Gemini - 1. Josh

"Hey Asshole!"

I tightened the grip on the strap of my backpack and walked faster.

‘Don't turn around, keep walking. It’s only a few more feet to the door and then you’ll be in the schoolyard,’ I thought to myself in panic.

He grabbed me by the shoulder from behind. There was a loud clatter when I was thrown against the lockers to my left. I fell against them and slid helplessly down to the ground. When I looked up, my gaze was met by a pair of angry eyes. 'What is your problem, Parker?' I wanted to ask but the words got stuck in my throat and remained unspoken.

Yeah, that's me. Joshua Abraham Adams, fifteen years old, a wimp and a coward and not very popular either. Things weren't exactly good a year before, but after we moved to Albany, it had become horrible. I knew this move was a bad idea from the beginning but it was not like my opinion mattered to my parents. “You’ll like Albany,“ they said, “we used to live there when you were a baby, it’s a beautiful city,” but since the first day of school, when Parker and his friends singled me out as their favorite victim, I’ve hated it.

"What are you looking at, asshole?" Parker barked. A year ago, the few friends I had called me Josh, or J for short, but here I was only Asshole or, if I was lucky, Adams. It was rare that someone called my name at all. Since Parker had singled me out, nobody wanted to risk having anything to do with me. Parker was strong and huge, he was more than a head taller than me. He was also an unpredictable prick.

A strong pain in my shoulder ripped me out of my thoughts. "If I'm calling you, asshole, then you’d better pay attention to me." He lifted his fist to deliver another blow and I closed my eyes and tried to brace myself. Then I heard a door opening from above and someone descending the stairs.

"It's your lucky day, Adams, but I'm not done with you. I want my money." Parker grabbed me once again, pulled me up and slammed me into the lockers with another loud clatter. Then he turned around and casually walked away.

I pushed myself up on the lockers behind me, grabbed my backpack, which had been tossed aside during the scuffle, and tried to straighten my clothes. I was still trying to shake off the shock when Mr. Fisher came from the stairs into the hallway.

"Josh, what are you doing here? Aren't you done with classes for today?" He smiled at me. Mr. Fisher was one of the few people in this school who actually seemed to care about me. Most of the other teachers seemed to prefer to stay distanced to what was going on between students. Mr. Fisher was my history teacher and I was good at history and genuinely interested in the subject. Maybe that was the reason he always gave me a smile when he passed by.

"Oh, I was just thinking about something and then I was standing here and yea..." I trailed off, hoping he wouldn't notice how shaken I was.

Now, I could tell him what had happened and hope it would help, or ask him if he hadn’t heard what had happened. Only, he was a history teacher, and he was weird, he probably got stuck somewhere between the Declaration of Independence and the Civil War. He was a genius when it came to teaching history, but he didn't notice much of what was going on around him and most of his students didn't take him very seriously.

So while he was nice to me, he was too absent-minded to realize what had taken place, even if he had heard me being slammed into the locker when he was descending the stairs. Telling him wouldn't help either. He would probably feel bad for me, but there was nothing he could really do. Even if he could, then Parker would just wait for me after school. I thought it’d be better to keep quiet and not embarrass myself more than necessary.

I left the building and held the door for him. After wishing him a nice day, I started on my way home. I had barely left the school yard, when the encounter with Parker came back into my thoughts. It seemed Parker got it into his head that I owed him money. As if he had any money he could lend. I would never borrow money from him but apparently this was his new excuse to torment me. Maybe he even hoped I might actually give him some money just to get rid of him. I thought about it for a minute and then decided that the opposite would happen and he would want more.

At least today was Friday, so I was rid of him for a couple of days. The walk home was not too far, and after twenty minutes of futile thinking about my problems with Parker, I reached my lonely home. My parents were hardly ever home before dinner and sometimes they were gone for days. We had help, Philip, but I didn't like him and he didn't like me. Officially he was hired to keep the house clean, buy groceries, and the like. Unofficially, his job was to make sure I was a good little boy, and behaved properly and probably also to report everything I did back to my parents.

Considering I didn’t have any friends, I wasn’t likely to throw any wild parties while my parents were gone but their motto had always been: 'Trust is good, control is better'.

Usually Philip was there when I got home but today he was apparently out buying groceries. I plodded to my room, threw my backpack into the corner and started my computer. I checked my emails and Facebook... nothing new. What did I expect? The few friends I had before we moved kept contact with me for a while, but over time, the messages got shorter and shorter and at some point there were no more replies. At least I had more than enough time to get my homework done.

After that, I usually read or surfed the net. If I found something, a word, or just anything, that I didn't know, or that sounded interesting, it usually ended up in an endless list of search on Wikipedia, Google and sometimes even in the library. That was why I knew a lot of things that most of my fellow students probably had never heard of. It was not that I learned all day to be good at school; I just read a lot because I found things interesting.

My only other passion was swimming. I was around 5'7'', slender and not exactly strong, but once I was in water, I was like a fish. The only time for me to really relax and let my thoughts go was when I was swimming lap after lap.

As always around half past six, I showered quickly, put on fresh clothes and went to eat dinner. Although my parents were usually gone all day, they considered family dinner to be very important.

"Hello Joshua," my mother greeted me, when I entered the room. "How was your day?"

Her tone was not exactly loving but rather flat and void of interest. Business-like would describe it best, I think. She always called me Joshua. Not Josh or maybe Joshie, like she used to when I was little. Joshua.

I sat down while I replied. "It was the same as always, nothing special happened."

"How was your math test?" In other words: 'Did you get an A?' The only thing my parents really cared about was image and me being a straight-A student was part of that. You have to understand, my parents were probably not the most average parents around. My father was a politician and my mother's family had been in the arms industry for generations. They both were very religious and archconservative. Sometimes I thought I was growing up in the 50's, not in the 21st century.

“It was fine, I got an A,” I gave her the answer she wanted to hear and tried to smile.

My father came directly from his study to the dining room, in a suit and tie, as always. He sat down and sighed. I think many would describe my father as 'scary'. We were complete opposites in almost every regard. He was huge, overweight really, while I was small and slender. He was strong and I was weak. He didn‘t ask, he demanded. I think if he were my age, he definitely would be like Parker, not like me. While I was shy and polite, he was a bully.

He looked like he had been angry about something all day. He tried to control himself though, and turned to me. "Joshua, how are you doing at school?" Bad question. Only once, just recently, I had the courage to tell my parents what really happened in school. I wasn't even done telling them all about it when my father started a big speech about how I ought to grow up and be a man and not whine about things like this. I should fight for myself and not let them pick on me.

Back then, I tried to explain to him that it wasn't that easy, Parker being twice my size and all, but he didn't want to hear any of it. I haven’t brought it up ever since.

"It's alright," I replied briefly. He nodded, his sign of showing that this was all he wanted to hear. My father said a short prayer, thanking God for the food we had and after that we ate our dinner in silence and I left for my room as soon as politeness allowed it.

When I got to my room, I decided I had to go swimming as soon as possible. The private club down the street was closed for renovation since the beginning of the week. Five days without swimming was way too long and between school and my parents, I felt more like a prisoner than like a free person.

In the very moment I was thinking that: “Joshua did you do all your homework?” I was so surprised to hear him speaking right behind me; I almost jumped in the air. Philip never knocked. I hated it but there was no use in telling him to do so. I did it a couple of times and he just didn’t care and my parents wouldn’t care if I complained either. I think he was hoping he would catch me wanking some time. Ha! Fat chance. I knew how to avoid that happening.

I turned around and told him calmly that I already got everything done. He nodded and looked a bit disappointed, as if he were hoping he would find some reason to hassle me, but eventually left the room. I let out a sigh and turned back to my computer. That should be the last interruption from him for the day.

I looked up the next-closest public pool on the internet and printed out a map with the route. Although we moved here last summer, I still didn't know the city at all. I could find my way to school, to the library and to the mall, but that was about it. There wasn't really a reason for me to know anything else. When I was done, I spent the rest of the evening reading and watching videos on YouTube.

Around midnight I shut down the computer and stripped naked. I had my own bathroom and didn't need to worry about anyone entering my room at this time of night. Philip was gone and my parents were asleep. I was usually pretty shy and didn't like to be seen naked by anyone, but when I was alone in my room, I enjoyed being naked. It was as though I was doing something illegal, or inappropriate, something nobody would expect from someone as modest as me. I know, this probably sounds weird, but I couldn’t help it, that was how I felt.

I would have even slept nude, but I couldn't lock my room and I didn’t want to take any risks. Philip sometimes came in to wake me up in the mornings and I definitely didn’t want him to see me naked. His favorite way to get me up was pulling away my blanket. What a creep. He even did that on weekends, when my parents had once again forgotten to mention some important event in time. Actually they rarely told me anything beforehand.

They were treating me as if I were still a little child. Hence I never knew whether he would come to wake me up early or not, so I couldn't take the risk of sleeping naked, but at least I could run around naked for a while before going to sleep.

Even if I wasn't the 'real man' that my father wanted me to be, I, at least, managed to be the most picture-perfect child around. I tried to be as good as I could. I didn't feel they loved me, but I did try everything I could to fit their expectations. Maybe doing so would change their feelings towards me. I was a straight-A student, kept out of my parents’ way, never did anything wrong or caused any trouble, and I made sure that my parents had no idea that I was capable of having sexual feelings or thoughts.

It was better they didn't have a clue about what really was going on in my head. Because I did, in fact, have those kinds of thoughts and my parents were so conservative, if they could, they would have probably tried to ban sex even after marriage.

After I had shed my clothes, I went to the bathroom and started brushing my teeth. While brushing, I looked into the large mirror and wondered what was wrong with me. After a few minutes, I spit into the sink, rinsed out my mouth, put the toothbrush away and turned back to the large mirror.

I didn’t look that bad. I didn't even have any zits. I ran my right hand through my dark brown, ever slightly-tousled, chin length hair. When I was younger, my father had always made sure that I had a military buzz cut. Then Philip had somehow convinced him that very short hair didn’t look good on me. I still don’t know how he managed to do that, or why he did it. I guess the pervert prefers boys with long hair. I didn’t mind though, I liked my hair that way better, too.

I looked at my body. I was slender but definitely didn't look like I was starving. I wasn't exactly a child anymore either. Puberty had kicked in long ago and I had some hair on my legs, in my armpits and there was a small trail of hair developing towards my belly button and my voice was notably deeper than it was a year ago.

My nose was special, not in a bad way; it was rather cute, a little bit like a button nose, pointed but round and in my case, relatively broad on the base.

I looked okay, I had rich parents, so I always wore good clothes and I was polite and smarter than most kids my age. Only it seemed like I had a huge sign on my back that said 'kick me', or something.

My lack of confidence seemed to draw bullies towards me like blood draws the sharks and that’s as logically as I could explain why they were picking on me. It seemed so easy to do something against what Parker and his friends were doing to me, but when it actually happened, I just stood there, got weak in the knees and couldn't utter a single word.

If it wasn't for Parker, this school year could have been very different. I might even have had some friends, if not close ones, but Parker had decided to hate me. God knows why.

I looked into my sad, glaucous eyes and realized that my situation was pretty hopeless. At school, nobody wanted to have anything to do with me, thanks to Parker, and at home my parents wanted me to be perfect, without caring about who I actually was, or what I felt or thought. I tried to keep myself above the water and pretend things weren't as bad, just like when swimming. Only the distance I had swum by now was enormous and I was hoping for a lifebuoy, because I knew I was fighting a losing battle.

As so often lately, I had exactly this realization and silent tears fought their way out of my eyes and started to run down my cheeks. I tried to comfort myself with the thoughts that summer break was close. It worked some, after a while.

I put on my underpants, went over to my bed and slipped under the covers. I lay there for a few minutes, trying to fall asleep, feeling very alone, and hoping for things to change, just like every night in the past week.