Taion

The rest of the week went by fairly uneventful. I –as customary –received no answer from Alex, nor Jack or Zack or Rian, but I’d learned not to care. Just as I’d learned to ignore the newly spreading gossip about me and what had happened in Coach Brown’s room. I no longer talked to Avery in that class, replacing him with the leather bound sketchbook I’d received from the Barakat’s.   I later requested to be seated at the back of the room. My wishes were granted and I was pushed away from my teacher’s concerns and into the realm of lies and deceit known as high school gossip.

I heard their whisper’s in the halls and I acted according to my role fate had dealt me. I bowed my head, clutched my books to my chest and tried to play the part of the innocent school girl or the shy homosexual kid in means to clear my name. The rumors refused to stop.  I was on drugs.  I believed I was from a different planet and often hullicinating. And yet my favorite? Coach Brown and me had a secret love affair that went haywire, ended up in me being raped, and scared to death of him.

Well…they were partially right. Not Coach Brown, though. I brainwashed myself into believing his class was actually Art; not Biology and I found myself daydreaming as I sketched, using a spare tissue to blend the graphite pencil led. It took me twenty minutes into his lesson on mitosis for it to actually sink it what I was drawing. I dropped my pencil, the blood pounding in my ears and I zoned out at the image. I slammed the sketchbook shut, my eyes wandering to my pencil as it rolled off the edge of my desk and clinked to the floor. It was the loudest noise I’d ever heard in my life.

I raised my hand quickly, my fingertips to my mouth; I wouldn’t make it. But I had to. Must. Must. Must. Must. Must. Avery caught my eye, looked at me confused. I looked away and squeaked, “Mr. Brown?”
He stopped because I had cut him off. No one ever cut him off. You raised your hand and waited politely. I looked away, pink coating my cheeks and bit down hard on my lip so my piercing would dig into the roof of my mouth –my way of punishing myself from breaking Coach Brown’s biggest (yet unspoken) rule.  

I could feel the bile coming –the image I’d drawn taunting me. It wouldn’t be long until…. And after eternity, he spoke. “Excuse me?” He sounded annoyed.

Behind my muffled mouth, I muttered, “Bathroom. I feel sick.”

He nodded, his expression changing into curiosity and I bolted. So now I was a homo druggie who hullicinates, has an affair with his teacher, and randomly gets sick. Sweet.

The bathroom was two classes away –roughly eighty feet. I covered it in a few moments, entered a stall, and threw up that morning’s breakfast. My hands were shaking. My head was pounding. I could feel the blood pumping through my fingertips. I couldn’t stand back up, and I’d only felt this sick once before in my life. This sickness –it was tied with one event and I knew: it was most defiantly my picture I’d drawn that snapped my sanity in half. “I-“ I couldn’t get the word’s out. “I…rape.” And I clutched my sides and sniffled.

The sketch had presented itself in my unconscious mind as harmless. It was further from the truth: It was typhoon, a whirlwind, an earthquake all rolled into one and I was a strand of grass. It was a given, I was going to make it.

That image? An image of sorrow and rape and pain and darkness? A small boy, naked and bruised and cut and hurting. Positioned at an angle where his face was unknown. On his hands a knees, his hands curled into fist underneath him. And oh. The blood. It was everywhere, shaded lighter than the actual shadows, yet so much more meaningful. And that’s about the moment the image turned into movie –my mind Windows Media Player –and the small boy turned his head, looked right at me and his shaky legs gave out. And that’s when I realized who it was: it was me again.

The kid version from my dream.

I retched and slumped against the stall wall, my eyes weakly traveling ‘til they rested on the jagged teeth of the toilet paper dispenser. I blinked and thought about how quite a few months ago, I would have done it in a heartbeat: dragged my wrist across the plastic teeth who knows how many times until I broke skin. My thoughts were fished back to reality when I heard a voice. It sounded surprisingly like Marcy.

“Phoenix?” She sounded uncertain, unsure –as any girl should be when approaching a men’s restroom.  “Envy?” She sighed and I could mentally see her biting her lip and nervously fiddling with her shirt, but I frowned. That image wasn’t correct. Marcy didn’t get nervous. …So why’d she sound so doubtful? “Please be in here.” She murmured the last line to herself; she was getting antsy.

“Marcy?” I finally asked, also unsure –but of letting her see me in my current state; I felt like crying.

“OMG, Phoenix! I thought Avery had lied or something like that. I was going to kill him." She rushed into my stall, crinkled her nose as the smell of vomit, and then hugged me. “But are you okay? Jeez, what’s wrong with you, Envy? You’ve got a fever. C’mon I’ll take you to the nurse.”

I nodded, reached to flush the toilet, and let Marcy help me up. 

“How’d you find out?”

“Avery texted me. Adrian couldn’t have come; he was in Gym and Coach Lambert works you hard. He won’t even let you go pee when they get started.” She laughed and ended up snorting. I laughed, too, but it caused me to feel sicker so I stopped and just entered the nurses office. 

She look suprised to see me. "Twice this week, kid?" She sighed. I bet she'd have my phone number memorized by the end of today. I nodded.

"I'm sick." The nurse laughed, as if it were a joke. "Obviously. Have you ate anything today? What's making you sick?" She shooed Marcy out of the office. She left with a quiet goodbye and a small wave. I nodded in her direction. 

When Marcy was out, she took my temperature, frowning at the results. "102 degrees." She paused. "Mr. Gaskarth, I realize your stressed. You just need to calm down. Thats what's making you sick, alright? I'll call your guardians and they can come pick you up."

Her phone call was short, a few "uh-huh"s and "no-ma'am"s and Mrs. Barakat was on her way to get me. Before the nurse let me leave, however, she told recommended that I go home a rest for the day. 

That was the second day that week I left without my book bag.