Ezzy

I went home after an hour of bickering with myself whether or not to go back. I staggered through the doorway like a drunken idiot, wishing I actually had some alcohol to down. Anything to get rid of what I was feeling.

Walking through the tall, sturdy, wood door with the big, brass knob was intimidating, but not as discouraging as when I saw my dad browsing through the paper, sitting at the dining room table. He glanced up at me like I was nothing. He furnished a sneer and then went back to reading the useless shit our community provided us with.

I always told myself: “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” It had never, ever worked. I started off strong, and I was slowly getting knocked down with every insult and grimace shot towards me. Did you know the leading cause of deaths in teens is suicide?

I logged back onto my Facebook to find nothing, no threats, promises or any notifications. “Hey,” he said. He? Brad. I didn't want to talk, I just wanted to sleep and never wake up. “Did you get my message? I never got anything back:(“ I didn't recall accepting his friend request on this site. I only had like 10 friends, that being the gang and my family, but apparently Brad was on there too. I let out a slight grin and typed back something about how I was sorry. It was late, and I can barely remember the conversation we had that night.

He said how he still felt bad for everything that had gone down the past few years. “It's not your fault, it's mine,” I had typed.

“It's not a fault. Don't say it like that, like it's a defect or something.”

“You seem to know what you're talking about,” I responded with a yawn. My soft, inviting bed was sounding more and more attractive by the minute.

“More than you know,” he mentioned. He logged off after that, and I had stared at that sentence written in the stupid font. It was weird seeing it in letters, on a screen, knowing he had typed it, communicated with me. Something about the sentence was comforting, the type of feeling Jack used to supply me with. But now Jack couldn't be seen with me, or he'd get hit. Brad alleviated me that night, he was like a drug, closest to a sedative I had. We barely talked, and I don't think it should have gone any further than that. His sister was Jessica Allbin.

I heard my door creek open and saw curious eyes through the splinter of hallway light peeking through. “Go to sleep,” my dad ordered.

It still baffled me that he thought I would use his stupid man-perfume. Why would I want it? Just because I liked girls, didn't mean I wanted to be a guy. “Dad,” I said, making an effort, “Goodnight.” He looked back at me with the set of eyes the spoke: Go to sleep you useless fag. Fag.

It was just different seeing it in the eyes of someone you wanted to love, about something you could never escape.