Don't Change The Way You Think Of Me

I sigh and look up at Zacky who is sitting with me at the public library. He’s scratching his head with one hand and taping the desk with a pencil in the other. It’s only Wednesday and Friday was the day of the party.

This week so far sucks. I went to the movies with Val, Jason and his brother, and we watched something completely stupid. And now I sit with Zacky who is looking at a Physics textbook and rolling his eyes and sighing.

“What’s on your mind?” I ask. He looks up as though he forgot I was there.

“I don’t understand what I’m reading.” Well duh, if he did we wouldn’t be here.

“What do you not get?” I stand up and walk around the table to see what he’s looking at. Well he’s looking at phase changing…again.

Since Monday, our first tutoring session, he had been moaning and bitching over having to read the chapter I assigned him. “This whole thing. Why the fuck can’t you go from here,” he points at the bottom of the water phase diagram, “To here?” He indicates the diagonal that would be gas.

“Because for each step you take, it involves energy and you need all that energy to get to the top. If you decide to cut it, you use less energy and all though to you that sounds like fun, it takes a lot of energy to get water to boil.” He looks at me like an idiot and I smirk.

“Lamens terms please!” I pull the seat next to him back and plop down. He scoots back a little. I guess he doesn’t want a gay boy up in his space.

“Ok well let me put it this way…you want to take a walk in the woods or on the beach, OK?” He still looks confused. “You see the path laid out for you alright? You want to get to a party here but you don’t want to stray from the path because then you get lost.”

He nods and watches my hand as I put a finger on the diagram. “Now you see that there’s a sloping upward hill that you have to take in order to get to a flat surface. When you reach here you see that in about…oh, let’s say several meters away there’s another hill, but when you get there you have to go 100 meters to get to another flat surface. Well you’re starting to sweat because it’s a little hot but you truck on. By the time you reach the top of this hill you’re no longer sweating because it evaporated. Now you’re not done yet because you see all your friends near another hill but right at the bottom of it. So you hurry to join them.”

Pausing I look up at him and he has a smirk on his face. “Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yeah but I think after the sweat started I would have called it quits and went home.” He chuckles when I roll my eyes.

“Let’s just get to work.” He nods and looks at his book again.

After a few minutes he finishes and gets to the work pages. After attempting the first question he sighs and slams his head into the book. “I dongetit!” His voice was muffles but I’m pretty sure I heard him right.

“What don’t you get?” He looks at me and glares.

“What the fuck does a solid at -20°C heating up to steam at 110°C have to do with anthing?” That’s one of the simpler examples.

As I start to explain I feel him getting closer and not so much as shying away from me. He finally got it after the third problem and started to work on it again as I sat there reading. When my phone vibrates I look at it.

Texts from Jason were always interesting.

Hey dawg! Mattie has a game this Sat cnt mak party. What…no way he’s supposed to be going with me.

Wat? U suck! I grunt and look back at Zacky. He’s staring at me, then something comes to his mind and his eyes snap back down to the book.

“What Zack?” He swallows and looks at me.

“Nothing…” He looks back down and my phone vibrates again.

Tht’s wat she said! He’s so stupid but I start laughing a little.

Yeah yeah watev!

“Who’re talking to?” I snapped my head up to look at Zacky.

“Oh, just Jason.” he nods and looks back at the problems and I see him scratching things down. What’s up with him?

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Zacky says in a small voice.

“Sure, shoot,” I say and he looks at me.

“What made you want to have dick and not pussy?” My jaw drops and he just stares at me.

“Wha-what?” my phone vibrates but I don’t look at it.

“Um…just wondering why you’re gay not straight?” His face got a pink tint and he flips the page.

“Because…I just am,” I tried not to say what was on my mind. I knew the reason was because I better related to girls as friends and I started to look at guys like they did.

“But when did you know?” He was still studying me.

“A long time ago,” I say dully and look at his work that he stopped working on. His answers were only half right. He’d get to certain spots then just stop and get lazy with his work.

“But how did you know?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you, Baker. In fact, I refuse to share my life with you because you could use it against me.” I circle what part he messed up on and then drop the pencil. “Look, you seem tired of this work so why don’t we just call it a day a’ight?”

Before he can respond I grab his book and my own and head back to the shelves we got them from and replaced them in their spots. He was packing up his backpack when I look at my phone.

Hey Val nd I r getting a bit 2 eat…wanna join?

Fuck yea! I respond back and before I can go back to where Zacky’s at, I hear Matt, Jimmy, and Brian walk in screaming his name to get his attention. I back away quickly and head down the back isle.

It’s good I know the layout of the library or I’d be dead. I get on my knees and crawl past the isles that you would be able to see me. When I pass unseen, I text Jason and Val and tell them that I’m most likely going to be dead the next time they see me.

“Where’s short shi--”

“Shh” The librarian says harshly and as soon as she catches my eyes she looks away. She knows what’s going on because it’s happened sometimes before this.

I wait listening to the guys as they start to whisper.

“Where’s short shit at?” Brian asks again but this time whispering.

“Don’t know…he left me a few seconds ago.”

“Well his shit’s here so guess he’ll have to be back.” Matt says and his voice starts an unwanted stirring in my body. I sit with my back pressed against a bookshelf that has me hidden between them and death.

For about five minutes I sit and wait for them to leave. I had gotten a text back from both of my friends and Val told me, her, and Jason were on their way along with Mattie and Michelle who just happened to be in the car with them.

When I finally hear Matt's heavy footsteps getting closer my heart accelerates. “Come on fag, I know you’re still here. Brian just checked to see that your car's still in the parking lot. Just grow a pair and face the music.”

Fuck them. I'm just going to stay where I am until Val gets here or I get caught. I should’ve asked JB to get me some fucking cigarettes.

“Maybe he did leave, but left his car here.” Zacky says and I know that he’s just trying to get them to leave. "He was texting some of his friends before, maybe they're going out and he left it."

“I doubt he’d leave that fucking sports car his parents bought him out there.” Jimmy says with a dull voice. Well actually, they didn’t buy it but I sure as hell am not leaving my car here with them around anyway.

“Well on that note, I guess we better go looking for him.” Matt says and I hear Brian agree. The other two just groan in annoyance. I don’t know why Brian hates me, I guess it has something to do with following the mighty, mean, sexy, stupid Mathew Sanders.

I use my legs to push myself up off the ground. I feel in my pocket for my keys. Shit they’re in my back pack. I could make it there if they went down the Science Section. I had gotten two isles away before I got stuck here.

“Well me and Jimmy will take the Reference section and Science areas, so why don’t you and Bri take the Non-Fiction?” Zacky suggests.

“Nice to see you guys participating!” Brian says sarcastically.

By now I’m fully standing but I wish I could be running and getting out of here. I hear them break off and Jimmy is asking why he had to help. I start to skim against the shelf of books and work my way to the table with my crap.

Once I make it to the isle I grab my backpack and take my keys out. But, I make too much noise because soon, Brian yells to Matt and I’m running. My heart starts to pound in my chest. I’m almost at my car, but before I reach it I feel Matt tackle me.

“You’re fast for a short fuck!” His breath hit the back of my neck and I try to control my body. He gets up and Brian kicks me in the ribs.

“Mother fucker,” Brian yells and I screech as another blow goes to my abdomen. It stings like a bitch.

Soon my face is getting beat in by fists and I hear my nose crunch. That is so not good.

Before I know it though Val is telling Matt to get the fuck off me, my breathing, labored but no ribs feel broken.

Val kneels down next to me and Michelle on the other side. They look so much alike that I wanted to say that I was seeing double, but Michelle had blonde bangs.

“See Matt! This is why we’re not together!” She strokes my hair and Chelle is holding a rag over my nose and squeezing to stop the bleeding. I yelp out in pain. Val looks up to glare at him. “And you can forget about us getting back together after winter break!" Matt's jaw drops, his face going a violent shade of red, but he doesn't speak.

“I don’t think it’s broken but I think we need to go to the hospital.” Michelle says, pulling the bloody rag away to look at my swelling nose.

“'Chelle get away from that fag.” Brian says grabbing at her arm.

"Get the fuck off of me, Brian. First you spread rumors about us having sex in the pool now this? You are so lucky I don't break it off with you right now!"

Brian lets go of her arm and glares at her. I was shocked but my jaw hurt too much to drop. “So next time you should call and fucking apologize for getting that on my permanent record.” They help me up and Mattie asks if he can drive my car to the hospital. I told him as long as he doesn’t speed he could.

~`~`~`~`

“So you guys didn’t have sex?” Val asks as she sits with me, Jas, Mattie, and Michelle in the hospital room.

'Chelle had been right. I didn’t have any major breaks, but there were a lot of fractures. We told the doctors that I got in a fight but didn’t say anything more about it.

“Nope!” she looks over at us. “I would have let him have his lie if he would’ve apologized. But he didn’t so screw him!” That was Michelle for you.

“Well the doc says I can go at any time, so we should really be going.” I had two days before Friday and I wanted to figure out if I still wanted to go or just say fuck it to the whole world!