Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Poem Collection - MythOfHappiness - 9. What are friends for?
I enter the din and clash
Of the cafeteria
Clutching my tray
And glancing from side to side
Searching for somewhere quiet
By quiet,
I of course simply mean less loud.
There is no truly quiet place
In this packed room
In this crowded building
I find a spot,
Near the back of the room
A table, almost empty
Save a single Goth Chick
Truly, the high school promised land.
I point myself to
That one true place of peace
And forget to watch my feet,
Or rather watch the feet of
The boys in the letterman jackets
One such boy
“Accidentally”
Sticks his leg into my path
And I trip,
Sprawling onto the laminated floor
This is not the first time.
Not to brag,
But I am quite adept at falling
Onto this particular laminate floor
And I manage to keep my tray unspilled
I grumble unhappily
And rise to my feet
Turning to the laughing boys
And glaring at them darkly
Particularly the one who tripped me
He is tall
At least six foot
And he has brown, mousy hair
And I have know him
For a long time
Jamie stops laughing
For a moment he looks almost regretful
But then one of his leather-sleeved buddies
Gives him a hearty slap on the back
And the look vanishes into an ugly smirk
I turn back to the table
Because I still had my dignity
And I sit across from the Goth Chick
And we don’t talk
And I eat my lunch
Days pass,
Like they do
And Jamie keeps doing what Jamie does
Singling me out for some unknown reason
For his daily torment
And it’s not all that unusual
He’ll do this sometimes
Usually all it takes is for him to notice someone
And that someone would be his favorite for a while
But I was different
He took some strange guilty pleasure
In torturing me
I could see it in his eyes,
Always fleetingly remorseful
At his remorselessness
And then it came to a head
Maybe three weeks after
That first “accident”
Three weeks of daily abuse
Then, nothing
For two whole days
I saw him
And he saw me
And he left me alone
And I wasn’t sure why
Then, on that third day
He stopped leaving me alone
In fact, he stopped leaving me alone
In the biggest way he possibly could
And that was even more unexpected
After fourth period gym
I stay till everyone’s gone
Because I prefer to shower alone
And I don’t mind missing half of lunch
To do so
I take off my kit
Stuffing the sweat-coated garments
In the bottom of my gym bag
And wrap a towel around my waste,
Heading for the showers
I take the stall on the far right corner
Like I always do
And toss my towel over the waist-high partition
The water is ice
After all the other boys are done
I don’t mind.
I like the cold
It keeps my mind focused,
Gives me a moment to think
And time to think is so rare in school
Suddenly I’m aware of movement
I spin around and am shocked to see Jamie
As naked as I am, standing in the middle of the room
He frowns at me and I feel strange under his gaze
Like he’s looking at me in a way that’s not quite ok
He comes up to me,
Enters my stall
He’s close
Too close
I feel uncomfortable
He touches me
On the chest
Just above my left nipple
And I see that he’s totally hard
And I don’t know what to do
And then he grabs my shoulder
And pulls me to him,
Forces a kiss
And then shoves me back
Into the tiled wall
He looks… terrified
He turns
And he runs,
Actually runs
Out of the room
I turn off the water
And stand, dripping
And thinking
And it makes sense,
It really does
I suddenly feel bad for Jamie
Forced to live a life that is wrong for him
And I can’t believe that I feel bad for him
Because we have history
So much sour history
Jamie and I were friends
In Middle school
Then he started hanging around
Those People
And he ditched me altogether
Just all at once
One day we were friends
And the next he barely knew me
And that made me feel
Really, really bad
And angry too
And sad
And so fucking angry
And like I wanted to cut my own throat
Because he was my best friend once
And then he wasn’t
Then he was just some guy
I saw sometimes
In the hall, or the cafeteria
Always surrounded by his new friends
But I’d still sometimes catch him
Looking at me
When he thought I couldn’t see him
And I still remembered
That one night in his bedroom
It was just a fling for me,
Experimentation, all kids do it
But I guess it was more for him
And it was still more for him
And I feel bad for him.
Because we were friends once
And even though I don’t think
we ever will be again
I still feel bad for him
For getting himself stuck like he did
So I decide to help him
Help him in the only way I know how
By forgetting all this ever happened
And pretending like I don’t even know him
Just another stranger in the halls
I guess
It’s the least I can do,
I mean,
We were friends once.
And what are friends for?
- 10
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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