Two Boys in Love

Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

I felt miserable as I lay in my room. It was late Sunday evening and I was dreading returning to school tomorrow. Mom spent the entire weekend wandering around the house in a daze. She would alternate between stone silence and hysterical sobbing, sometimes within the same minute. A psychiatrist at the hospital had given her a prescription for Xanax and Valium, so she was in a dazed stupor as well.

Don was downstairs in the living room with his friends. Widespread Panic was blasting from the stereo, and the sounds of laughing, cursing, bong hits, coughing, snorting, and beer bottles clinking would periodically accentuate the music. Mom was asleep in the bedroom, her Xanax allowing her to sleep through all the pulsating racket. I had made the unpleasant discovery since moving into Don's house that the nightly partying here would often go on past 2 am, even when everybody had to be at work the next day. I had always preferred dark and quiet when I would go to bed. When I first slept at Adam's, I couldn't hardly sleep that night because of the black light strip that he had running along the wall that he used as a night light. I was also depressed because Adam hadn't come over this weekend due to being severely grounded.

Maddie had come by briefly on Saturday, but then almost immediately left when her boyfriend showed up, the one I saw her blowing in her room a week before. He was a student at Keiser University and was skinny with mousy brown hair, a goatee, a long ponytail, and a pair of wire frame glasses. She had been over for a grand total of 15 minutes on Saturday before he showed up and whisked her away, so I wasn't able to hang out with her either. Don didn't care because as soon as she had walked through the door, he had fulfilled his legal requirement for the visit. Once she had left, he was able to dive back into drinking, smoking, pilfering Mom's medicine, and breathing white powder up his nose.

I was able to find out from Maddie before she left that Steve's parents had come by on Friday evening in regards to his fight with Adam, and that they had threatened to sue the bejeezus out of Gerald over it. Apparently Sherry and Mrs. Krauter got into a screaming match, mainly over Steve going on line about Adam and me. Maddie said that Mrs. Krauter told Sherry that they are a "God fearing family" and that they encouraged Steve to do what he did to help battle "the filth" that she said is all around them. Sherry responded by telling them to leave immediately, and that they are going to be in for a hell of a fight if they decide to sue.

After Maddie left I checked the Facebook page that Adam and I had, and discovered that it was full of hateful, and in some cases, threatening comments, so I went ahead and deleted our page. I decided that if someone tried to pick a fight with me tomorrow, which I expected would happen, I wasn't going to hold back, even if some kid wound up in the hospital. School was out in four weeks anyway, so if they wanted to suspend me, fine, they could go right ahead. Maddie also said that Sherry had gotten into it with the Principal on Friday afternoon for not punishing Steve for cyber bullying. Mrs. Krauter showed up that afternoon as well to try to get Adam's suspension extended to a full week. This bummed me out because it was Memorial Day next Monday, which meant that it might be next Tuesday before I could talk to Adam again. According to Maddie, Adam is apparently not even allowed to leave his room, and Gerald is talking about sending him to military school.

The next day in school I discovered that I had gone full circle. Just like when I first arrived there last fall, I now sat by myself at lunch, kept to myself at recess, and didn't talk to anybody. What was different now was that the kids who sat away from me would give me dark looks, or laugh, or whisper into each others ears. While I sat and ate my lunch, I was hit be several spitballs that were launched from an unknown assailant sitting somewhere behind me. Chris Richards, Scott Crawford, Chris Stover, and the rest of the kids that we used to sit with at lunch were now all clustered at the next table.