The Boy Next Door (...is trying to eat me)

Crawfish


I didn’t think of him again til Thursday.

‘All right boys and girls, three laps,’ Mr Holt barked, fishing his whistle out of his chest hair. Beside me Duncan exhaled with a whine. You would think having such long legs would make him a formidable threat in gym class but Duncan kept his chin tucked into his chest when he ran, arms held down uselessly at his sides. He was also the sort to keep his eyes trained on the ground about a foot in front of him even when moving at high speed. During last year’s carnival relay he had managed to take out every single hurdle much to the dismay of our team.

Unlike Duncan, I was actually quite at home on the sporting field. Not as good as Maxine. Not good enough for any kind of scholarship. But I found it nice to run and feel the wind in my hair and not worry about anything but maintaining a good rhythm.

The worst thing that can happen to you when you’re running is a stitch.

Mr Holt blew his whistle and we all took off in one long, slow stagger. It took a while to find my way out from behind Patricia Lunkett’s feet and into some clear running space but once I found my stride it was easy to ignore all the groaned complaints. There was just the faint ache of disuse in the back of my legs and the full feeling of my lungs, and sharp, cool air streaming past my ears.

I got such an easy stride going that I had time to look around. The girls’ lacrosse team was setting up on the smaller oval, unpacking their sticks. My sister was talking animatedly to her teammates as they tied their hair and strapped their green and white leg guards on. Whatever she said made the huddle of girls laugh. I wondered what it would be like to hold attention like that. My whole body flushed uncomfortably when I was called upon the read aloud in English. To be the centre of attention and enjoy it…

Mr Holt blew his whistle, bellowing at some of the dawdling students to pick it up. One girl was texting on her phone, her shiny ponytail swinging as she walked. The rest of the group had split off into pairs to gossip while they jogged. I looked further back and saw Duncan loping to catch up to me only to have someone to talk to as well. I was suddenly annoyed and picked up my pace, pushing myself til my legs began to burn and tighten up.

My Holt looked impressed as I shot past him on my second lap and he made a note on his clipboard.

‘Good Bellevue! Keep it up!’ he yelled after me.

I felt a spark of pleasure at being noticed but as I rounded the corner of my second lap I again had time to look at the lacrosse team and what I saw snuffed that spark right out. Max was standing with her hands on her hips, bouncing on her heels and talking to Sasha Marin. Sasha was nodding enthusiastically, easy as ever, and tossing a water bottle up and down in his hands. Suddenly they both turned to look at me just as Duncan slammed into my side with a laugh.

‘Gosh you’re fast! I was yelling for you to slow up, didn't you hear me?’

I ignored his outstretched hand as I struggled to my feet and scanned the field for Sasha but he’d already disappeared and I couldn’t spot my sister amongst her teammates.

‘Snyder! Quit bugging Bellevue! Bellevue, get moving!” Mr Holt’s voice boomed across the field.

I heard a rough panting as Souleymane approached, long legs flying. He shot me a dirty look up and down, and sneered. ‘You still getting changed before gym, Birdy?’ he hissed as he shot past me, probably on his third lap already. I swallowed hard. Out of the corner of my eye, Duncan was looking intensely at his shoes. Way to stand up for your friend asshole, I thought, surprising myself with my foul mood, but Duncan had already started jogging again, perhaps not as interested in talking to me as he had been previously.

I caught up to him effortlessly. ‘Hey Dunc,’ I said, feeling suddenly brave even though my ribs still hurt from my sprint, ‘You don’t like, believe any of that shit Souleymane says about me right?’

Duncan looked at me wide eyed, tripping on his own feet as he ran. ‘N-no! No man.’ He laughed breathily, pushing his glasses up on his nose in a nervous gesture of his.

I thought about the look Souleymane had given me, dully scanning me from shoes to neck and then making sure I knew it sickened him, whatever he’d seen of me. That was unlike him, to be so subtle. Souleymane was the stuff you in your locker, steal your lunch money type. He wasn’t one for innuendo although I suppose taking a stab at my sexuality was easy enough. Ever since freshman year I’d realised I hated the locker room crowds and the noise and the steam. The fact that I changed uniforms in a stall before gym period to avoid the hassle had become something of a running joke amongst Souleymane and his cronies. But even then, to suggest that I was…that way just because I didn’t like changing in a crowd…

‘You know…’ Duncan huffed as he spoke even though we had slowed to an easy jog and in fact, were behind some of the girls in the class. ‘You know…you could just change…with the rest of us. Just to…you know…shut him up.’

He stopped suddenly, bracing his hands on his knees to get his breath back. I wasn’t even sweating anymore. Looking around I saw that everyone else had slowed to a stop as well except for a few stragglers and I realised we’d finished the third lap.

‘So you think…’ I swallowed again around the lump in my throat.

Duncan caught my drift and smiled, more certain this time. ‘Of course I don’t Birdy. God you’re luckier with girls than I am. I’m just saying, you know, it’d shut him up if you did it. And anyway,’ he blushed, ‘You’re with Nora Collins now right?’

‘What?’ I asked, shocked out of my skin. ‘Who’s saying that?’ I looked around. Patricia Lunkett was standing a little too close to not be eavesdropping.

Duncan looked confused. ‘Everyone, man. You ate lunch with her on Monday right? And I saw you talking to her after fourth period on Tuesday too.’

I sighed. ‘We’re just…talking. She’s kinda nice I guess.’

Duncan waggled his eyebrows. ‘You think she’s hot though, don’t you?’

I forced a laugh. ‘Yeah, man. She’s cute.’

Duncan punched me lightly on the shoulder. ‘You dog!’

‘Snyder! Enough with the chitchat, I want you setting up the nets!’ Mr Holt yelled, striding over. I made to go with my friend by the teacher grabbed me by my polo sleeve. ‘Cool it Bellevue. You really quit out there. What in the hell happened?’

I frowned, remembering all of a sudden what I’d seen before Duncan had bowled me over. ‘Nothing sir.’

He gave me a hard look. ‘You’re a good runner Bellevue. We might have a place for you on the track team, maybe in lacrosse if you got enough drive.’

My heart pounded. ‘Really? Like, I could get a scholarship?’

Mr Holt laughed. ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself kid. I haven’t seen enough from you yet. But you keep your pace up during class and spend less time farting around with Snyder and I’ll see what I can do to get you on the boys’ team.’

‘Thanks Mr Holt!’ I said, really meaning it. Dad had spent all of last year pushing me to be on the baseball team, going so far as to pull my allowance once he figured out I wasn’t any good with a bat. For a brief moment I had a vision of him coming to see me at a weekend match, mom and him cheering from the stands like they did at Max’s games. Smile making my face ache, I shuffled over to my bag and grabbed my water out. Huh? Something familiar and shiny fell out.

‘Damn it, Max,’ I muttered to myself, bending down to pick up the lip ring still in it’s backing. I stuffed it back down deep in my pack before Duncan could see it and start another lecture.


-:-:-


I tried to find Max at lunch to ask her what she’d been doing with Sasha Marin but all I got was a bunch of unnervingly giggly sophomores. Sofie and Duncan were conspicuously missing from our table so I sat and ate alone as fast as I could, face probably bright red. Mom had packed me a Coke, a tub of yogurt, two apples and two granola bars all on top of two peanut-butter sandwiches (my favorite since I was in Kindergarten). The apples had crushed the white bread into unrecognizable lumps and I stuffed them into my mouth hurriedly, famished from gym class. Even if my two friends had abandoned me, probably to feel each other up in a janitor’s closet, things were looking up a bit. Mr Brandt had got my name right with a half-grin, handing out assignment questions for Literature (I got “A Street Car Named Desire”) and Mr Holt had slipped me a waiver sheet for my parents to sign off on so that I could join the lacrosse team; practice starting next Wednesday. I bit smugly into an apple. On top of everything, perhaps thanks to Patricia Lunkett’s big ears and bigger mouth, there was a rumour going about that I was dating Nora Collins, a semi-popular girl.

I tried to picture her and me dating, holding hands, making eyes at each other… and then my hormones made my brain skip to an image of her lying on my bed, her honey-colored hair mussed and my hands rolling those stripy socks down softly curving calves.

My daydream was rudely interrupted by the sounding of the bell and the sudden swarm of activity of B-lunch students in their hurry to get to class. I breathed out carefully and stuffed my partly uneaten lunch back into my lunch box, hurrying past the serving area to bin my apple cores. I tried to block out the delicious smell of oily cafeteria fries and hot casserole. Mom used to give Max and I five dollars for the cafeteria every Friday as a treat. I’d get wedges and sour cream or sometimes if they had them, a Muffuletta. Max would get a double serve of mash and gravy. That ended when dad got his cholesterol checked and mom turned into a health freak but I still remembered the taste of those olive and salami Muffulettas, not even that fresh (being bulk imported) but still rich and wonderful. I sighed in reminisce as I chucked my cores through the flap. Just as I turned around a hand shoved my shoulder, slamming me back into the bin with a clang.

Lola Macky didn’t look at all happy with me. In fact, she looked like she was about to thoroughly blitzkrieg my good mood.

Lola was just as scary-looking as advertised even though you didn’t hear often that she was still quite beautiful. Her face was round and pale, her skin looking like it’d never known a zit. She drew black lines all the way round her eyes to make them slanted and her hair was one long sheet of black with heavy fringe free of mandatory school clips. The controversial nose ring, the septum piercing, was as Sofie had said, not that big, and didn’t detract from her pretty features. I remembered when mom and Max had dragged me to see her in the contests, back when Max had both loved and hated those thin, glamorous beauty queen girls. Lola’s lips had been painted pink then, stretched wide over her million-dollar grin. I remember how she’d stood with her shoulders back and her hand at her waist, making sure to look coy at all the wolf whistles. Now she wore white powder on her lips, even though I could see where it had worn away over lunch. Her breath smelt like candy.

‘Gosh Bellevue,’ she said, her words slurring around her tongue-piercing, ‘aren’t you just a catch.’

I couldn’t respond I was so shocked. Even when she’d been the most popular girl in school and therefore artificially friendly to the lower echelons; she’d still ignored me. All of a sudden I’d registered and I wasn’t sure it was such a good thing…

She shoved my shoulder again and I winced as it made contact with an awkward part of the bin. I looked around for help but there only a few stragglers still clearing their lunch trays remained, and even then, they just looked on with half-interest, not at all willing to get involved with the school psycho and some nobody. A lunch lady tsked under her breath at us and then moved away to start clean-up. I refrained from begging her to help me but it was a near thing.

‘I- I-.’ Why are you talking to me?! What have I done?!

‘I, I, I,’ Lola mocked, ‘Jesus Bellevue, don’t you get sick of being a joke? Stay away from Nora and stay away from Valmont or I’ll. Cut. You. Up. Comprenez?’ She looked down at the lunchbox in my hand and smirked.

‘Cute lunchbox.’

She shoved me one more time with both hands and the bin shook so hard at my back I thought I might have dented it. Lola snorted around her nose ring and stomped away in her clunky boots, leaving only the faint, incense-y smell of her perfume behind.

My stomach flipped over once I realized what she’d accused me of. Valmont. The name sent an electric thrum through me. But I hadn’t been trying to go near him. Hell I didn’t even want to be in the same school as him. And Lola thought I wanted to search him out and what, be friends with him? The very thought was laughable! The kid gave me the creeps…


-:-:-


Sofie caught up with me at my locker after the last bell, her ponytail dead straight.

‘Hi you.’

‘Hey,’ I said, cramming a few books into my backpack.

When I shut the door she was leaning against the lockers beside me, eyes playful. ‘So you want to hang out after school?’

‘Um.’

‘Duncan’s got his French tutor,’ she said by way of explanation. Ah. I couldn’t help myself. I looked her over for signs of what they were doing at lunch. But her cheeks weren’t flushed. There were no hickies that I could see…

‘I’m busy. Mom wants me to help her with the groceries,’ I lied. She didn’t seem to buy it, biting her bottom lip.

‘You know,’ she said as I fiddled with my combination lock, ‘you’ve been pretty spacey this first week. Is everything ok?’

‘Sure,’ I said a little to breathily. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘I don’t know. You just seem a little distracted. I know…. I know things are…awkward between you and Duncan right now.’

Oh, so we are talking about it then, I thought. We filed out the main doors and across the lawn. The sky was a clear, beautiful color free of clouds.

‘Sofie, I…’

‘I know,’ she said shortly.

‘Know what?’

She breathed a deep sigh. ‘You didn’t dance with me at the formal. Not even once even though I asked you.’ Her voice sounded weird, strangled.

I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. ‘So? I don’t like dancing.’

We walked a little in silence.

‘Do you like someone else?’ she said suddenly.

I snorted. ‘Not really. Listen, Sofie, it’s not… you’re my friend okay and I…’

She gave me a resigned grin. ‘Don’t like me like that?’

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Yeah. Besides, Duncan…you know he likes you.’

Her face fell. ‘Yeah. But it was you I asked to the dance last year.’ She murmured it so quietly I was sure she hadn't meant me to hear.

I laughed nervously, scratching my head.

Sofie shot me an assessing look before saying, ‘You have changed you know. You don’t talk to ether of us anymore and your sister says you spent the whole holidays in your room-’

‘What!” I span around. ‘Why were you talking to Max?’

Sofie shook her head. ‘You’re missing the point. Listen, we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Want a lift home?’

‘You have a car now?’ I asked excitedly.

She smiled. ‘Yup! And it only takes forty dollars gas to fill,’ she said proudly, redirecting us to the student car park.

I laughed.

‘And do you pay that or does papa?’ I asked teasingly.

‘Shut up, you know I-’

I laughed. ‘What?’

She’d stopped walking and I turned back to her. Her face looked pinched.

‘What is it?’ I asked, worried. I followed her line of sight.

A car. She was looking at a small silver car, which I assumed was hers. And on it was sitting Lola Macky and the boy I’d seen in the lot on Monday. The boy with the shaved head.

I wanted to turn around, walk away and just keep walking but Sofie would expect me to make them move, be the big, strong not-quite boyfriend.

I took a deep breath, summoning my meagre confidence, and approached the scary-looking duo.

‘Uh, you guys. This is my friend’s car so…’ I felt Sofie move to stand at my side.

Lola shot me a smirk, only moving to lean her head against her boyfriend’s shoulder –Christophe, I remembered from Nora’s talks. Up close his tattoos were fascinating, done in vivid colors -red, blue, purple and green, and solid from the brief shoulders of his vest to the knuckles of each hand. Nora had told me he was older, twenty-five, but in the flesh his features were sweet and youthful, set around a hawkish nose. He smiled benignly at me and I waved before I could stop myself. Seeing this, he let out a snorting laugh, but his eyes were kind. I felt the beginnings of a blush start at the base of my neck.

‘So,’ Lola drawled, ‘Lunchbox boy has a girlfriend already. Nora will be soooo upset.’ She didn’t look concerned for her friend and I felt angry on Nora’s behalf.

‘Hey, don’t talk like you know what’s between us ok.’

‘Oh!’ Lola put a delicate hand to her mouth. ‘And it’s learned to talk back too.’

Her boyfriend, Christophe, rolled his eyes. ‘Play nice, Lolly.’

‘I’ll play how I want,’ Lola said. She started swinging her legs on the hood of Sofie’s new car, her heavy buckle-boots clanking against the metal on each downward swing.

Sofie cleared her throat but didn’t speak up and of course Lola noticed and swung her feet even more viciously til the metal was squeaking in protest.

‘Cut it out,’ I said before I lost my nerve. She’s just a girl. She’s just another teenaged girl so suck it up. Don’t you ever get tired of being chicken-shit?

Lola made a face but hopped off the car in a graceful move (save for the thump of her boots) which made her hair swing over her shoulders. With an exasperated look Christophe too, slid from the car, finding his feet and stretching to his impressive height. He was wearing the kind of pants with the fluoro tape that set Duncan’s teeth on edge when we walked in the city. Rave pants, I thought distractedly.

‘Hey, want to hear a joke.’ His voice was nasal around the septum ring he had to match his girlfriend.

I almost laughed at the thought of this guy, who looked like he’d walked off the set of a Hellraiser movie, telling me a knock-knock joke. Sofie caught my eye and shook her head. She was clenching her car keys tightly in one hand, the knuckles popping with strain.

‘Uh, sure,’ I said.

Christophe beamed me a huge, infectious smile and Lola leant again on his arm, her eyes wide and mocking in her pale face. Her eyeliner had smudged at the corners.

‘What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?’

Sofie beeped her car open, hurrying past the three of us and opening the driver’s side door. She shot me a hot, maybe accusatory look before jumping inside and slamming the door shut.

‘What?’ I croaked.

Lola began to snicker.

‘Nothing! You already told her twice!’

I couldn’t help myself. I began to laugh. The bizarreness of being told a joke by some Goth, of my not-girlfriend sitting huffily in her cute little car… The laughter just welled up inside me until I was gasping on it.

Lola looked sour at my response, as if I’d surprised her. Christophe came forward and clapped a skinny hand on my shoulder, squeezing.

‘Peace, Ferdinand.’

I had only a moment to register that he knew my name before he was pinching my cheek hard and lurching away. Lola giggled, and skipped to catch up to him, shooting one last jibe over her shoulder, loud enough for Sofie to hear.

‘Dive safely.’


-:-:-


Sofie was silent all the way home; taking corners sharply, frown set deep on her face. When she dropped me off at the corner of my street I was more than thankful to be out of the car and away from her cold judgement.

‘Drive safely,’ I muttered through the passenger window, only realizing what I was repeating when Sofie broke her statue-routine to look at me with hurt eyes. ‘Sofie…’

‘See you tomorrow,’ she said briskly and I barely had time to pull my head away before she was zooming away.

I sighed in annoyance. Sofie and I got on better than Duncan and me, even though being a boy he was automatically my best friend. All through middle school we’d been able to talk to each other, often to the exclusion of Duncan as much as it annoyed him. Then puberty had happened to her and I’d waited for it to happen to me, waited to get feelings for her. Instead, knowing that she liked me had made me want to draw away and go quiet. I’d started to shut myself off from her, dropping lies into our conversations as frequently as truths until I built up a persona so far removed from myself… And then of course, once I realized that they had a friendship outside of me, my two friends, I’d had to lie to Duncan too, be who he expected me to be…

God, how have I fucked this up for myself, I thought, as I walked the leaf-strewn path to my house. What have lies ever gotten you but trouble? And not even trouble. Ha! You’d kill for a little trouble, a nasty inner voice hissed. You’ve made them believe in this timid, predictable, sanctimonious “you” and really what you want is to spit in their faces and tear free of their safe, pathetic little world… God, I was making myself miserable. But it was true. Horribly, undeniably true and the little voice had been plaguing me more and more over the past year, making me question everything I did. Dad was no longer the hero. Max wasn’t a little girl. Sofie and Duncan didn’t know me. I didn’t love anything or anyone and my teachers forgot my name. The little voice made me think on those things so much it hurt. So much I’d sit awake at night and stare at my ceiling and think about how pointless it would be to wake up the next morning and do it all again. But I’d thought, hoped, that it would fade my senior year. After all, senior year is when all the wonderful, exciting things happen right? You go to the prom, lose your virginity, get drunk with your friends… That was supposed to quell the raging need for change and aside from that I’d be happy in my routine of pleasing mom and dad and getting good grades. But Max’s words to me had stirred it up again. ‘I’m just saying that you could be happy.’ I thought of the sunlight on the boy’s –Valmont’s- lip rings, the way his stare had pinned me like a needle through a butterfly.

‘Hey kiddo.’

‘Hey dad,’ I said, trudging across the yard. Dad was tinkering with something on the porch, his brow furrowed in concentration.

‘How was school?’

‘Good,’ I said dully, ‘Mr Brandt handed out assignments.’

We both nodded for a bit, trying to think of something to say to each other.

‘What’s that?’

Dad looked down at the white bucket he’d been busy with. ‘Oh. Mrs Talcott from next door, her son brought back some crawfish from the restaurant. Your mother’s going to please. I just have to find a way to kill them before she sees that they’re live.’

Curious, I leaned over the bucket and peered into the dirty water. There was a scrambling of claws and several pairs of beady black eyes gazed back out at me.

‘Max home yet? She might know how to cook them,’ I said, toeing my shoes off and opening the screen door. We lived in a typical American two-storey, the type with flaky white-painted wooden panels and the functional-sized backyard and the kitschy replica letterbox (except that mom hated kitsch with a passion and replaced it with a regular letterbox when we first moved in).

Mom always ranted about the Creole-style townhouse she’d grown up in and she made a promise every year to get the porch banisters painted cyan-blue, but her nursing job kept her busy. Inside, the house was completely renovated -new power points, new pipes, new lighting. Max and mom were big on cooking so we’d had to knock down a few of the original structure’s walls to make room for a proper kitchen. Then, when Max and I had gotten too old to share a bedroom, there had been a reshuffle and I’d moved upstairs with a squeezy little ensuite bathroom to myself. We still had the original floors, which creaked when you walked and were particularly uneven in the bathroom, but apart from that it was modern and comfortable for our little nuclear family. And of course, you could always tell if mom was home by what smell was coming out of the kitchen.

I dropped my bag in the entranceway, padding down the hall. Max had someone over and after a tense moment of straining to hear if it was Sasha Marin’s voice, I determined that it was I fact, just Kelly from over the road. I rapped once.

‘Come in.’

‘Hey,’ I said, ducking my head around the corner. Max and Kelly were sitting on the floor, playing with our pet hamster Norbert. The poor little bundle of fur was skittering around on the carpet and the girls had their legs stretched out and joined at the feet forming a sort of pen to keep him in. ‘Aww poor Norbert.’ I bent down and swiped him up with one hand, cradling him to my chest. ‘Did those horrible girls frighten you?’

‘Stop sweet talking the hamster, Birdy, he likes it,’ my sister said making her friend giggle.

Norbert shivered in my hands. ‘I’m sure he does,’ I said sarcastically. ‘So, uh, dad’s outside with some crawfish and he wants to know how he’s supposed to cook them…’

Max’s eyes lit up. She loved being knowledgeable about things, especially cooking. She had a messed up relationship with food. We’d always thought would be one of those big girls who lived to make other people happy through their cooking which I suppose was not fair to Max seeing as it turned out she’d been crying herself to sleep, writing recipe’s down in her diary to calm herself and then barfing up all her food…

‘Are they big ones?’

‘Sure.’

‘You gotta boil them,’ she said wickedly. ‘Boil ‘em in a pot with some uh, cayenne pepper, some potatoes…

‘Hey you could put some garlic in too,’ Kelly piped up.

I smiled at her, impressed. ‘Hey, that sounds cool. I might actually want some now.’ Kelly turned bright red. ‘Hey,’ I asked, concerned, ‘Are you all right? Do you need some water?’

‘God, Birdy, don’t be an asshole.’ Kelly’s face had turned just about purple.

‘What? How am I-’

Max huffed, getting to her feet. ‘Never mind. Come on Kel, let’s go help dad cook.’ She gave me a cheerful look. ‘Mom will freak if she figures out we had to kill them ourselves.’

‘And you want to kill them? What kind of Martian are you?’ I stroked Norbert’s soft fur. Poor thing, I’ll never leave you alone with her again Norby.

My sister laughed, stalking towards me with her hands making clicking claw-shapes. ‘The kind that likes to watch the water get hot enough for their eyeballs to POP out!’

She and Kelly sniggered at my revolted face as they passed by me into the hall.

‘Girls are nuts, Norby. You and me, we’re staying bachelors,’ I whispered to the trembling rodent once I’d heard the screen door close. I put him back inside his cage on top of Max’s dresser and watched him play on his wheel. Well that was a good sign. Sometimes after Max and Kelly played with him he just sat in his water dish, rocking.

Upstairs, my room was just as clean as I’d left it, the bed made. Mom or dad had done the laundry and sorted my clothes into a hamper for me to fold. I could tell already that some of the socks were Max’s. My room was painted green, unchanged since Dad had done it up for me. Last years Christmas present and reward for moving up to AP Physics had been a double bed. My other present, for getting an A+ in Government had been a small bar fridge which sat humming soothingly in the corner. I crossed to it and pulled out a can of drink and then flopped down onto my bed. I still had glow in the dark planets and stars stuck on the ceiling although they looked a bit worse for wear. Grow up, the voice hissed.

Outside, the laughing voices of the girls and dad filtered through my cracked-open window. Max was shrieking with glee. I scratched my stomach absently. The unopened soda rolled across the bedspread and came to rest against my cheek, startlingly chill. With a slight snort I realized I was thinking on a line from a comedy me and Duncan had gone to see a few years back –“I wish I liked anything as much as my kids like bubbles.” Ha! I wish I liked anything as much as my sister liked boiling things alive.

To be honest, if I really thought it over properly I did still enjoy things. I loved Norbert. I loved hearing my mom come home from her long shifts. I loved running. I loved storms. I loved laughing at stupid horror movies… It was just that those things seemed so…so tiny in the face of what other people were enjoying. Other people loved better, bigger things. Duncan loved Sofie so much it burnt him up inside and made him secretly hate me. And Lola Macky. She loved her boyfriend Christophe. She loved being and object of fear and mystery. Hell, she probably loved pushing me into those bins and knowing I’d never dream of hitting her back. And Sasha. I thought suddenly of what Sasha Marin might do for fun. Probably go yachting with his rich family, I thought jealously. Or he might go on a road trip with his friends, the top down on his expensive car. Sasha Marin probably spent all day in the sun without ever worrying that his perfect skin might burn. I felt a stinging feeling in the back of my throat. I don’t have friends like Sasha Marin has friends, I thought without wanting to. But then again, who really had anything like Sasha did. Guys like Sasha deserved friends. Guys like Sasha who felt at home in their bodies, who probably didn’t walk into doorframes because they’d suddenly gotten too tall. Guys like Sasha knew what they wanted, they didn’t lock the bathroom door and whack off under the shower trying to find a face, any face to care about enough to want to come…

Without realizing it my hand had wandered down to the waistband of my school pants. I thought of all the mundane things I had to do instead. My gym clothes would need to be unpacked before they stunk up my bag… Norbert’s water dish needed refilling…I had to put in at least two hours of study if I wanted to keep up with my French class this year…

My fingers grazed the hair just above my boxer shorts. Do boys like Sasha Marin even need to do this? Probably not. Not with their hair always perfectly tousled and their nice skin and big shoulders, and they way they fill out their uniform shirts and smile so. God Ferdinand, what are you thinking?…

My breath stuttered out when I realized what exactly I was thinking about and what exactly I was about to do. I forced my hands away from the half-interested swell in my pants, sitting up. I thought of the magazine under my bed, if I should look at it. God I wanted to look at it and feel that thing I felt again but it was so tied up with the memory of Maxine finding it that day…

In a moment of quick decision I rolled onto my stomach, pushing my dick against the mattress, feeling a tendril of sensation uncurl at the base of my spine. Fuck. I bit my lip, cheek rubbing on the cotton sheet. I rocked back and then arched forward experimentally, choking out a gasp when the feeling intensified. No, I wouldn’t read the magazine again. But I could think about the feeling it gave when I’d used it before. That nervous, sinking and flying feeling that knotted my stomach up.

‘Shit,’ I moaned into the bedding, pressing harder against the mattress, loving and hating the way my ass clenched, the muscles in my legs seizing up at the intensity of the sensation. I was smearing; my cock-head felt slick where my silk boxers were crushed around it. I shook, breathed out unsteadily, felt my face go hot as I found an awkward sort of rhythm to grinding against my bedspread.

It should have been quick. It should have been perfunctory, what with the door unlocked and family home. But I couldn’t make it come just off remembering the first time I’d used the magazine. I itched. I itched to reach under my mattress and grab it, fold it open to the pages that most scared me and just let myself fall apart, work my cock the way I wanted to. But I couldn’t. Because I’d done that before, just once, just that first time. And it had escalated and I had known then that it always would. That I couldn’t stop myself if I got trapped up with those sick thoughts and fantasies… So I had to do this, ball my fists up in the sheets so I wouldn’t be tempted to touch myself in all the ways I wanted so badly it hurt.

I choked on the spit that had built up in my mouth. Dad’s voice was a low murmur outside and I pushed it out of my head, thought only of my breathing in and out, in and out, like at jogging, like Duncan’s panting breath next to me and ‘What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?’ Squeeze. God, think of Nora, running your hands up her legs, over those colored socks and over the skinsosoft at her thighs and -Sasha Marin laughing at me in homeroom and Lola pushing me hard against the bins and godgodgod white-blond hair and gleaming piercings standing in my room with the magazine in his hand and Sasha shoving me against the bin, again, and again clang, clang, clang, –‘you could be happy’.

‘Ah! Ah-nnn!’

I cried out into the sheets as I started to come, hot electricity racking my body from toes to fingertips and pulsing deep inside. My thighs clenched and I slid one hand between my dick and the mattress, trying to undo myself with hard, fast palm-rubs to where I was throbbing and leaking. Wet, I was so wet, were boys even supposed to get wet? Oh god I couldn’t, couldn’t think about that but it was coming to me unbidden, a low whisper in my ear –‘you’re getting wet Birdy.’

I writhed, every part of my body tensing up as I humped frantically into my hand, open mouth wet and rasping against the sheet, the air cramped in my lungs.

‘Uhn-n-nnn.’

God it wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop shooting, just rocked, soaking my pants and feeling my orgasm all down my back, so powerful that I jerked around on the covers like a hooked fish.

It went on forever, the hot, flooded feeling. When I finally came down enough to be embarrassed about the drool all over my chin and the seeping warmth against my palm, it had gone dark outside and the smell of cooking crawfish was thick on the air.

A/N:
Good people of America, how do you cook your crawfish?
Oh poor Birdy, how did you get so emo so quickly? : (
Update on the way. Thanks for reading!