Free Book Excerpts

A gay teenager struggles to overcome sexual abuse.

Excerpt:

“Hey, faggot!”

The muscles in my back bunched up like someone had attached a string to my spine and pulled hard. I sneaked a look back over my shoulder and saw Larry, DeShawn, and Pete half a block behind me. They’d followed me from the junior high. They did that a lot when they didn’t have football practice.

“You walk like a girl, Bowman!” Larry yelled. “You even look like a girl with those long eyelashes and those pretty blue eyes. Let’s see if you fight like a girl.” He smacked his right fist into his left palm.

I tried to ignore them and walked faster.

“The faggot’s scared,” called Larry.

At least Josh wasn’t with them like he had been the week before. That wasn’t much, but it was something. The hot summer wind whipped across my face. I blinked hard and ran a hand over my eyes.

“Poor baby, he’s crying,” Larry said.

I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t crying, that it would take a hell of a lot more than him and his Neanderthal friends to make me cry, but I needed all my breath to get away. I broke into a run as I reached the intersection where Highway 183 cut through Clareton like a long, ugly knife wound. The traffic light facing me was green. I stepped off the broken curb as the light turned yellow and sprinted across the intersection, dodging a white Ford minivan that accelerated too soon. The driver honked and shook his fist at me.

Behind me I could hear Larry, Pete, and DeShawn cursing at me, but even they weren’t stupid enough to try to cross the highway on a red light when traffic was so heavy.

I reached the other side of the highway, turned around, kissed the middle finger of my right hand, and shot them all the bird. “Wait ‘til Coach Lugielli hears you can’t even outrun a faggot,” I shouted. My voice didn’t come out very loud. It never did. The wind and the cars rushing past carried the words away, but they saw my finger. There wasn’t much they could do about it, though. Kill me in school the next day, but I had at least sixteen hours before I had to worry about that.

Right now, all I wanted to do was run the three blocks to Loving Pastures before that light turned green again.

*****

The nurses had Grandma sitting in front of the television set in the lounge, even though I’d told them that she’d never even owned a television when she lived alone. Even after she got Alzheimer’s and came to live with me and Mom, she never parked herself in front of the TV the way Mom did.

On the screen, a blue haired skank was ragging on a fat guy with sweat stains on his shirt and tattoos of women with huge boobs across his forearms. He looked like someone Mom might bring home.

“Hi, Grandma,” I panted, pulling a hard plastic chair over to where she sat slumped in her wheelchair. The blast of cold air from the vent overhead made my lungs ache.

I straddled the chair, resting my arms on the back. My hands shook a little, and I laced my fingers together to steady them. My bare legs stuck to the plastic seat.

The fat guy on television yanked off his microphone and threw it at the blue haired woman. He screamed something at her, but the network bleeped most of it out. Definitely like someone Mom would bring home.

Grandma turned her head slowly and looked me up and down. “Who are you?” she said.

My stomach hurt, as if someone had punched me low and hard. “I’m Danny, Grandma.”

“Henry?”

Henry had been her older brother. He’d died way back during World War II when he was seventeen and Grandma was fifteen.

“No, not Henry. Danny. Lora’s son.”

“Lora?”

At least it kind of made sense, Grandma forgetting Mom. I’d forget Mom too, if I could. I stuck my finger through a hole in my shirt and twisted the material hard.

Across the lounge, a little old man started rocking back and forth and moaning. A dark stain spread across his crotch.

On the television, the fat guy and the skank had made up and were sucking face.

Grandma jumped a little and looked at me as if she’d just noticed I was there. “Danny!”

Every time I came, it took her a little longer to figure out who I was. Someday, I was afraid she wasn’t going to know me at all.

I squeezed her hand. Her fingers were thin and cold, the skin baby-fragile.

“Sit up right in that chair,” Grandma said.

I stood up, turned the chair around, and sat down in it the right way. “Did you get your hair done?” I asked. “It’s nice.”

“I look like a whore.”

“No, it’s great,” I said, trying not to laugh. She sounded almost like her old self. “You should always wear it curly like that. Really.”

“Damn waste of time and money. Where’d you get that watch?”

I automatically slapped my hand over the titanium watch on my left wrist, but it was too late. She’d seen it. She’d know Mom couldn’t afford a watch like that—it had cost over a hundred dollars. Mom couldn’t even afford clothes that didn’t have holes in them. Only one person I knew could afford a watch like that.

Mark.

I braced myself for more questions and a stern lecture about not taking gifts from Mom’s boyfriends.

Instead, Grandma gave me a puzzled smile. “What did you say your name was?”

My eyes got hot. I blinked hard.

Grandma patted my hand. “Are you all right, Henry?”

“Stop calling me that, Grandma. I’m not Henry. Henry’s dead. He’s been dead for about sixty years.”

“Feed the dog,” Grandma said suddenly, trying to stand up.

I jumped to my feet and got in front of her so she couldn’t move. She wasn’t supposed to try to walk. She’d fallen and splintered her left hip just a few days after she moved into Loving Pastures. The doctor said it would take at least six months to heal, if it ever healed at all. He hadn’t sounded real optimistic.

Grandma slapped at my hands. “Help! Help!” she hollered.

“Shhh…Quit it, Grandma. Settle down.” I tried to get a better grip on her, but she squirmed like a landed fish.

The nurse behind the front desk lowered the paperback romance she was reading and looked up at us. I’d given all of the nurses nicknames. This one was Jabba. Before I could wave her over, she went back to her book and her bag of potato chips.

“Grandma, knock it off,” I hissed. “Sit down now!”

I manhandled her back into the wheelchair with a thud. She shrank back with her hands over her face like she thought I might hit her.

“Grandma, I’d never hurt you. You know that.” Keeping my hands on the greasy, plastic armrests so she couldn’t get up again, I crouched in front of her, my face level with her knees.

I’d scrambled for Grandma’s lap more times than I could count when I was a little kid and Mom or one of her loser boyfriends came after me. I knew that if I made it to Grandma, I’d be all right. At least for that time.

Grandma and I were both quiet. After awhile, I felt her hand gently stroking my hair.

The old man who’d peed his pants started banging his head against the picture window. I could see the grease stains where his hair hit the glass.

Whap. Whap.

Jabba didn’t even glance up from her book. Her tongue flicked at the corner of her mouth as she turned a page.

“Hey,” I called out to her, but my voice didn’t carry very well. I’d had so much practice not making too much noise that I couldn’t do it when I really needed to get someone’s attention.

Whap.

“Stop it mister,” I said to the guy, “you’ll hurt yourself. Hey, lady. Nurse!”

Jabba finally looked up, scowling at me as if I had spoiled her steam scene on purpose. I pointed to the old guy banging his head.

She pressed a button behind the desk. After a minute or two, a nurse’s aide came out of one of the other rooms and led the old guy away. By then he was crying.

I leaned forward and hugged Grandma tight, resting my head on her knees like I used to when I was younger. Her bones felt so fragile I was afraid I’d break them if I hugged her too hard.

She smelled of dried pee and too much cheap perfume and lotion. If they wanted her to smell nice, why couldn’t they just give her a bath?

“I love you, Grandma,” I said, standing up so I could kiss the top of her head.

Grandma jerked away and stared at me like I’d grown a tail. “Do I know you?” she said.

Chapter Two

It took me almost an hour to walk from Loving Pastures to the trailer park where I lived with Mom and Mark, her newest boyfriend. They’d been together about six months, a record for Mom. Most of her boyfriends didn’t last more than a few weeks.

If one of them had to stay around, I was glad it was Mark. He didn’t beat me up like a lot of them did, and he talked to me like I was a real human being. He even did parent things, like helping me out with my homework, or playing games with me, or getting on my case when I forgot to do my chores. Sometimes he bought me stuff too, like the watch. He could afford it, because he was a trust fund baby. That’s what he called himself.

I kept expecting to get home some day and find all Mark’s stuff gone and a new guy grunting at me from the beer-stained couch, but so far Mark had stuck it out. He went on business trips sometimes, but he always came back. I had no idea why. If I’d been him, I wouldn’t have put up with Mom for six seconds, let alone six months.

The walk home wouldn’t have taken so long, but I spent a good ten minutes scouting around to make sure Larry and his friends weren’t lying in wait for me. They’d caught me once while I was walking home, and it hadn’t been pretty. By the time I was sure they weren’t around, it was rush hour and I had to wait what felt like hours for the light to change so I could cross 183.

I didn’t see any cars in the yard when I walked up to the trailer. No point in bothering with the key. The splintered lock was a parting gift from Mom’s boyfriend before Mark.

I shouldered the door open, dropped my backpack on the living room floor, and headed for the kitchen. I’d skipped lunch at school, and my stomach was growling.

The place smelled like a swamp. I’d been spending so much time with Grandma, I hadn’t gotten around to doing the dishes like I was supposed to. Mom had threatened me with the strap if they weren’t done by the time she came home from work, but she was wasted when she said it, so I was betting she wouldn’t remember. I was hoping, anyway.

“God, Danny, were you born in a barn?” Mark stepped out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel slung low over his hips. He looked like one of those marble statues of Greek gods they’d made us study in history last year. He wasn’t tall, but he worked out almost every day and had a lot of muscle, and his face was movie-star handsome with every feature perfectly chiseled and eyes as green and bright as a cat’s. His auburn hair hung in wet crinkles around his face. Beads of water glistened in his chest hairs.

“The backpack,” he said, pointing. “Pick it up and take it to your room, please.”

I ducked my head, hoping he wouldn’t notice the way I was looking at him and said, “I didn’t see your car.”

“It’s not there to see. I had to take it in overnight for repairs. I just hope the morons don’t ruin it. They were standing around scratching their heads when I left.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t have a whole lot of BMWs here in Clareton,” I said. “Not even on the east side of town.”

“No kidding. By the way, do you know what time it is?”

I winced. Mark had been on me recently about staying too long at Loving Pastures after school. “Four-thirty? Five?” I said as I leaned over and snagged my backpack by one denim strap. My voice came out in a squeak because I was super-conscious of Mark standing so close to me.

He snorted. “Try ten to six. I got you the watch. Do I have to teach you to tell time as well?”

I shook my head and felt my face get hot at the mention of the watch. I still couldn’t figure out why he’d gotten me such an expensive gift. If he was worried about me being on time, a basic Timex would have done just as well.

“And of course you crossed the highway during rush hour traffic again.”

“So?”

“So, people get killed at that intersection.”

He was right. Maybe once every four or five years, you’d hear about some kid getting hit by a speeding car, but it was usually a little kid, not a thirteen year old. The parents on the west side—it always seemed to be a westie kid—would petition the town council to lower the speed limit or add more stoplights or something, but nothing ever came of it except a few editorials in The Banner and a couple of dumb safety seminars at school.

Mark sighed and shook his head. He was standing at the opening of the short hallway leading to the bathroom and the bedrooms. He didn’t move when I walked towards him, so I had to scrunch against the wall and squeeze by. I couldn’t help brushing against his body.

The towel slipped, exposing him.

He didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t care how careful you think you are, Danny, it’s dangerous, especially during rush hour when the commuters go shooting through town. I seem to remember mentioning that to you, oh, about six thousand times before. If you can’t pay more attention to the time, I’ll have to put a stop to your visiting your grandmother after school.”

I was so busy trying not to look where the towel had slipped that I barely registered his words.

He broke off suddenly with a grin. “Oh, don’t act so embarrassed, kid. I haven’t got anything you can’t see in the mirror, right?”

Face blazing, I escaped past him to my room and tossed my backpack onto my bed. Actually, I aimed for my bed, but I missed by about half a foot and the backpack wound up on the floor with three weeks’ worth of unwashed clothes. I pulled the door shut so Mark wouldn’t get on me about my room being a mess on top of everything else.

“What’s for dinner? I’m starving,” I called, hoping my voice sounded casual. I looked at Mark out of the corner of my eye. He had covered up again, so I walked back down the hall.

“Starving, huh? That means you didn’t eat lunch at school again,” Mark said, giving me a light swat on the butt as I edged by him.

I jerked away from him, even though it hadn’t hurt.

Mark didn’t seem to notice. “What did I tell you about that, Danny?”

“Uh…not to skip lunch.” I went into the kitchen, found a half empty carton of OJ, and drained it without bothering to look for a clean glass. It tasted foul. I should have checked the date before I drank it.

Mark reached over my shoulder, opened the freezer, and rummaged around until he found a package of chicken pieces. “You can’t let a friendship mess you up so bad you can’t eat, kid. You’ve got to grow a thicker skin.”

I’d told Mark about fighting with my best friend, Josh, and about some of the jocks giving me a hard time, but I hadn’t told him the whole story.

I was scared he wouldn’t like me anymore if he found out I was gay.

“If what’s-his-face abandons you because you’re not a football player, then he wasn’t a very good friend to start with, was he?” Mark went on.

“Josh was my best friend,” I muttered. Aside from Grandma, he was the only person in the world who knew about Mom and her loser boyfriends and what they did to me sometimes. I’d spent a lot of nights over at his place when it wasn’t safe for me to go home, especially after Grandma started getting so forgetful.

“Well, the time I met him, I didn’t think much of him.”

Mark’s towel slipped again and fell to the floor. He put the chicken on the nearest counter and reached for it, still talking. “In fact, I thought he was rude as hell. Nothing like you, Dan. You’re a really nice kid. Which is good, because if there’s one thing I won’t tolerate, it’s a kid with a smart mouth.”

He fixed the towel again and reached over to ruffle my hair. Then he put his fingers under my chin and lifted my face up so I had to look him in the eyes. “I’m very lucky to be dating a woman with such a good kid.”

His gaze was so intense that I shivered. I would have done anything in the world for him at that moment.

Then Mom’s car pulled into the yard, and Mark let me go, laughing. “Now you’re in trouble, Danny-boy. You were supposed to have the dishes done. Your mom’s going to want me to take the strap to you.”

Mark hadn’t done that yet, but he’d never tried to stop Mom from whipping me, either. Mostly he just pretended like nothing was happening until it was all over.

“I’ll do them tomorrow,” I promised fast. “Honest.”

Mark looked at me for a minute. “All right. I’ll see if I can run interference for you tonight. But skip the nursing home tomorrow. Your grandmother won’t die if you miss one day. Come home and do the dishes before we all catch salmonella.”

“But—” I saw the look on his face and stopped. “Okay.”

“I am not kidding around with you. I will be seriously pissed if you disobey me. Got it?” He nailed me with his eyes again. “Seriously pissed.”

“I said okay.”

“I trust you. And now you trust me. Junior high is not the end of the world. It just feels like it sometimes.”

He squeezed my shoulder and vanished into the bedroom to get dressed.

Copyright © 2008 Debra Stang. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.