Return To Sender

It wasn't even noon yet and already the neighborhood was in full force, both inside and out. Lawns were being mowed and sprinkled, gardens tended and pools cleaned, all to create the illusion that, externally at least, things in each of the million dollar homes were picture perfect. But Mikey knew that each of these steps was just to cover up the secrets and lies that are present like the plague in every goddamn house.

The Johnstones have five cars in their garage that are each worth at least one hundred thousand dollars, all to cover up the fact that their daughter dropped out of high school in grade eleven and was presently a prostitute in New York City.

Mr. Thompson, who is sixty five years old, is New Jersey's equivalent to Hugh Hefner, parading around with a bevy of women young enough to be his daughter, simply to try and disguise that every night, he shares his bed with a man.

Every house had a secret, just begging to be revealed to the entire world as his footsteps broke the pattern of... perfection. They didn't fit in, he didn't fit even with the pre-ripped jeans and the customized Converse sneakers. No matter what he did, Mikey always stood out, even to himself.

But Frank had stood out too; never before in his privileged life had Mikey met someone like him, someone who carried themselves with such raw confidence and sexuality. If some of the girls in his class had been like that, maybe he would have been more willing with to experiment with them instead of labeling them sluts and moving along.

Frank could give them lessons.

His feet automatically carried him off the sidewalk and onto his damp, perfectly manicured front lawn, crushing the gentle blades beneath his feet. The sprinklers clicked on, spraying him with frosty water but he kept walking, flipping off their gardener who was yelling at him in Spanish about wrecking his work.

Mikey hated the gardener. All he did was turn their house into a secret just like the rest of the fucking houses, take away from making it a home. He whined about how he wasn't paid enough, how the Way's should have even paid for his goddamn car insurance.

As if fucking Mikey's mother on the side wasn't enough, he wanted more.

If he had it his way, Mikey would have long ago walked out while he was mowing the lawn and put a bullet through his fucking skull. He wanted to see his eyes go blank, watch his blood dye the grass, hear his mother's scream when she realized her boy toy was nothing but a goddamn inanimate lawn ornament.

Then maybe the grass would grow high enough to hide everything and they'd be forgotten, mere memories that people would bring up when their normal social talk got boring.

Do you remember what the Way boy did? Shot his poor gardener, right through the head. I always knew that boy was crazy.

Mikey knew he wasn't crazy, per se; he just had a different way of looking at the world, in a way no one else he knew could. None of his family could see the sickening corruption of the world they lived in, because they were too blinded by all the ridiculous excess surrounding them.

"Michael, where were you last night?" Only one of his feet was inside and already, his mother was bitching at him, her fried blond hair curled to the point of absurdity.

"Partying and having sex," he muttered under his breath, deliberately scraping his shoes along the immaculately polished floor. "Where were you last night Mom? Having another 'girls night'?" Between the streaks of dirt now staining the white linoleum and his implications, Mikey's mother was speechless, her lip-gloss shiny mouth flapping and moving soundlessly. With a smirk, he continued up the ridiculously large stairs, dragging his fingers along the glazed banister and creating ugly white fingerprints that smudged the perfection.

Down the hallway, he can hear the whimpers of his older brother going through the painful process of withdrawal, the padlock on Gerard's door showing just how far their parents have gone to maintain that image of spotlessness. It's an unspoken truth that as soon as the lock comes off, he'll go and get high again, and the steps will repeat themselves.

Mikey knew this, his parents knew this and even Frank knew it.

His room is musty and dark, thick curtains pulled over both windows to block out any unnecessary light. Mikey likes the dark, likes lying on his bed at night and wondering if there's someone standing just out of his sight holding a butcher knife. So much stuff is easily hidden in the dark.

The hour hand on his old fashioned alarm clock, the kind with the actual bells, is just brushing twelve noon but Mikey falls on his unmade bed and lets his eyes shut again, barely aware of another strangled groan coming from the bedroom where his brother is probably sweating bullets.

Fourteen hours passes and then Mikey is hit in the mouth with a pebble.

His eyes spring open to the complete absence of light and noise, like he's created a vacuum. He can't even hear Gerard's whimpers anymore and for a few moments, he's convinced that he's finally died.

Welcome to Purgatory.

Then, another pebble smacks into his nose and he knows he's still alive and that someone is somehow throwing pebbles through the window directly opposite his bed, the one overlooking his over sized back yard that could probably easily accommodate four houses from any other area of Jersey. The idea that it might be someone worth disposing of pops into his head and he slowly, very slowly reaches under his bed until his fingers curl around the tire iron he filched from his garage and deemed "Mr. Murphy."

There may be no light but Mikey doesn't need any; with all the calculated grace of a serial killer, he creeps across his room to the covered window, just in time for another one of those godforsaken pebbles to shoot by his ear. Reaching out into the abyss, his fingers immediately find a small hole in the blanket and, beyond that, in the window as well, just the right size for a small rock to go through.

Mikey doesn't remember this hole being there when he went to sleep.

Reaching up, he hooks the tire iron over his curtain rod and yanks as hard as he can, ripping the entire thing out of the wall so he's immediately blinded by moonlight. Wincing, he fumbles for the window and yanks it open, a gush of cool, gasoline scented air fills his nostrils and he breaths deeply.

And then he remembers his entire reason for being awoken and looks down in the backyard, squinting, to see the shadowy outline of a man. His hair is swept over his eyes but as soon as Mikey sees the Converse just like his own, he immediately knows.

"How'd you know where I lived?" he asks, not raising his voice even though the distance between them is at least fifteen feet. Somehow, Mikey knows that Frank would hear him even if he was whispering... and he also knows that what he asked was a stupid question.

"I told you, there's lots I know about you." The voice is just as intoxicating as before and Mikey can already feel his heart practically twitching in anticipation. "Your parents left for the night, your brother is somewhere in Trenton copping another perfect load of coke and here we are, all alone."

Mikey doesn't think about the next words that flow from his lips but somehow he knows they're the right ones.

"We should go swimming."

***

The gardener, who doubled as a pool boy, was long gone for the night, leaving Mikey and Frank truly alone on the grounds. Mikey is lying on the dew tipped grass, mere feet from the swimming pool with only his jeans on, the skin on his back crawling from the cool air. Frank is beside him in the same state of dress, shoes and shirt having disappeared in the time it took Mikey to climb out his window and down the side of his house. The air around them is filled with the pungent smoke of the joint they're passing back and forth, nearly burnt down to nothing but a nub.

"How often do you smoke up?" Frank asks, taking one last gulp before tossing the spent joint behind him. Mikey shrugs, letting little tendrils of smoke slowly escaping from his mouth.

"Once in awhile," he says, eyes towards the moon, which he realizes is a fraction away from being full. "When other people are supplying." He rolls over and lowers his body on top of Frank's, delighting in finally being able to see the face of his true intoxication. Delicate silver hoops through both his ear and lip glinted lightly and Mikey didn't bother resisting the urge to nibble on Frank's lip, using his tongue to lightly flick over and around the piercing. Even as Frank's leaning up, lips already parted, Mikey is pulling away, standing up and removing his belt in one quick movement of the wrist.

"We're supposed to be going swimming," he says in response to the mock-pout on Frank's face, which quickly changes to pure lust once Mikey kicks his pants aside, leaving him in only his boxers. He can feel Frank's eyes still burning into his back as he steps up onto the diving board and jumps into the water. For a moment, he's sure that the cold is going to give him a heart attack but he focuses on the chlorine burning at his eyes and the feeling quickly passes.

When he resurfaces, flicking his bangs away from his face, Frank is nowhere to be seen. He gazes out in the dark, trying to see if he's still lying on the grass, but there's only a small lump that he recognizes as his pants.

Behind him, the water stirs and he whips around in time to see Frank popping up like a ghost, already grinning. Mikey licks his lips and opens his mouth to remark on the other boy's stealth but before any words make their way out, Frank already has him pinned against the ladder at the side of the pool and Mikey can feel that Frank isn't even wearing boxers.

The plastic rungs of the ladder are digging into his back and all he's aware of is Frank's hands all over him, ripping his boxers off and moving their hips together, making the water swirl around them.

Everything rushes together and when Mikey finally brings himself back into a semi-calm state of mind, the sun is shining overhead, he's lying on the grass with his jeans unbuttoned and Frank has completely disappeared.