Miracle (boyxboy)

Chapter Three

Breakfast was painful. Swallowing was a bitch. I ended up taking a few bites and deciding that a full stomach wasn't worth it. The coffee went down a little better as long as I sipped carefully, so I sat there while Maddy polished off the pancakes and scrambled eggs that came with them. When we were done, I told her I wanted to go home. My guts were throbbing after their adventures in rearrangement-by-fist. I didn't think Maddy knew about that, and preferred to keep it that way. I just wanted to lie down. Maybe with a pack of frozen peas on my belly, if we had any in the reserve freezer.

"Aw, man, really? But I wanted to go to the pool this afternoon. Come on, it's too hot to lie around inside."

"You go," I said. "It's fine. I'll just hang out at home and read."

"You can read at the pool."

There would be people at the pool. I was absolutely done with people today, and no way was anyone seeing me in swim trunks for a while. I was probably going to be purple from sternum to belly button.

Maddy had to get her swimsuit at the house, so we rode back together. I went a lot slower, blaming it on the heat and being tired so I wouldn't have to explain how much I hurt. Maddy grumped about it, but didn't leave me behind. When we got home we dumped our bikes alongside the porch. Mom was in the living room, on the phone, with a half-burned cigarette pinched in her fingers. I held up the Marlboros from the grocery bag and she beckoned me over impatiently.

"Been on hold with these people over an hour." She eyed my neck and made a harrumphing noise. "What happened to you?"

I put up a hand to cover the damage. "Nothing, Mom." If Tyler found out I snitched, I'd get it even worse next time. Considering how savage he'd been today I was very much motivated to not piss him off further.

She waved me off, so I headed for our bedroom. Maddy spent all of two minutes grabbing her swimsuit and stashing her new hygiene products in a few different places, then she was texting her friends as she headed out the door.

I waited until she was gone. Peeked out into the hall. Mom was still in the living room, so I couldn't get out that way without being seen. I retreated back into the bedroom, unhooked the screen from our window and climbed onto the desk, hissing between my teeth at the pain in my abdomen.

With some squirming and a whole lot of muttered curses, I worked my way out the window, landed in the dry brush outside, and crept around to the back of the house where the reserve freezer was. It was humming hard in the summer sun. I twisted the combination lock, unhinged the latch, and flung it open.

No peas, but the sack of frozen okra would do just as well. I lifted it out, refastened the hinge and lock, and clambered back inside through the window. Then I had to replace the screen before I could climb, carefully and painfully, up to my bunk. I laid down on the muggy sheets and set the blissfully icy bag of veggies on my throbbing midsection.

Breathe in, breathe out. Absorb the cold. It was okay now, I was safe.

Except that behind my eyelids, all I could see was Tyler's leering face. Mr. Pemberton's wild-eyed stare. I could feel their hands and lips on me all over again, and it made me nauseous for reasons that had nothing to do with the bruising to my innards. I raised the back of my hand to my mouth and felt like retching.

I'd never kissed anyone before, so I guess you could say that revolting liplock with Tyler was my first kiss. It wasn't bad enough that I was the only gay kid for a hundred miles, with zero chance of meeting someone and falling in love like a high schooler was supposed to. Oh no, that imbecilic assclown had also gone and stolen my first kiss.

It was a dumb thing to feel upset about. I wasn't a girl, with a bunch of giddy romantic notions about stuff like that.

But my eyes were leaking onto my pillow anyway. I was used to being bullied. For being small, for being weak, for being gay. But twice in one day, two different guys had sexually threatened me. That had never happened before. And one of them had been someone I trusted.