TheZot

After winter break, rehearsal started in earnest, and any thought of doing anything with anyone went right out the window. What time I had left after homework, rehearsals, and forms was spent with Trevor, me working on his accent and he trying to teach me how to act. In the end it mostly worked -- he had a passable Bronx sound, and I didn't come off too wooden on stage. It was kind of a pain to make sure things worked out right with Trevor singing my songs, but getting him off-stage or b

It was the Monday before vacation, and I'd decided to skip out on lunch and hit the weight room instead. With play practice starting up, even informally, Rick and I hadn't been spending all that much time together and I was kind of missing him. Yeah, we were still studying together, but Melanie was always with us when we did that, and it just wasn't the same. I kinda wanted to spend some time with him while I had the chance. My parents and I were going home for Christmas, and then right

Lunch had gotten to be a pleasant habit. Trevor, Paul and I would eat together, and so would Rick on the days he wasn't working out. Melanie would join us if Rick did, otherwise she ate with Rob and the jock crowd. It was kind of strange to watch, knowing what was going on with Rob, and between Melanie and Rick. Today it was just Trevor and I, since Paul was doing something with the school electrician and stage lights. The cafeteria was as busy and unappealing as ever, bright lights boun

I spent most of Sunday working out and thinking about what had gone on at the art show. Melanie had dropped me off at my house after the show with an apology, but that was it -- we hadn't actually spoken the whole drive home. I was mostly trying to figure out what was going on. I wasn't sure what Melanie was thinking. The one thing I did figure out was that Melanie did know Bobby was gay, and had tried to set us up. I think she was thinking I'd be flattered at Bobby's artwork and maybe m

It was Saturday, and I'd cut my normal morning run short because Melanie had told me she had an outing in mind for us. It was about nine thirty when she rolled in, and I was still a little wet from the shower. "C'mon," she said, dragging me out to her car, "time for our field trip." Melanie was nothing if not persistent. "What, won't Rick be jealous?" I teased as I grabbed a jacket from the pegs in the front hallway. "I mean, really, being seen alone with me!" "Why Justin

"Justin, could you be a dear? I've got homework for someone who's been out the past week that I need to drop off, but I'm tied up with Student Council business. Could you take it over for me?" Melanie had cornered me after class, put on her thickest southern charm and batted her eyes at me. She knew it wouldn't get her anywhere, bit it made us both laugh. She'd been flirting like this with me ever since we had our talk. It was fun, and it was casual, and if I screwed up it didn't much matter. I

"So, you and Melanie, huh?" It was lunchtime, and Rick and I were eating and working on trigonometry at the same time. We were lucky and managed to have two days a week together for lunch. Well, lucky for my trig grade, at least. "Yeah," he said softly with a real dopey grin on his face. I looked across the cafeteria to where Melanie was sitting with Bobby and a few other people. "So why isn't she over here eating lunch with you?" "She can't. You know." He said it

It was about six at night, I was up in my room, and I was working with my notecards when the phone rang. I let it go, since it wasn't ever for me and I always forget to give people messages. Mom would get it or it'd ring over to the answering machine, but either way I didn't have to deal with it, which was fine by me. That's why I was so surprised when I heard my mom yell. "Justin, phone!" I dropped all my notecards when she said that, and kind of sat there surprised for a second

The single nice thing I've found about moving to Georgia is the weather in the morning. It was October, and back in Massachusetts it would've been cold at six thirty, but here it wasn't bad. More than nice enough to be running in shorts and a t-shirt. While it had taken a few weeks, I'd finally settled on a route that worked for me. It was a little less than nine miles, and I could do it in the hour before breakfast. Yeah, it was a pretty good pace, but the roads were mostly flat, there

Tuesday morning things were a little bit closer to back to normal for me. Mom had a shift at the hospital different from Dad's, so she wanted her car back, and I didn't think I needed to put on the same show again anyway, so I didn't. My car's pretty nondescript, so I was pretty sure nobody'd notice me right off. I grabbed a few tennis balls out of the basement before I left too, just in case I needed a distraction. I got to school only a few minutes early, not enough to do a walk around

When I got to school Monday morning my stomach was in knots. I'd managed to borrow Mom's Prius for the day. I startled her when I walked into the kitchen, and she didn't protest. I figured that was a good sign. I took a couple of deep breaths, grabbed my new bag, pasted an unfamiliar smile on my face, and stepped out of the car. I'd timed my arrival to try and get the best impact. Early enough that people weren't racing the bell, but not so early that there wasn't anyone there yet. The l

On any day without rain I run in the morning. Saturday was nice, so even with the bruises from the beating I took on Thursday I was out on the road for most of an hour. I got back from my run to find a girl sitting on the front steps to my house. "I'm Steph," she said, standing up. Even on the steps she barely looked me in the eye. She was dressed sensibly enough for the weather -- t-shirt, denim skirt, and a patchwork quilt vest, a navy beret pulled down over her head with bits of red h

Wham! Some days I think lockers are made of some weird alien metal, since whenever they get hit really hard the noise they make seems to make all other sounds around them disappear, and the harder they're hit the faster things go silent. This time I hit hard enough to make the corridor go instantly dead quiet, with everyone looking at us. Us, in this case, was me, Justin Payne, and my personal antagonist, Bobby Phillips. In this school I was a nobody junior, since I'd just moved

In which Ben and William come to the rescue of a damsel in distress, and find that some things which can be done ought not be.

"Some bad days are better than others"

Ex Marks the Spot Bars. God, I hate bars. Hate 'em with a passion. Dark, crowded, and full of people I can't stand, acting like assholes. Still, here I was, sitting at one, working slowly on getting wasted. Why the hell not? Just got the brush-off from the guy I'd been dating. Bastard hadn't even had the guts to tell me to my face. He'd sent me a text message. Fucker. I dont thnk itll wrk He couldn't even be bothered with punctuation. But he said I couldn't be bothered to get serious, so

It's awfully delayed, but chapter 13 should be up tomorrow sometime, web gods willing.

Working on it! Slowly, ever so slowly (I just finally got chapter 13 of yankee revised and off for upload) but I'll get there. Hassle me in a week if there's nothing else. The poking does induce action.

Yep, now we've got the boys together and they do hold each other in the highest regard, don't they? You can be sure they'll get along ever so well...

Heh. It thinks Soulmate was written by a man, and Ex was written by a woman. Which is funny, since Soulmate's my mushy romantic piece and Ex is my cranky, curse-filled, vicious one. Still, it's gotta be true -- would the internet lie to me?

Yes, well, William is... not so much cheerful as driven. He doesn't give up, not if he can help it, and while things are bad he's not dead, so he pushes on. Definitely flip, though -- the world's not given him much respect, and if he's going to be the butt of some celestial joke he can damn well laugh back at the universe. (Though he would, if pressed, 'fess up to the fact that lots of folks have it worse) Of course, it's also possible that there's just a bit too much of me in his character, and I'm a cheerful cynic. (And yep, while Real Life has been a bit of a trial, the third chapter's out for read-through and edit so hopefully in the next week or so, depending on how much work it needs)

Sorry 'bout the delay. My laptop had to go in for repair, which killed about two weeks worth of writing. (Well, a bit more, as it was sickly before it went in) Hopefully soon, chapter 3's approaching 3k words and the rough draft's about two thirds done.

The skittles were one of those "I know what he likes but I don't know how" things, like the model railroad shows and the Thai food. Bit 'o modern magic and all that.

Hey, I was a Red Sox fan, until they actually won the World Series and slipped us into this bizarre alternate reality we currently live in. The main page green was Myr's doing, as I recall. I used a variant of it as the sidebar color for the Ynar stories, and then went digging for other dark tones for the other stories. (I'm not 100% sure I like the fuscia for the modern shorts, though) I spent way, way too much time in Safari fiddling with the chapter punch-outs (and even more time swearing at IE which couldn't do 'em like Mozilla and Safari could), layout bits, and php. Interesting in its own way, even if I'm probably never going to do anything significant with either php or css again... Well, y'know how frogs are. Ben, on the other hand...

With any luck, it'll be soonish. The next chapter's 1800 words done, so it's moving. How 'bout the yankee pages in Dodger blue? I fixed up the index and page templates. They all had a link back to the main page but it was badly labeled. Update's off to Joe for uploading.