Outside My Box

Chapter 2

 "You want to be my friend? My friend?" I said with disbelief. "Yeah, why is that surprising? You seem like you'd have tons of friends!" What is it with this guy– There's no way he didn't notice the whispers and the laughs as we walked around this morning, right? Unless he assumed it was directed towards him but I don't see why they would be, people are usually nice to the new kid. "I talked to your boyfriend. Er– Danny. I talked to him," he said like he was unsure of what to call Danny, and honestly, so was I. "Oh yeah? How did that go?" I said, afraid that it went badly. "It went okay. You were right, he seems like kind of a dickhead," he was drumming his fingers on his thighs and bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Blue eyes and brown hair, right? The golden boy type," he continued. "Yeah, that's him. Although, 'golden boy' isn't what I would call him." "How about you call me?" He was holding his phone out to me with create new contact displayed on screen. I hesitantly reached out to grab it and typed my name into the contact name, Forest Jackson, then put my number in and saved the contact in his phone. I gave him his phone back and then mine buzzed, the screen lit up and showed hey :) from an unknown number. "Now you have my number, too, Forest!" "Thanks, man," I said as I opened the messages app. Suddenly, tons of messages came flowing in at once. 5 from my mom, 10 from Danny, and 1 from Elijah. My mom's were saying that Danny was at my house and I should get home. Danny's said things like I'm at your house babe, come home, ffs where are you, wtf why are you ignoring me, COME HOME. "Oh crap– I'm sorry, man, I gotta get home," I turned back to my board and got ready to push off and leave, but right before I left, I said, "I'll take you up on the hang out offer." And then off I went.

When I got home I was met with a hot dinner and hot-headed Danny Gomez. "Where the hell were you, Forest? I've been here for an hour waiting for you," he wasn't exactly yelling but he was very obviously angry. "I was out, skating. I didn't know you were coming, you didn't tell me," I explained. "I shouldn't have to tell you! You should just be here, waiting for me!" My mom was in the kitchen but I knew that she was definitely listening now. "I can be out by myself if I want to be, I don't want to be with you 24/7 and I don't have to be," I said, raising my voice a bit now. He definitely wasn't a good boyfriend, and I knew that I was done with him. It feels wrong to break up with him in front of my mother but I was willing to overlook that. "Danny, get the hell out of my house, you're not allowed back here. If you have a problem with it then keep your damn mouth shut, I don't want to hear it." I don't snap at people, he knows that and so does my mom. They were both staring at me now, my mom pulling out a barstool quietly and sitting down. "Get out," I said, as sternly as I could possibly sound. I snatched his phone from the coffee table, slammed it onto his chest. "I gave you everything I had and now you're kicking me out," he said angrily. "You didn't give anything but a tongue down my throat. And I didn't ask for that. I don't want to meet up with you anymore. Get the fuck out." He walked out the front door and slammed it shut. I sighed heavily, then looked over to my mom. "Daniel freaking Gomez. That guy?" I knew she was surprised that I had decided to be with someone like that, but even more surprised by how I decided to leave him. "Yep," I walked over to the dinner table and sat down, "Believe it or not, that's not the first time," I said as I served myself dinner. My phone began buzzing repeatedly. Maybe about 10 times with a short pause after, then maybe 6 or 7 more. I silenced it and then continued with dinner.

"Has he always treated you like that?" my mom asked with concern strong in her tone, "Not always," I started, "He hasn't always been crappy, but he was never good, y'know?" She paused for a minute, like she was trying to figure out what I meant. Then she finally said, "Yeah, I guess." We talked about him a lot through dinner, more than I ever would have wanted to, even if I was still with him. I don't think I ever really enjoyed being associated with Danny, he was never a pleasure to be around. After dinner I went upstairs to play on my PS5, I decided to check my phone and instantly regretted it. Over 50 texts from Danny, and none of them good. The only one that bothered me, though, was do you realize that i can tell the whole school you're a tranny?. Oh crap... It's not like he didn't know, and it's not like he hasn't made the threat before. Usually when I don't do what he wants, and you could tell it was an empty threat when it came to that. But this time he was really angry, and I couldn't tell whether or not he was serious. He would get angry when I didn't make out with him in the boys bathroom at school, and when I didn't want him to touch me in certain ways or places. But you could tell that he wasn't actually going to do anything. Just empty threats. But it was different this time, I just cut him off from everything I ever gave him and I have no idea how he's going to handle that. Maybe he can just forget about it and move on. I didn't care about what anyone else at school would think about me being transgender. They all don't like me already and it really doesn't affect me in any way. But I don't want Elijah to know— I mean, if he genuinely wants to be my friend now, I can't mess that up. I have no idea what he thinks of the community and if he thinks badly of it then something could go wrong and I can't risk that.