I was in my garage. My nose was still bleeding from where Vincent had slapped me. I only got a B- on my English paper about Egyptian religion. I did not want to show him at all, but Mom saw and she talked to him. She doesn't know. He doesn't want her to know. Besides, all the urge to tell her is beaten out of me when we go on "adventures" together. Mom's way of me getting to know her new lover.
"Where are you, Bailey?" The screams shook the house. I wipe the tears forming in my eyes on my sleeve, and I walked up the stone steps leading to the door. The door that separates me and the 250 pounds of muscle that is Vincent. "Are you in the garage again? Having a hissy fit over a bruise?"
"Yes."
"You need to toughen up, son." The word "son" rolls off his tongue like he's trying to throw a spiked ball at me. It'll hurt me alright, but it seems to sting him, too. "I'm... shortening a long, hard process. You'll thank me one day."
I fish the key that saved my life multiple times out of my back pocket and unlocked the garage door, which had marks where Vincent's fists had pounded for uncountable hours on end. Sometimes trying to apologize, trying to get in there and beat me some more. And Mom doesn't even notice the marks.
There was a bowl of soggy cereal prepared for me at the table. I sat down, slowly eating and staring at the pages of The Iliad.
Vincent had left out a porno magazine on the kitchen counter. God he is a slob, I thought to myself as the slimy cereal slid down my throat.
"You best not be looking at my mag, Bailey. Oh wait, you're a fag." He pointed at me and laughed like he was surrounded by eighth graders who laughed with him. No one did. "And you can't even get a gay boy to like you."
I wasn't gay. And I wasn't going to put up with Vincent calling me gay.
"Stop," I said, "you are not funny."
"And what can you do to stop me?"
I looked around. What could I do?
That's when I saw the drawer. Full of them. I walked over calmly, making Vincent shoot me a sour glance. My back was turned to the drawer, and I slipped my hands inside, fishing for it.
"Do you want me to come at you again?" Vincent said, a look of fury in his eyes.
"Sure," I said, with all the calm and coolness I could muster. I felt hatred at this moment, as he charged at me like a barbarian.
That's when the knife came out of the drawer, in my hands, and placed itself through my rage inside his brain.
It obviously wasn't the most important part of the brain, because he fell over and just laid there, going into random fits of screaming and then calm again. "Please," he said, blood starting to drip from his mouth, "help."
"No."
"You will never get away with this." He said, defiant.
I it all to him. "When I'm put on trial, Ill simply say it was in self-defense. I have the wounds to prove it. I just found a knife and stabbed you with it. And I will get away with it."
I called 911. I lied to them.
And six months later, I walked out the courtroom with my mother, smiling.
