Saving a School (boyxboy)

For Sarah's Son

Ashton POV

"Boys, up, now!" Sarah's voice boomed up the stairs. She must have been screaming for a while now, her voice was raw, but me and Dan were not morning people. I was a proud night owl, I had stayed up till 3 in the morning last night and Dan... well, he was just some kind of always sleepy ostrich. He was still asleep, curled around one of my arms in a fetal position. Waking him takes some work. I pulled my arm out, careful to wake him in the process, and when that didn't work, put my back to the wall and pushed him off the bed.

Now you may ask, why were we sleeping in the same bed. Are we together, like together? No. Both straight as pole. There are reasons.

First of all, we have known each other since we were born. Our mother's were best friends, so we were close like brothers. Second, both of us were having a rough time right now. Cuddling, even non-romanic "I'm here for you bro" kind of cuddling, maybe especially that kind, helps. And third... Sarah's house had one extra bedroom with one bed. No more room. That may have been the main reason.

"Boys?" Her voice took on a threatening tinge. She couldn't come up, she was cooking breakfast. I could picture her standing at the bottom of the stairs, holding a spatula, and soon she was gonna come up and whoop our asses with it.

"We're up, we're up!" Dan called, groaning on the floor. He headed for the closet, all fours, as I headed for the bathroom. I needed to style my hair. Dan didn't have that problem, he wore cornrows, and rocked them, but I had some work to do on my "white people hair". The price of being pretty. And hot. And popular. And athletic. And a narcissist.

In half an hour, we were both heading downstairs. Sarah and her family were already sitting there, waiting to say grace. We sat down, holding hands awkwardly while they mumbled through their prayer. That only made it more awkward. Me and Dan were not religious, and we hardly knew Sarah and her family, but we made an effort anyway. From graditude.

Sarah and her husband Mark were not rich. She was a social worker, he was a cop, and they had three kids to raise. The oldest, Seth, was our age, and Sarah had him way before she met Mark. Lizzie and Julie were twins and twelve. They had enough on their plates and they still took me and Daniel in, just because of a childish promise eighteen years ago.

My mom Jo, Dan's mom Aurie and Sarah had met eighteen years ago in a homeless centre. They were all teenage girls who had been kicked out of their homes for getting pregnant. In shockingly similar situations, they had bonded and promised to be there for one-another. And then me, Dan and Seth had been born. The three way sisterhood had lasted for a year before Sarah's family had come to their senses and took her back. Our mothers did not have such luck. Sarah moved to California and lost contact, and honestly me and Dan didn't even know about her a few months back.

You'd think two teenage moms wouldn't do a good job, but they did. Me and Dan had amazing childhoods, even if all we had were our moms. We were happy and well, getting good grades, being the stars of our school and basketball team, even though we were just juniors. All was well. At the end of the school year, the four of us, plus Aurie's boyfriend, went to have pizza. Me and Dan left one way, to go to a party, and the three of them went to the movies. And that's it. All it took was one guy, a bottle of whisky, a semi-automatic and a single clip of bullets. A small mass-shooting, only five dead, so it wasn't even mentioned on national news. Must have been an eventful week in the country or something.

Me and Dan were close before, but this just... I wouldn't wish that to happen to my worst enemy, not to mention best friend, but we were in this together. It hurt, sometimes, that I couldn't just scream "you have no idea what I'm going through" and storm out like some pubescent girl, but the fact that someone right here did understand, exactly, everything, all... just made it somehow almost bearable. He was there when the social workers were shaking their heads in pity, knowing we would be in the system not long enough to get adopted, just long enough to get fucked up. And we wouldn't even be together anymore. Social workers would try to keep sibling from being torn apart, but we weren't even related. We already made up our minds to drop out and live on our own, abandon the dreams of basketball scholarships and good colleges, when Sarah showed up.