The Three Worst Secrets

Our Father's Friends

Minho lifted the sleeve of his jacket, eyes trained on the mirror in front of him. It would have to come up almost to his elbow to be seen. The bruise on his forearm was blue and stark. He pressed the pad of his thumb into it, squinting at the pain.

"You're going to be late!" his father yelled from the kitchen.

He jumped, triple-checked his outfit and walked out, lowering his head as he sat at the table.

"Did you dream dear?" his mother asked, putting a plate full of food in front of him.

"No."

"What?" his father's voice- abrasive, always so angry.

"I said no. No dreams."

"Hmph. Pity. Only the intelligent dream, I hear- isn't that what they say darling?" the older man grumbled, eyeing his son distastefully.

His mother was quick to agree, her tiny hands fluttering about, smile wide and plastic.

Minho felt tears in his eyes and blinked, pressing his thumb into the bruise on his arm. It ached terribly, distracting him from the conversation and pushing the urge to cry away.

He couldn't eat, full instead with the words his father barked at him, until the older man had to leave and then his mother was clearing the table hurriedly.

"Grab the toast at least Minho. We don't want you sliding out of your clothes again." She muttered unhappily and the young man flushed with shame. He took the toast, and she swept the rest out from under his nose, rattling busily towards the kitchen.

Minho grabbed his bag, waiting for his father to pull out of the driveway and muttering a soft "I'm leaving." before walking out. He was so glad it had become warm again. The colder days were often bad for him.

He'd always been different. He'd known it even as a young boy. He didn't want to play sports with the other kids, didn't want to go fishing with his father's friends.

A car blew past him, and he had to resist the urge to cower away from it. He'd been meek and frail for a long time and it didn't look like it would be changing soon.

They moved towns too often for him to make any real friends, so he'd always been alone, not understanding how to fit in. He missed the social growth periods that were necessary for his age, so he often felt childish and immature around other 17-year-old boys. They talked so loudly, laughed with their mouths open. Minho hadn't given an un-forced smile in a year.

His father was someone important. Someone other men would pay a lot of money to move around to keep close to them, keep him where they needed him most. His father worked with software and computers, so it infuriated him even more when Minho was practically useless with anything technology related. As punishment his father had given him a flip cellphone that only took calls.

This ostracized him further from boys his age. Soon, he became a walking high school cliché. The weird kid who leaves after a year or two- occasionally even a month. The quiet one who sits in the back, and never has lunch. The kid with a flip phone in his back pocket, clothing a size too big or small, who floats in and out of thousands of other kids lives like a ghost.

He had no class pictures, no memories besides the strange occurrences that would stick out from the norm.

In one town a kid had offered to share his lunch with him. He said his name was Kihyun, and he'd smiled so wide Minho had felt blinded by it. In another school, a boy named Kyungsoo cornered him in the locker room just to ask if they could do a song together for the music lesson.

But those were strange happenings that rarely occurred again. He would begin to grow close to them, and then his father would have to move, and he'd leave more and more of his childish belongings behind.