acting out because I'm tired of being abused and kicked around!”

“Yeah sure, you're not acting out. You've been acting out ever since you decided you were a fag after Mom died! The straight boy was hurt, so a homo was born!”

Tears filled my eyes as I heard my own father utter what was for me the most profane of insults. I ran up the steps and slammed the bathroom door behind me. I locked it shut, and fell back against the wall in tears. My own dad had just called me a fag. Just when I thought nothing more could go wrong in my life, just when I needed him the most, he hurt me the worst.

I had nothing. My Mom was dead, I had hurt Landon, and now even my own dad hated me. I stood up and looked in the mirror over the sink, surveying the damage that was done in my fight with Kenneth. My face was smeared with cuts and dirt, and I had what was likely to develop into a black eye, on the left side. Other than that, not much damage was done. I wished that Kenneth had done more to hurt me physically. Maybe it would take away from the mental pain. I knew one thing that would, however. I reached into the medicine cabinet, and grabbed every pill bottle that was in there.

“Liam?” I looked over from my spot on the bed and saw Landon standing in my doorway. I sat up quickly.

“Landon!” I said, my surprise obviously showing in my voice. I had gotten the call the day before that he was released from the hospital, but I didn't expect him to be showing up at my house.

I looked over at the uneasily smiling boy and could tell immediately that something was wrong. “What's the matter?” I asked standing up.

Landon crossed the half of the room between us, and collapsed into my arms in tears. I caught him and held onto him as we fell gently onto my bed. I stroked his hair gently as he cried into my chest. Taking a few minutes to look back, I was glad that I had decided against suicide.

Things hadn't gotten much better between me and my dad, but when Brandon knocked on the door and asked if I was almost done in the bathroom, it put some things in perspective. I remembered how much losing Mom had hurt both Brandon and I, and I didn't want to cause that same kind of pain on Brandon again. Dad had enough trouble coping with Mom's death, and I would have felt bad leaving him with more grief that he'd have to live with. Landon, I realized as he cried into my chest, also needed me more than I had previously thought.

“Thanks, Liam,” Landon told me softly after a few minutes. He looked up into my eyes and I could almost feel my heart breaking. He looked so sad. I just wanted to take away his pain.

“No problem, babe.” I said the word before I realized what was popping out, and immediately noticed his small facial twitch at my use of the pet name. I didn't know what that was about. “Please, Landon, tell me what's the matter. I wanna help you, and there's no way that I can do that without knowing what's going on. Is it something to do with your health?”

Landon pulled my arms away from around him, looking sadly down at his feet as he stood up. “No, my health is going to be fine. I mean, not really, but kinda. They don't really know what's gonna happen but I got something screwed up in my brain. But I'll be ok. I just get really dizzy and weak sometimes. No big deal really. That's not what the problem is.” He paced around the room as he said all that, and his voice started getting quicker and quicker as it used to.

“OK, Landon. Just calm down and tell me what is the problem.”

“You wanna know how I ended up in the hospital, don't you?” Landon was the quietest I had ever heard him at this point.

I nodded slowly. “I don't wanna push, but yeah. It's been bugging the shit out of me. It was Kenneth, wasn't it?”

“Liam, if I tell you, you gotta promise not to tell anybody. No matter what.”

“I promise, Landon.” I didn't know what this secret was, but if it was important to Landon, I was determined to keep it.

“And you can't go out looking for revenge.”

“OK, Landon, just tell me.”

“Well, Jake was in detention with me. So we were talking and he invited me back to his place for a while. I thought that we were just gonna go and hang out. I thought it sounded fun. Well, we watched a movie for a bit, and while we were sitting there, Jake came onto me.”

I felt my fingers go cold for a few seconds as I got nervous about what Landon was saying. “Well, we kinda started to mess around. Apparently Tommy didn't know that Jake and I were going to be messing around on the couch, and he got mad. He kinda went ballistic on me.”

“Tommy!?” I yelled in rage. Landon placed his hand on my chest, trying to calm me down.

“You promised not to over-react, Liam.”

I bit my lower lip and tried to calm myself down. “So why were you crying so hard when you came in today?” I asked. “Was it just being attacked?”

“No...I...Liam, Jake and I got pretty far and, well, I cheated on you, and I don't think we can be together now.”

“You...oh.” I felt my face drop when he told me that. “OK, I guess. I mean, I'm grounded anyway. And I didn't even know we were really together.”

“I thought we were.” Landon ran his fingers through his hair awkwardly. “Are we at least still friends?”

“Yeah, I'd like that.” I looked down at my feet, unable to look up into Landon's eyes.

“Well, your dad kinda told me to keep it short. Said you were grounded for being suspended?”

“Yeah,” I responded with a slight blush. “But I'll be back to school tomorrow. Today's my last day of the suspension.”

He nodded, and seemed uncomfortable as he looked at me. I leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips, gaining a small smile from him before he scampered out of my room. I walked over to my computer and deleted the site where Landon's stories were posted from my favorites. I didn't need to go there anymore.

The day after Landon came to my house, I returned to school. The first thing I did was visit the band room and talked with the director. He said that I was still going to be permitted to play in the concert that night. I think his reasoning was a mix of me being the only oboe player and the fact that I had a major solo in the middle of the song which would wreck the song without my presence.

I avoided the cafeteria before school so that I could keep my promise to Landon and not go off on Tommy when I saw him. Just thinking about the fact that he could attack Landon and send him to the hospital made my blood run cold. In first hour Landon asked me to eat outside with him. I wasn't sure if I wanted to eat with Landon after what I guessed was our breakup, but, knowing that he was doing it to keep me away from Tommy, I agreed.

Lunch with Landon was not nearly as awkward as I had imagined it would be. The first few minutes were spent in an odd silence, but soon the two of us were back to talking and joking like old friends. There were a few moments were I found myself losing control of my thoughts and thinking how beautiful Landon looked, but I understood that I needed to reel those in and not think about it. Towards the end of lunch, I thought about inviting him to the concert. I decided against it, however, when I realized that I needed to just cut off our ties of being in a relationship.

“I'm sorry,” I said sheepishly as Kenneth took his seat next to me in Biology.

“About?” he asked. He kept his eyes forward, apparently not wanting to look at me.

“The fight, and assuming that you attacked Landon.”

“So you believe me now?” he asked.

I nodded slowly. “Yeah. I know who did it, and I'm sorry for accusing you.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he responded. I rolled my eyes slightly as the teacher started the lesson, keeping her eyes on us the whole time.

I got off the bus that afternoon and immediately went into my house and up to my room to start getting changed. I had to figure out how to dress myself in a full tuxedo, which had been rented for me by the band, and get over to Riverton High in time to start setting up the equipment for the concert. It took me about a half hour to figure out how all the parts of my suit fit together into something that looked like a tux, and then I was back downstairs.

“I'm ready to go, Dad!”

“What about dinner?” he called out.

“I'll grab something after the concert,” I hollered back. “I'm not hungry.” In reality, that was only half true. I was also too nervous to eat. I didn't know how the R-SALT band was going to play, or how we were going to be received in the predominately straight Riverton High.

“OK, have you got your music and instrument?” he asked as he emerged from his office. I raised the inquired items to show him that I did indeed have them.

Dad walked with me and Brandon to his car, we both climbed into the back seat, and he got into the front. Dad always insisted that Brandon and I both ride in the back seat to show that he didn't give either one of us preferential treatment. That, and Brandon would throw the hissy-fit from hell if I ever tried to sit in the front.

Dad drove to Riverton High and stopped in front of the main entrance. I got out, and he told me that he and Brandon were going to grab a fast food dinner before my performance. I nodded, and they drove off.

I walked in to Riverton High for the first time in months. Admittedly, I was very nervous, but I didn't have any feelings that anything bad would happen. I was only there for a concert. Surely the people of Riverton could respect that.

I went to the gym and set my music and instrument down with my band before deciding that I should use the restroom. I quickly scampered out of the gym and to the familiar location of one of the bathrooms. I stepped up to one of the urinals and, after a small struggle with my tuxedo, started to relieve myself. I froze in terror when I heard the door behind me open and a familiar voice say “I thought we warned you about this, fag.”

I turned around after zipping my fly back up and was afraid, but not surprised, to see the unnamed baseball player who had threatened me a week before standing in the entrance way. “I've got a concert here tonight,” I explained. “I'm not bothering you.”

“This school has been loads better since we got rid of you fags,” he spat. He was in his baseball uniform, apparently fresh off from practice.

“I understand that,” I said, trying to withhold my anger to stop from causing a fight that I knew I could not win. “Trust me, I'd rather not be here.”

“Then get your fruity ass out of here.” He shut the door behind him, and started walking slowly towards me.

“Just let me go,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt.

The next thing I know, I was pushed backwards into the wall and felt the back of my head split open as it made hard contact with the porcelain wall. I fell to the floor and was met by a knee driven straight into my face. Before I even had time to cough up blood I was pulled up from the floor and had my face dunked unceremoniously into one of the germ-infested toilets in a stall. I sputtered around, trying to get air, until I heard the door once again open.

I felt the baseball player tense up and pull my head from the toilet, before giving a sigh of relief. “Oh, it's just you, Tommy.”

I looked towards the door and saw the very same Tommy who was dating Jake. He looked between our faces, and I saw an internal struggle happen. “Let go of him, OK?”

“Why should I?” my attacked questioned. “Are you taking pity on the fag? Aww, don't tell me you're falling for ‘em being at R-SALT. Is Jake getting your heart?”

“No way, man,” Tommy dismissed. “You know I wouldn't even be with Jake if the little fairy wasn't giving it up to me nightly.”

My face, I'm sure, dropped in shock when I heard that. Was Tommy really only using Jake to get sex? Surely he could have done that with anybody, why pick Jake?

Before I had to much time to think about that, I was pulled back to my feet and had my arms pinned behind me. My attacker offered Tommy the “final shot,” which my one-time friend accepted by walking towards me. He drove his fist hard into my stomach and walked out, leaving my laying on the cold, dirty bathroom floor.

It was a couple of minutes before I was able to finally pull myself off the bathroom floor and look in one of the mirrors. I was shocked and disturbed by the boy who was looking back at me. His face was battered and bloody with scratches all over it. His hair was matted and nasty-looking and he wasn't nearly as handsome as the boy who had left the house just an hour earlier, looking forward to his night.

I cleaned myself up as best as I could, drying my hair quickly with some towels and wiping the blood off as well as could be expected before walking out of the bathroom and back to the main hall. “Oh my god, Liam!” I looked over and saw that Dad was walking in with Brandon holding his hand. “What happened?”

He rushed over to me and started looking me over quickly. “I had a mishap in the bathroom, Dad,” I explained. “I'll be fine.”

“Who did this to you? We gotta get you to the hospital.”

“No, Dad,” I responded, pulling my arm away from him. “I wanna go out there and play the concert.”

“Why?” He asked.

“Because the entire band is depending on me. I don't want to let them down. But, more than that, if I don't go out there and play this concert, they win.”

“Who wins?” I could tell he was completely confused.

“Look, Dad, can I just go play the concert? I'll explain everything afterward. I promise I'm fine.” I tried once again to sound more convincing than I felt.

He paused in thought for a few minutes, then gave me a small, forced smile. “Go play your concert. And kick ass.”

I gave him a forced smile of my own, and quickly hurried back to the band set. Although his smile seemed to be forced, his “kick ass” comment made me feel better. It was a typical ‘Dad’ comment, like he would have made before we had our falling out. After a short discussion with the conductor, we decided that I was going to be able to play the concert, but he was going to allow me to leave early, right after our set was done. The rest of the students would have to stay through the entire program. I took my seat, and within a few minutes, we started to play.

Once we started to play, I was almost instantly lost in the music. That night became the best concert of my life up to that point. I don't know if my attackers were in the audience, in reality I doubted it, but it didn’t really matter. When it got to the point in the second song where I got to play my solo, I felt totally exhilarated. I had won a personal victory tonight. I had survived their vicious attack in the bathroom, and I didn't let it keep me down. I had made it back to the band and was able to make it through my solo almost perfectly. If we hadn’t been on stage in front of a huge crowd of people, I might have done a little victory dance, I felt so good.

At the end of the song, the crowd clapped for us as they did after every song. Our director turned to the audience and held his hand out towards us. As he indicated the band, the applause grew louder. He motioned to me with his hand and I stood up sheepishly. I bowed my head towards the now thunderously applauding audience, a single tear escaped my eye and rolled down my cheek as I thought to myself, ‘Mom would be proud of me’.

I sat in my room in complete darkness for a few hours, staring at the ceiling and just thinking. I had finally come down from the high of playing the concert after being attacked, and my face had begun to throb. I stood up from the band immediately after we had concluded our set, and started to make my way out of the auditorium with Dad and Brandon. We made it out to the foyer area of the school when I heard a voice behind me.

“Liam!” I turned around to see Kenneth running towards me urgently. “Are you ok?”

I gave him a quick nod while silently hoping that he wouldn't say too much about the drama that had been happening at R-SALT over the past couple of weeks. I hadn't gotten around to telling Dad about those things, and I wasn't sure if I ever would.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” I said when he wouldn't leave. “I just had a mishap in the restroom. I'm going to be fine, though.”

“Are you sure? It looks pretty bad.”

“We were actually just about to go to the hospital to have him checked up on. You're more than welcome to come with us if it would relax you,” Dad offered. I had told him about Landon and me having a falling out, and apparently he was wasting no time in trying to hook me up again.

“I'd like that,” Kenneth accepted.

The four of us made our way out to the car, and climbed in. Kenneth got to sit in the front, due to his status as the guest. I noticed on the ride over there that, as opposed to Landon, Kenneth didn't interact with Brandon at all. I shook my head quickly. I had to stop comparing Kenneth to Landon. I wasn't interested in Kenneth like that.

I felt awkward walking into the emergency room wearing a tuxedo. Of all the things that hospitals see on a daily basis, I was pretty sure that “band geek in tuxedo” was probably towards the bottom of the list. Dad signed us in and filled out the necessary paperwork before taking Brandon to the restroom, leaving Kenneth and I sitting in the waiting room alone.

“So why did you wanna come along so badly?” I asked looking at him.

“Because I love you, of course.”

“What!?” I asked, my complete shock showing obviously on my face.

“It was a joke,” he laughed. I'm sure I made a face at that comment, because he blushed slightly as he looked at the ground. “I mean...not that you're not able to be loved...it's just...we haven't had the greatest impressions of each other.”

“Yeah, I realize that. I still don't entirely know the truth about you and Tommy, but i'm starting to lean towards your side of things.”

“Why's that?” He asked.

“Who do you think did this to me?” I asked, indicating my face.

“Tommy?”

“Him and one of the guys from Riverton's baseball team,” I told him.

“That asshole,” he grumbled.

My dad and Brandon returned to us shortly before the doctor called us back to check up on me. Dad and I walked with him, leaving Brandon with Kenneth in the waiting room.

Dad told the doctor that I had fallen down a flight of steps as I got ready for my concert. I looked at him confused, but he gave me a “we'll talk about it later” look. The doctor ran all kinds of tests on me, only to tell me that I was completely fine. “Just a little battered and bruised,” he'd told me. I rolled my eyes as Dad and I left the room and he paid for the visit.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” I told him.

“For what?” he asked.

“Making you pay for this unnecessary visit.”

“Liam, don't worry about it. There are more important things than money. You and Brandon are two of them. Look, I know I haven't been the best father since your mom passed away, and I'm really sorry for that. I was completely wrapped up in the finanal side of things and didn't stop to think that you two needed a Dad, not just a father. I'm going to make a lot of changes and things are going to get better.”

I practically fell into my dad and wrapped my arms around him. He did the same, rubbing my back slowly. “Dad, I'm sorry about all the crap I’ve caused.”

“It's OK, Liam. We've both made mistakes, and we've both got a lot of changes to make.”

I knew that my Dad and I probably looked pretty strange, standing there in the hospital hallway in a tight embrace, me in a tuxedo and beat to a pulp. I couldn't have cared less, though. If Dad and I were able to stick to our respective words, things in my life were going to be getting a lot better. At least on the home side of things. R-SALT was a completely different story.

Dad drove Kenneth home after we left, but very few words were said in the car. We got to Kenneth's house, and I walked him up to his door. “Hey, there's no school tomorrow,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, almost sounding like a question. I didn't know where he was going with this.

“Wanna meet me at the burger place from a few weeks ago? This time I can tell you the real story about Tommy and me.”

I thought about it for a few seconds and nodded. “Sure. I'll meet you there at one.”

“It's a date,” he said before disappearing inside his house, leaving me to ponder those words.

I got back into the car, and Dad drove towards our house. “So how do you know him?” Dad asked.

“He's in my biology class.”

“Do you like him?” he asked bluntly. That was the most forward Dad had ever been when talking to me about a boy before.

“I don't think so, Dad,” I responded after recovering from the shock of him asking that. “But we're going to grab a burger at one tomorrow if I can get a ride.”

He sighed softly, a sure sign that he didn't entirely understand what was going on. “Yeah, sure, Liam. Just be careful. Something about Kenneth doesn't seem right.”

I didn't sleep well that night after the concert, looking nervously forward to meeting Kenneth for burgers the next day. Dad drove me to the place at one o'clock, and I think he thought that it was a date. “You sure seem nervous,” he commented multiple times.

“I'm fine, Dad. Just a lot of things going on in my mind.”

“If you say so,” he said. “What time should I pick you up?”

“He's got a car. I'll call you if any big plans come up.” I got out of the car before he had an opportunity to object.

I scanned the parking lot for Kenneth's car, and was a bit disappointed to not find it there. After what seemed to be a few minutes but was likely only a few seconds, his car pulled into the parking lot and he parked in a spot towards the front.

“Hey,” I said as he got out of the car. I raised my hand to wave, but didn't want to look like an idiot, so I used it to scratch the back of my head. He grinned at me.

“Hi,” he said calmly. We walked inside together and both ordered and took our seats at the same table as last time before either of us said another word.

“So, you said you wanted to tell me the rest of the story?” I asked after a few minutes of awkward burger eating.

“How much do you know again?” he asked, looking across the table at me blankly. His ability to do everything so calmly made me slightly uneasy.

“I know that you and Tommy had a thing before. I also know that he claims you cheated on him but you say that you were broken up before you got with the other guy. Honestly, that's about it.”

“Well then I've got a hell of a lot to tell you,” he said bluntly. “Tommy and I had a relationship, if you wanna call it that, for about 3 months. Basically, we got together to mess around and then went on our merry ways. That's all he wanted, I guess, but I thought he was actually interested in me. Mistake number one. So after a while I told him that if he didn't start caring about me that he wasn't going to keep getting some. Well, after that we quit talking for a while. About a week later he called me up and told me that he was sorry and I, being the idiot I was, believed him. I went over to his house to make up with him, but he hadn't changed. Almost as soon as I got in the door he started putting the moves on me. I tried to get away but,” he took a long pause at this part, “he raped me.”

I sat there in stunned silence for a few minutes before I was able to choke out an “I'm sorry.”

He waved his hand in the air to dismiss it. “It's something I'm dealing with. That's why I hate him so much. Well, part of it. After he raped me, he started “dating” my sister. I wasn't going to let the same thing happen to her that happened to me, so I started some rumors going around about Tommy, including that he was a pedophile and liked little boys.”

“That's pretty shitty of you,” I told him honestly. Our food had been all but forgotten as he told me his past.

“Yeah, well, that's how things happened. I'd be lying if I said I regretted it. He did some bad things to me, and that was far from the worst thing I thought of doing to him.”

I picked up a fry and deposited it in my mouth. “So that's really the truth, huh?” I asked.

“You don't believe me?”

“I do, sadly. I heard him and the baseball player talking in the bathroom as I was being attacked, and I think that he's doing something similar to Jake.”

“It wouldn't surprise me,” he said.

“He said that he's just using him and talked about hating us.”

“Who? Me and you?”

“Gay people in general, I suppose,” I told him with a shrug.

“Again, that hardly surprises me. I wish we had some evidence on him to put him in jail.”

“You should have reported him after he raped you,” I said.

“Don't blame me,” he snapped.

“I wasn't….”

“Don't try to talk to me like an idiot,” he interrupted me. “Do you have any clue how hard it is to be raped by the closest thing you've had to a boyfriend?”

“Kenneth, calm down,” I said as calmly as I could. “I'm not blaming you for anything. I just think that we coulda solved a lot of this if you would have reported him. I'm not blaming you, though. I know how hard it must have been.”

“So...do you have somewhere you need to be?” He asked, after yet another awkward pause.

“There's a few things I need to do,” I told him. “But could I get a ride by Landon's house?”

“Why do you want to go there?” He asked, an almost possessive tone in his voice.

“I just need to clear a few things up,” I told him.

“Sure. Let's go.”

I followed him out to his car and climbed into the passenger side. “I'm really sorry about what I said,” I apologized. I wasn't entirely sure why I was apologizing, but he seemed like he was mad at me over it still.

“It's OK,” he replied as he started his car.

We sat in silence except for my directions to Landon's house. Kenneth pulled up in front, and I sat with him for a minute before putting my hand on the door handle. “So I guess I'll see you at school on Monday?” I asked.

He nodded, and I got out of the car. I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. It was quickly opened by a smiling Mrs. Isert. “Hi, Liam,” she greeted me cheerfully. “What brings you here today?”

“I was just coming by to see Landon for a little bit. I had some free time and wanted to see him.”

“Sure, he's right up the stairs in his room. I'd knock before entering though. He's got his own computer,” she told me suggestively. I blushed furiously before following her directions up to the door.

I knocked and heard “come on in,” after a minute. I opened the door slowly, and saw Landon lying on his stomach reading a book.

“Hey,” I said and he looked up from his book to me quickly.

“Liam!” By the time the word had stopped rebounding around his room, he had stood up and embraced me tightly.

“Hey,” I said, slightly surprised at the affection. “What's up?”

“Nothin' really. Just been doing a lot of reading. Come on and sit down,” he rambled. I had to smile at that.

I sat on the foot of his bed and took a look around the room. It was pretty neat for a teenaged boy's room, other than a few discarded clothing items and books scattered here and there. The walls were covered in posters of artists that he either liked or thought were hot, and he had two large bookshelves full of literature.

“So what'd you come by for?” he asked.

“I'm not allowed to come see a friend?” I asked teasingly.

“Well, you are, but I thought maybe after what I did we wouldn't exactly be friends anymore.”

“It's no big deal, Landon,” I said. “We weren't ever officially together, so it's not like I can call it cheating.”

“I know, but….”

“I said it's no big deal,” I cut him off. “But if you wanna make it up to me, I have a favor that you can help me with.”

“What's that?” he asked.

I told Landon the story of what happened to me in the bathroom the night of the band concert, and how I had found out about Tommy just using Jake.

“As bad as that is,” he started slowly. I could tell he was feeling awkward about what he was about to say next.

“What is it?”

“Well, it's not really that big of a deal. Jake's not gonna be living with Tommy for much longer.”

“What happened between them?” I asked.

“Nothing. Jake doesn't know anything about this. But they're closing R-SALT.”

“What do you mean they're closing R-SALT?” I asked in shock.

“Mom's friends with one of the school board members,” Landon explained. “She heard it through the grapevine that they're closing R-SALT. They should be announcing it to us any day now.”

“But why would they do that?” By now we had both been sitting cross-legged for a while, and he got up to stretch.

“Apparently they think that it's a form of segregation,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, I can see where they're coming from. They're taking all the gay kids and putting them into R-SALT. It's like either you hide who you are, or you get shipped to our school. We're just a couple gas chambers away from being Auschwitz.”

While I felt like Landon's comparison to a Nazi death camp was a bit too extreme, I did get what he was trying to say. Ever since I had been to R-SALT, I noticed that a lot of kids were transferring in. I had a sneaking suspicion they didn't all want to be there, but there was nothing that I could do about it.

“So Jake will move back home?” I asked.

“Yeah. I don't think we should tell him. It would just hurt him.”

“I don't wanna hurt him,” I agreed. “But I don't think I can be around Tommy anymore.”

“That's OK. I'll tell Jake that you two had a fight if he asks, I'm sure that he won't get mad at you or anything.”

“OK, that sounds like it could work,” I said, trying once again to put forth more confidence than I felt.”Do you think that maybe I could get a ride home from your parents?” I asked awkwardly. I didn't want to be a bother, but I felt like I needed to get home soon before Dad started worrying.

“Yeah, I'm sure we can give you a ride,” he offered. He seemed a bit disappointed that I was leaving so early, and I felt bad for disappointing him.

“I'm sorry,” I said as I stood up from his bed and gave him a quick hug. “I just need to get home and tell Dad what's going on.”

“I understand,” he replied, holding me tight in the hug.

I followed him downstairs where he asked his mom if they could give me a ride home. She readily agreed, and the three of us piled into her minivan. She followed my directions, and I was back to my house around 3 o'clock.

“Thanks again,” I told her as I got out.

“No, thank you. For everything,” she replied cryptically.

I gave her a confused look, but she just smiled before Brandon came running outside. “Hi!” He cheerfully called up to the window. “I'm Brandon!”

“This is Landon's mommy,” I told him laughing.

“My mommy is in heaven,” he told her brightly. That's what Dad had always told him, but I don't think he really knew what it meant. There was no way for him to. There were times that I couldn't quite grasp the reality of the situation.

Landon's mom gave me an “I'm sorry” type of look before looking back down at Brandon. “Well I'm sure that she's very happy up there looking down on you and your big brother Liam. He's a very good big brother, isn't he?”

Brandon nodded and gave her a big grin, wrapping his arms around mine. “Yeah, he's the man!” I laughed a little bit at that, and wiped a tear from my eye that had formed upon the woman's kind words.

“I bet he is. He's a very nice boy,” she replied.

I smiled at her once again. “Thanks,” I repeated.

“Not to break up the love-fest,” Landon chimed in, “but Dad's probably wondering where we are.”

I nodded and smiled at the Iserts again. “Bye.”

I walked inside with Brandon and saw Dad walking through with an apple in hand, apparently on his way back to the office. “That wasn't Kenneth,” he said obviously.

“I know,” I told him. “I went over to Landon's for a few, and got a ride back from his mom.”

“Oh, well that was nice of them.”

“R-SALT is closing down,” I told him suddenly. There was no easier way to say it, so I decided to just tell him.

“What? When?”

“At the end of this year. They're closing down R-SALT and merging us back in with the other kids. They haven't told us yet, but Mrs. Isert is friends with a lady on the school board, and she found out that way.”

“Are you OK with that?” he asked me.

“I guess I kinda have to be, don't I?” I asked him with a shrug. Brandon left the room, obviously bored with our adult talk. I followed Dad as he walked back towards his office.

“Well, I could get you a tutor or something and have you home-schooled till college,” he offered. I felt myself snort at that suggestion.

“No, Dad. I can brave two years with the real people. Thanks, though.”

“If you need anything, I'm here for you,” he told me. I smiled and left the room.

Everybody knew that something was up the minute that we walked into R-SALT the next day. Instead of the usual energy that infected our school, there was a hushed silence that seemed to permeate everybody's souls. One of the teachers stood at the front door, telling everyone to go to the gymnasium as they entered for what they once thought was going to be just a normal school day. I looked over at Landon as he entered behind me. “Is this about what I think it is?”

“I'd say so,” he said with a solemn nod.

Landon and I walked together to the Gym, where we took seats in the bleachers together, as far away from Jake and Tommy as we could. The large room was quiet. Not silent, just quiet. Everybody was talking, but it was almost as if they knew that something big was going to happen and nobody wanted to miss a second of it.

Mrs. Stone walked out into the gym shortly after the first bell rang. “I'm sure that many of you have heard the rumors by now. For those of you that have, I am just going to say that they are true. For those of you that have not, I regret to tell you that our school is going to be closing at the end of the year.”

The quietness that once was among the crowd got shattered like a glass window. Everybody erupted into conversation on this subject. Even in the crowd around Landon and me you could hear a variety of reactions. From shock to anger to sadness, it seemed like everyone had an opinion on the news. Mrs Stone tried to calm us down, but it was pointless until she grabbed a microphone and demanded attention through it.

“I know this is surprising news, but we need to stay orderly. Many of our students come from right here in Riverton. Those of you that do will be returning to this building next year, along with those who currently attend Riverton High. This building will be the new home to the Riverton Rebels. Those of you who come from other school districts will be returning to the schools at which you started the school year.

“So the bigots are taking over our school!?” one kid yelled from towards the top of the bleachers. An outraged cry of support grew around his voice.

“First of all, I have to ask you to keep an open mind about them, as we expect them to do for us.” A grumble of disagreement met this sentence. “But they are not going to be taking over our school. This is property of the city of Riverton, and what they decide to do with it is their business. I don't agree with this any more than any of the rest of you, but I understand where they are coming from and I am going to do my best to facilitate these changes and make them as smooth and easy as possible. For example, next year I am going to be the vice principal of Riverton High and I am going to see to it that Riverton High gets it's very first Gay/Straight Alliance.”

The assembly lasted for another fifteen minutes or so and when we were released, everyone was only able to talk about what was announced to us that morning. Landon and I had already had time to digest the news, so we walked towards first hour talking of our futures. “I guess I'll be going back to Riverton,” I told him softly.

“I never saw you there before,” he said.

“You went to Riverton?” I asked surprised. I had never heard him say what school he attended before R-SALT.

“Yeah, I was only there for about a week of this school year, though,” he told me.

“So we'll still be able to see each other,” I told him happily. Somehow, that made it better. I was going to be able to face the new school with Landon by my side and that made it a lot less intimidating.

The rest of the school day was basically a waste. Nobody was able to shut up long enough to do any actual learning, In fact, a lot of the year passed in the same way. Nobody knew what was really going to happen to us once the new school year started. A new school, new teachers, everyone seemed nervous. In all honesty, so was I. I don't even think I was that nervous going to R-SALT as I was once I knew that I would be going back to Riverton.

Landon and I grew extremely close over the next couple of months. Almost every day after school, one of the two of us was at the other's house. Between doing homework, hanging out, and having snacks, we became the best of friends. We often ate dinner with each other too. As close as we got, though. I knew that there was no hope for the two of us to become a couple ever again. I didn't even like him that way. Not anymore.

The band was invited to play at R-SALT's one and only graduation ceremony. After our rousing performance at the concert, the entirety of the school demanded it. We worked for months on perfecting “Pomp and Circumstance,” and were also to perform the song from the concert in which I got my solo. It was a major honor, but also really stressful to be performing a big moment like that at our school's only graduation ever.

It was the last day of school. I had survived. I made it through a year at R-SALT and, as much as I hated to admit it, I had fun. Through all the drama and heartbreak, I loved every minute that I had at the school. I had been attacked, beat up, and abused. But I also found love, at least for a week, and made some great new friends. I think it was honestly one of the best experiences of my life.

“So, I don't guess I'll be seeing you guys anymore, huh?” Jake asked slightly nervously. He rubbed his one arm with the other hand and looked down at the ground.

“Well you gotta go home, don't ya?” I asked.

“Yeah.” The single word was the softest that I had ever heard the young promiscuous boy speak. I saw a tear roll down his cheek slowly, and I tilted his head up to look in my eyes before wiping it away.

“Don't cry. Anytime you're back in town, swing by. We'll get a big party going and have a blast. Maybe some new guys will be in town for you to have your way with too.”

He blushed at that, and wrapped his arms happily around my neck. I knew that after the announcement to close R-SALT down, Tommy had broken up with Jake. He claimed that he couldn't deal with a long-distance relationship, but I knew that that was just because his penis couldn't reach across the interstate that far. I kept that information from Jake, though. He seemed OK with Tommy and him being over, but I knew that he wanted a new boyfriend desperately. “Thanks,” he whispered in my ear, “for everything.”

I nodded simply and hugged him before I felt a finger tapping on my shoulder. I turned from Jake, leaving him to talk with Landon, before I saw Kenneth standing in the hall smiling at me. “Hey,” he said. I noticed almost a hint of nervousness in his voice. I wasn't used to that at all.

“Hi,” I said, making the word almost a question.

“I was wondering...I know that we haven't always gotten along the best over the year, but I wanted to know if maybe...since we won't see each other anymore at school, ya know, if you'd like to hang out sometime outside of school?”

“Sure,” I said with a happy grin. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, when I get back from my vacation with my family,” he rolled his eyes here, “we could maybe go to that club. Over The Rainbow?”

“I'd like that,” I said with a much more calm smile than I meant.

“So, Mom,” I said as I sat on the bench near the grave where my mother had been buried not long before. “I know you'd be proud of me. I made it through the first and only year of R-SALT. I guess I made history. You always told me I would.”

I paused a few seconds in order to wipe a tear that rolled down my cheek. “I had to be strong to do it. I think I got that from you. But I did it. I'm going to go back to Riverton High to finish out the rest of high school, and I'm going to be strong there too. I know that's what you'd want. No, what you do want.” I looked up at the sky. That's where Mom was, not in the ground. And that's where I was going to meet up with her again one day.

“I'm going to keep taking care of Dad, and Brandon. Don't worry, Mom. I'm keeping all my promises that I made you. And I'm not going to let things slip into discord. The band played great, by the way. Another standing ovation. I wish I coulda heard you clapping like at the concerts when I was a kid. But I know you loved this one too. I love you, Mom.”

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