faking it l.r.h

Prologue

It started in second grade, I never really had been the loud type, so making friends was overall a mess. Making friends was difficult. Especially when everyone in this small town knew everyone since birth. You feel like an outsider. You don't get invited to birthdays, or pool parties, just a long chain reaction of self-doubt in my later years. But when I did have a friend, that one friend. It took time for me to fully open up but once I did I never really learned to shut up. A year of being quiet, of keeping my 7-year-old thoughts to myself. When Luke moved to my school, my neighborhood, my life, it had become a gift from the gods. Everyone immediately accepted Luke and his new light-up shoes illuminating the entire class, the frosted tips of his naturally blond hair being the absolutely coolest thing on the planet. He was a natural do-gooder. He wouldn't allow them to treat me so unfairly, so anything he was invited to he brought me along. What was his was mine now. That's how my life began, some people have this amazing childhood story about all of their friends, but me? I had Luke.

Luke and I would cause trouble, like replacing the teacher's lunch with the frogs we were dissecting that day kind of trouble. He hated hurting the green thing, so when she wasn't looking he stuffed it in his pocket with it's legs all tangled, to my disgust. Later that day we were supposed to bury it in my backyard, but when she gave Luke a thunder sticker on his homework he had other plans.

Fast forward until 8th grade, Luke had just been stood up on his date. I remember the sound of his voice, it was something I feared hearing for the longest time. Hurt, pain, sick at heart. Liz and I picked him up that night at the brightly lit pizza parlor. I remember he didn't say anything all throughout the ride, to which Liz and I shared a look of compassion in the dark. He ran to his room, slamming his door shut as I said my goodbye to his family. Jack was doing his homework at the table when he raised a brow at me, to which I explained.

That night I snuck into his room by climbing up his balcony, tapping at the door until he trudged over. That was the first night I ever really hugged him with everything. We stayed up all night talking, I learned a lot about him. Not about the boy from second grade that once threw up on my feet at my birthday party. He had grown since then, and he told me all that was going on in his little head.

Sophomore year, Luke took me to homecoming because my date bailed to makeout with Kristie Cook behind the dumpster of Petez Pizzeria. Even though there were girls literally lining up at his door to have him take them. But he chose me, I was his best friend after all. That night I remember going home and saying goodnight to Luke through our windows that coincidentally faced each other. I didn't want this to affect the way I thought about him or our friendship. I scribbled it in my journal and went to bed with a secret heavy in my heart.

Girls didn't like me. Not because I was pretty or because I cool clothes. They didn't like me because every step I took I took with Luke by my side. When he wasn't looking they'd put red food dye on my seat or take all the toilet paper from the bathrooms. I knew Luke was attractive and so did they, so when I stood in the way they felt threatened because he wouldn't choose them. He would choose me. One day they broke into my locker and stole my journal, it was stupid to bring it to school and I regret it every day. They read page after page and spread it everywhere after burning it on the football field. The worst thing about this all was that Luke was so oblivious to it all.

By the end of the year, we had stopped talking altogether. I heard that he told a friend of a friend that he didn't like me like that and he felt uncomfortable when I was around. I'm trying to find a smooth transition to say that I'm gay. Wait, that was too forward. I'm not gay, I'm straight, well, Bisexual, really not the point. How do I explain the shit that I got myself into? Well, let's start with the first day of school. 

(credit to Crystalize- for the amazing cover)