Before I Break Page 4

  Why am I left here questioning every day?

  My existence is pointless, I know that by now.

  But the others all say giving up is for cowards.

  Then I coward I am, there’s no doubt about that.

  I’m just writing this journal filled with all of life’s facts.

  Driving home in the middle of the night, I could almost hear my heart pounding against my chest. What had happened back at the Fro-Yo Place was a lot more than just a hatred for him, and as I drove, I wasn’t even sure there was any hate in it at all. The truth was, I was more shocked than anything, and the fact that I had called him a faggot nagged at me the entire ride home.

  While it was true that I considered myself a homophobe, I had a justifiable reason, right? There were numerous things that I could point out in the Bible to anyone and they could agree with me 100%. But then you had people like Melissa, who claimed to be a Christian, and yet still denied some of the things the Bible said. Leviticus 18:22 tells us, “A man shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination.” That is a pretty clear statement, especially the verse not too far after that says gay men should be stoned. So why on earth did I feel so terrible about the way I had acted?

  I don’t really know how long I drove around, but by the time I got home, it was nearly 11 o’clock. When I walked in the front door, I found Jake sitting on the couch still, except this time he was awake. His eyes fell on mine when I walked in, but he didn’t say a word.

  Sitting down beside him, I said, “How was your power nap?”

  He smiled a little and said, “Man, I was really out of it. Sometimes that stuff really gets to me.” He had the box of Cheez-Its still on the coffee table and he picked them up. “So your mom said you went out with some new guy?”

  I nodded. “That new kid, Avery Branson. You may or may not have seen him around. He doesn’t have many classes with me.”

  Jake didn’t seem to know who I was talking about. “Well, don’t go replacing me with someone else, dude. You’re my best friend.” He took a handful of Cheez-Its and shoved them in his mouth. “So what’d you guys do?”

  I really wanted to spill the beans about what had really happened, but while he was my best friend, I knew he’d try to make jokes about it and I was so not in the joking mood. “I just kind of showed him around, you know? Nothing major.” I wanted to laugh at the thought. If only that was what happened, then I wouldn’t be feeling so sick to my stomach.

  I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and mom appeared in the living room threshold. “Cyril, what are you doing back so late? I was worried sick.”

  Great, now my mother was going to hop on the case. What was she going to do next, call a jury? “Don’t worry, mom, I’m fine. Avery and I just kind of had a dispute.” I grabbed the box of Cheez-Its and headed to the kitchen when my mom followed me, leaving Jake in the living room. I put the box back and mom stood there with her arms crossed over her chest. Acting nonchalant was going to be the best way to get through this. “What?” I asked.

  “You had a dispute with someone you just met?” she asked me, not sounding entirely sure. “What exactly could you fight with someone about on the second day you met them?”

  I knew she wasn’t going to get off my back unless I told her the truth. Reaching into the refrigerator, I pulled out a can of Coke and popped it open. “He’s gay.” The words came out so easily with so little conviction because the best way to approach this was to let her know this wasn’t bothering me. There was a strong pang in my chest, and if I felt it again, I thought I was going to cry.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  “He’s gay?” my mom asked. “But—”

  “Yeah, mom, I know. I ended the friendship tonight. He wasn’t really important.” The lie rang around in my head and I wondered what he really was to me. Not anything after what happened tonight, I could tell you that. “I need to go to sleep, mom, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I headed upstairs into my room, hoping to avoid any more of that conversation with her. When I got to my room, I pulled out my phone and texted Avery, saying,

  As I lay in my bed, I couldn’t help but replay the entire last two days like a movie. How had I suddenly got pulled into this? And why did I care so much as to even be questioning right now? Two days ago, if it were about Christian, I would have told this kid to go do a sexual act on himself, using the explicit term instead. Now I felt terrible for calling this guy a faggot and had no idea why. Why was there a sudden change in heart?

  When Avery didn’t text me back, I headed to my computer to send him a Facebook message. A few girls had Instant Messaged me from my post earlier, including those dirty pictures I had asked for, but shockingly I didn’t care. As I typed in Avery’s name in the search engine, he wasn’t coming up. I went to my friend’s list to try and find him there and realized every trace of him was no longer available to me.

  Avery had blocked me.

  When I woke up the next morning, I had nearly forgotten about the things that happened while I was out with Avery—that one particular thing I didn’t wish to think about. I had texted Avery several times the night before, hoping he’d respond to one of them, but he ignored me like I expected him to. Then I thought to myself, Wow, look who’s acting gay now—like I just lost my boyfriend.

  Throwing on some light blue American Eagle jeans and a short-sleeved blue Hollister shirt, I headed down into the kitchen where I knew Mom would be making me some breakfast, even if Dad wasn’t home. As I suspected, when I sat at the table, Dad wasn’t there sipping on his usual morning coffee. I figured it had something to do with Dad taking the Taylor’s case, but I couldn’t really imagine them fighting over something like this.

  “Where’s dad?” I asked.

  “He went into work early this morning,” my mom said nonchalantly as she put a bowl of Lucky Charms in front of my face. “Eat up.”

  Lucky Charms for breakfast? What the heck was going on here? Shoving it away, I asked, “Where’s the usual breakfast?”

  My mother was clearly upset. Her face was bright red, her usually luscious brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, showing that she was crying before I came down. “I have to get to the church early this morning to talk to Pastor Morrison about the next sermon.”

  Mom was involved in the church long before I was born, working side-by-side with Morrison and my dad, which came as no shock to me. They loved our church, East Hill Nondenominational, which had been around for more than twenty five years. Morrison, who was aged sixty-two, founded the church, originally planned to be Catholic, but found that more people were open to the idea of “nondenominational” sermons, which was actually kind of lie. My family wasn’t as strict as some, but we did go to church every Sunday and Wednesday. On Wednesday’s I had my teen service, as said before, and my parent’s had a marriage group that they went to so that they could learn to be a holy couple.

  “Will dad be there tonight?” I asked, hoping she would say yes. I really didn’t want them to be fighting right now.

  “Maybe,” she shrugged. “You could handle going to Youth alone, right?”

  “Mom, it has nothing to do with going alone. Are you and dad okay?”

  She handed me a pack of Poptarts and said, “Go on now; you don’t want to be late, do you? I’ll see you around 3:30, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, even though I had an hour before I even had to leave. “I’ll see you then. Have a good day.”

  She smiled to me, and then turned, leaving me in the kitchen alone. As soon as she left, I pulled out my phone to give my father a call. It rang once and then went straight to voicemail. He must have been busy with the Taylors. There was another person I wanted to call, but I knew she wouldn’t talk to me, and neither would Avery, who probably wouldn’t forgive me for the horrible things I said last night.

  Melissa and I went to the same church, and I knew she couldn’t ignore me forever. She was the love
of my life, the one I wanted to spend forever with, and I was sure she wanted the same things. Once I explained to her about Avery, she would have to forgive me. A small part of me said it wasn’t true, that she’d never forgive me, but she had to. My life depended on it. It wasn’t like I couldn’t get any girl I wanted—okay, maybe that is how it was, considering I couldn’t have Melissa right now. Telling her Avery and I were friends would get us together again. Sending her a quick text telling her to meet me in the parking lot before school, I grabbed my bag and headed off.

  The school parking lot was empty for the most part; at least the student one was anyway. East Hill, which wasn’t very large in population, was actually pretty large in size. The school had a big Theatre Department, doing about three to four plays or musicals every year. The gym was also good in size, and we had most of our games here. The football field in the back, opposite of the parking lot, was the biggest thing of all, and I surely hoped that I could get on the team again.

  Or did I?

  Football seemed important to do during the summer, but now that school started, I wondered if I even wanted to. A bunch of guys throwing a ball and tackling each other in an open field didn’t sound too pleasing anymore. But East Hill required at least one extra-curricular activity, so what would I do? It was still early to think about that, though, and I had a few weeks to come up with something.

  I sat in the parking lot for about twenty more minutes as more cars started pulling it. Melissa was only able to drive to school on Wednesday, her father’s day off, and on the weekends for cheer practice. Most of the time she got a ride from either a friend or me, but as I expected, she was driving herself. She pulled into the parking lot with father’s car, a silver 2007 Honda Accord, and when she saw my car, she got out, walking over to it. Climbing into the passenger seat, she glared at me. “What do you want, Hayes?”

  Whenever she was upset with me, she tended to call me by my last name. I honestly thought it was kind of cute. “Come on, ‘Lissa, don’t be like that. I have some news.”

  “Unless you suddenly decided to stop being a homophobic asshole about my friends, I don’t want to hear it.” When I smiled, her eyes widened in surprise. “You stopped being a homophobic asshole? That’s not possible.”

  “It’s true,” I told her. “You know that new guys, Avery? He’s gay! And he and I are friends. We went out last night so I could show him around Town Centre.”

  Melissa smirked at my comment. “Really? You went out with Avery? What was it, some kind of date?”

  “Of course not! He’s a really good friend, though, and it surprised me. He’s so…I don’t know…” Lying probably wasn’t the best tactic, but I really didn’t have much of a choice. And I planned on being friends with him anyway, once all of this calmed down.

  Right?

  “Not gay?” Melissa chimed in. “Not all gay men act like women. Only the ones that I feel like that’s who they are. Everyone is different, Cyril, and I am glad you’re seeing that. I just think it’s strange timing, don’t you? And if he is gay, I bet he feels all alone, don’t you think? He really needs a friend, probably. You should feel lucky he opened up to you.”

  Not understanding, I said, “What do you mean?” The strange part was, the timing was odd. One day I’m arguing with Melissa about her gay friend, and then Avery just so happens to be gay and I actually enjoy spending time with him? If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought this was all a joke.

  Melissa took a hold of my hand and smiled sadly. “Sometimes gay people go through a lot more than us. Last year I did a research paper about the stresses of homosexuality, and I discovered a lot of interesting facts, one being that almost 40% of homeless youth are in the LGBT category.”

  “LGBT?”

  She sighed. “You really don’t know anything, do you? LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Sometimes they add a Q.”

  “What is the Q for? Queer?” I asked, almost laughing at the thought.

  “Actually, yes, sometimes it does.”

  Oh God, she was serious. “Why?”

  “A queer is anyone in support or a part of LGBT’s but doesn’t fall into one of those categories.” I must have looked as confused as I felt because she laughed. “I know, that was my reaction when I did my paper and saw that queer was used as one of the Q’s.”

  “One of them?”

  “The other stands for ‘questioning,’” she went on. “That one is pretty self-explanatory. Anyone who isn’t sure or is questioning their sexuality falls into that category. So I guess I’m a Q.”

  “You’re questioning?”

  Melissa’s laughter filled the car—so sweet, so simple. “No, I’m a queer, technically speaking. And if you truly find yourself supporting them, you would be queer as well. I think.”

  Unsure if I liked that term as opposed to just straight, I said, “Well, queer we are then.” Holding her hands and looking into her eyes, I said, “Please listen to me when I say I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to say those things to you. I think I am beginning to see that gay guys are not all that bad.”

  “Really?” she smiled. “You should think about joining the Gay-Straight Aliiance with me this year.”

  “Gay-Straight Alliance?”

  “The GSA? I’ve been in it since freshman year with Christian. It’s a group in support of homosexuality. Lots of straight people join, maybe even more than gay people, but I think that has more to do with people being afraid to come out.” I saw a tear in her eye as she grabbed my hand again, pulling me in to kiss me. Our lips locked tightly but only for a second before she pulled back, looking me right in my eyes. “Please just tell me you’ll think about it. It starts next week in the trailers.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I promised her. We left the car and went into the school, this time holding hands, and it made me feel good that we had worked things out. In the back of my mind, though, I couldn’t get rid of the conversation we had. The GSA? She wanted me to join it? Just because I was friends with Avery—or was going to try to be—didn’t mean that I wanted to be in a room with a bunch of queers. Literally.

  AP Biology was pretty boring, as were all my other classes. We spent our time going to the textbook checkouts and going over more rules. The only fun part of the day was going to be lunchtime—or so I thought.

  Melissa and I, holding hands, entered the cafeteria. I didn’t expect to find Avery sitting at a lunch table all by himself, reading a book. Was this his way of not hiding from me? Melissa saw where my eyes had fallen and said, “Why don’t we sit with your new friend today?”

  “Uh…sure,” I said. I knew she was starting to catch onto the fact that something happened. During Biology, Avery ignored my gaze and when we went to pick up our books, Melissa had urged me to speak to him, but I said he might feel a little embarrassed about coming out to me. In truth, I was embarrassed for the way I acted and I didn’t want her to know how I reacted when I found out about Avery.

  Melissa, taking me by the hand, dragged me over to the table where Avery sat. She and I sat across from him and she said, “Hey Avery. How are you?” Sounding like her usual perky self, Avery looked up with a smile, but it wasn’t a nice one. Not when he saw me.

  “Hi. Melissa, right?” he asked. He glared at me and smirked. “You hear to talk about last night?”

  “Cyril told me,” Melissa said. “It’s okay, I support you fully. Cyril says you’re a good guy and I just wanted to finally talk.”

  “I see.” Avery looked at Melissa seriously. From the way his eyes seemed to ignite, I could tell he was going to spill the beans. “Did he tell you everything that happened last night?”

  Melissa looked at me with a small gleam of confusion in her eyes. “Yeah, I think so. He told me about how you guys went out to Town Centre so he could show you around and that you came out to him over some frozen yogurt. That is what happened, isn’t it?” The tone in her voice told me she was beg
inning to question my story.

  There was some sort of frustration in Avery’s eyes—an unhappiness of sorts. “Yes, that’s what happened. Assuming he told you what happened after I told him.”

  “What happened after?” she asked, but I knew the question wasn’t directed at me. She was looking right at Avery, like she couldn’t trust what I said anymore, and that pissed me off.

  “Avery, don’t,” I demanded. “We can talk about this.”

  Avery laughed sarcastically, with a dark humor that was kind of…depressing. “No we can’t. I trusted you. I opened up to you because I thought you would be okay with it, but I guess not. All you are is a liar and a jerk.” Looking at Melissa, Avery went on. “He called me a faggot after nearly having a heart attack. He laughed at me. He yelled at me. He didn’t even give me a ride home afterwards because he didn’t want to ride with a faggot. I guess he didn’t tell you that we almost got kicked out of the Fro-yo Palace, did he?”

  Melissa looked at me and the disappointed was clear in her eyes. Her anger, her rage, and her hated for me right now. At first she didn’t move, not like I expected her to, but I was hoping she would say something, but she didn’t. Her hand slipped out of mine and she said, “You lied to me.” It was definitely not a question.

  “I didn’t lie to you,” I told her quickly, taking her hand back. “I just excluded a little bit of stuff. I really do care about Avery, and I have been trying to get a hold of him. You know that, don’t you, Avery?”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “I blocked you on my phone, too, so I don’t see text messages either. I was sure I’d get a lot of hate-texts from you that I should just block you right away.” There was a sort of sadness in his eyes that seemed to shoot right through me. For some strange reason, I actually wanted to hug him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Avery. “That was wrong of me, and I realized that when I got home. I tried to text you but I got no response, not that I blame you. Please forgive me, Avery, and I’m not just saying that to be with Melissa, but because I want us to be friends.” The words were rushing from my mouth like a waterfall and I found them to be entirely true, even if they weren’t when I thought them in my head. Now that they were out, I felt my chest tighten up from embarrassment and hurt. Why was I suddenly getting all mushy? “Please.” The last part was a whisper, hoping no one else was hearing this conversation.