The Others - 21. Chapter 21: Distraction

It’s Thursday morning, I’m still in bed even though school started a few hours ago. It doesn’t matter anymore, if I go or not, or whether I can think of a good excuse for not going. School is almost finished, after today there's only one more day to go. The teachers are waiting for that moment as well, no one would think of checking for students who are skipping school. Even if they did check for it, I don’t care.

I can’t deal with the real world right now. I need time for myself. I need to put things in order in my brain or I'll be talking gibberish for the rest of the day. That’s weird, isn’t it? The best way to describe this is that my mind isn’t able to focus on reality when I didn’t ask it to do so specifically. I need to get things straight before I can start being a human being like people expect me to be.

I didn’t go to Codey after my conversation with Seth on Skype. I totally forgot about it. I got a text message from him that evening asking where I was and why I wasn’t with him. I got another message later on that night, he was worried, he thought that maybe he'd done something wrong, or something had happened to me. I ignored him. I'd screwed up and I can’t easily forgive something like that.

After saying goodbye to Seth, after using his name when I shouldn't have, I immediately logged off. How could I be so stupid? I always managed, however weird and messed up I was, to keep people at a distance. I never screwed up like I have lately. If someone was watching me these last few weeks they would probably think I'm terrible at keeping my mask on and that I could never keep something as huge as my blog a secret.

But I can. I did! I am a secret! That was my only accomplishment in life. The accomplishment I’m throwing away faster than you can imagine. And the worst part is… I don’t even know when I started screwing everything up. Did it start with wondering about my dad? I've thought about him my whole life, so that couldn’t make any difference. But… when did it start?

Focus Adam, focus! You need to think of a good excuse to tell Seth. How can you possibly know his real name? Then you still have the Codey situation… not forgetting about his dad, your dad. Oh, and the journey you’re about to go on. The goodbye note to your mother is important as well.

“Adam, are you there? Are you still in bed?” I hear my mother’s voice at the door.

“I am,” I reply.

“Don’t you have school? Wait, don’t answer that please, I don’t want to know.”

My turn to return the question: “Don’t you have to be at work now?”

“No, I have a day off. Apparently you do too? We could do something together. It’s been a while since I talked to you, like we used to do.”

Urgh, I don’t feel like talking at all. “Yeah, that’s a great idea!”

“I’ll be waiting for you in the kitchen. I made you breakfast.”

So she knew I was still in bed… I hate it when people ask things they already know the answer to. Or when people don’t say what they mean and I have to deduce what they mean from the context. Why won’t people say what they want to say, it isn’t that hard, is it? I know I’m a liar, but in some way everyone is. Why would my mom ask if I’m in bed, if she already knows? I guess that’s something I won’t ever find out or understand.

Yes, I read the books from Grice and I know it’s perfectly normal to not-say what you want to say. That’s the cooperative principle. But why do people do it? This, again, is something that makes me feel different.

I get dressed and walk downstairs. The breakfast is delicious; fried egg and bacon on toast. I sit across the table from my mother. She watches me as I eat.

“Do you still want to go on vacation by yourself?” She asks suddenly.

Ah, I thought she forgot about it, but she didn’t. “Yeah, I do.”

“But why?”

“Will you stop asking about it if I tell you I really need this, time to get my thoughts straight?” The key to telling lies is telling the truth, or at least partly the truth. I can’t repeat it enough, make lies logical for yourself so you can retrace the thoughts you needed to get to the lie in the first place. You need to make sure you will think of the same lie every time, no matter when or where.

“You sound like your dad,” my mom mumbles.

Woah. She doesn’t say things like that normally. What’s going on? “You never talk about him.”

“You wouldn’t want me to talk about him.”

Okay Adam, don’t screw up now. You have to use this, exploit it. “Was he that bad.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it now. You’re too young for that. To answer your question, no, he wasn’t that bad. He was a nice person, that’s why I married him in the first place.”

“You were married?”

“Let’s do something nice now, like we planned to, I don’t want to talk about this.”

And so we did. We don’t like doing things you have to pay for. That hasn’t anything to do with the money part, at least for me, but everything you have to pay for simply isn’t nice to do. You know what I mean? It can be fun, but not-paying is even more fun. For example going for a walk, like my mom and I did today, or maybe playing a board game. Those are things I like doing.

So we went for a walk in the park. It’s close to my school and I kind of feared that I might be seen, but so what, what could they do if they saw me. They could give me detention, but if I don’t show up, they can’t give me worse grades. During the summer break the whole online network will be reset, same as every year, so the administration wouldn't be able to know that I skipped school. I get a “schone lei” as they’d say in Dutch - a clean slate.

We got home early in the afternoon. I had plenty of time to think about my life, to realise how I’m screwing up et cetera, you know, the usual drill. The depressive thoughts I have to live with.

I open my email. As expected I had an email from Seth, among many other emails I still want to read. I hesitated to open the email, still not sure what to use as an excuse.

“Hey AB,

You left right after you said goodbye, but I couldn’t help wondering how you know my real name. Can you please explain?

Greetz AR or Seth as you now know.”

Suddenly it hit me and I reply:

“Seth, sorry, I should’ve told you earlier. When you asked me for help with your oral, of course I said yes immediately. But, you handed in a quote. Schools normally use some sort of software to check for plagiarism and when they find something an automatic message gets sent to the author of the text to ask whether or not they were allowed to use that text. In that message I got the name of your school, so it wasn’t very hard to find out who you were. Do you still want to talk? I can come online tonight if you like?

Just before I can send the email, my phone starts ringing. I see it's Codey. “Hey,” I answer.

“Hey,” he says with a soft voice. Then silence. “You didn’t reply to my text message.”

I doesn't take long to come up with a story to tell him. The reason being: he will believe anything I say, I don’t really need to lie as long as I tell him how I feel, except that's the part where I’m confused as hell. “I know. I’m sorry, Codey, I was confused.”

“About what?” his voice still isn’t much more than a whisper.

“About us. About what happened.”

“So you didn’t like it?” he sounds sad.

Oh no, this is going all wrong. When I saw his name on my display, I knew straightaway what I wanted. I need him, I need to be close to him. I liked kissing him. I want to do it again. “Oh, I did like it, a lot actually. That’s what I had to think about. In fact, I’d like to see you tonight.”

“Yes, that’s great. I’d like to see you too. My family isn’t home tonight…” An awkward silence. “So my dad won’t be there to interrogate you,” he quickly adds.

“Are they home right now?” I ask, not wanting to wait. Plus, I promised Seth to be online this evening.

“No, they just left.” Silence again. I'm starting to get used to the silences. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing though. “You can come over now, if you want?”

“I'd like that!” I say. I need it, I add in my head. I need to get away from everything that’s going on. And maybe I just want to feel human. Kissing is an act which I feel human doing. Maybe that’s why I liked kissing Sam? And no matter what happens, I want to kiss Codey today. It doesn’t matter whether or not he is my step brother.

I go downstairs, tell my mom I’m off for the afternoon and maybe the early evening and jump on my bike. With my excitement it doesn’t take me long to get to Codey’s. A few seconds more I’m at his door and before I even ring the doorbell, the door opens. “Hey Matt.”

Oh shit, I almost forgot I’m Matt now! Geez, thank you for reminding me. “Hey,” I say. I feel this is going to be awkward… but to be honest, I think that makes it even more exciting. We both know we liked kissing, so in some way it’s weird that we don’t immediately continue where we left off, right? I could continue without thinking a lot about it, right now. Seriously, if you could see his cute, innocent face, you would think the same. He is standing in front of me, hopping from leg to leg in the cutest way.

“So, come in. What do you want to do? Watch a movie, talk a bit, gaming?” “Hmm, I like watching movies,” I say. “I bet you’ve got a lot nice things to watch, right?” A mischievous smile appears on my face.

Codey’s reaction is to blush. “Follow me, mister,” he says. I walk behind him up the stairs, which gives me a perfect view of his cute ass in his too tight jeans. I wonder if he quickly changed into his jeans when he knew I was coming.

“I didn’t see you at school today,” Codey says.

“Yeah, I kinda skipped today. It’s the last week, not that important.”

“I went by your friends and asked if they knew where you were, but apparently I got the wrong group of friends, because they didn’t know you,” he says while opening the door to his room.

That nearly stopped me dead in my tracks. Shit, I didn’t think of that. He saw me at school, so he knows who my friends are. Every day I don’t go to school is a day I could get exposed. “That’s too bad,” I say. “So, what do you have to watch?”

“You,” he says with a smile and innocently adds, “oh, you meant the movie?”

I laugh. “We only kissed once and you already talk like that?”

“Let’s change that then.”

The last word goes almost unheared because he spoke it directly into my mind. Whilst he's kissing me he leads me to his bed and throws me on it. Woah, and I thought he was a shy boy! You won’t hear me complaining though, because hell, he tastes wonderful. I’m lying on his bed while he is on top of me. He balances so he doesn’t touch me anywhere else than with his mouth, but I’m sure I would feel something I would like a lot if he’d let himself fall on me. We continue the kiss for a whole minute before he stops it.

“So, what movie we gonna watch?” he asks. If I wasn’t so overwhelmed by the whole situation and the feeling that’s burning in my chest, I probably would see he is out of breath. Just like I am, by the way.

“I don’t mind, you choose.”

I try to get up into a sitting position. Codey sees what I’m doing and moves off of me. He grabs his laptop while I sit up straight against the wall behind his bed. He comes back on the bed with his laptop already connected to the beamer. He sits down in front of me, right between my legs. I like that position, because I can feel his body pressing against my growing hard-on. He notices it, I’m sure of it, he just doesn’t show it.

I thought I would be happy if I managed to get a kiss again today, but apparently this boy has another plan. He starts playing a movie about a man who isn’t able to have any new memories or something like that. He didn’t tell me what the movie was called.

Codey puts away the laptop and snuggles up against me, making sure he rubs my stiffy with his back another time. I put my arms around his waist and he lays his head against my shoulder, which is possible because he is smaller than I am. Like this we start watching the movie. The only thought that wanders through my mind right now - and yes, this is a single thought, normally there are more thoughts than one at the same time - is how much I like this, being close. I need this more, being close. Maybe that could pull me out of my depression?

No, that’s ridiculous. When did I start calling it a depression by the way? I’m just weird, that’s all. Absentmindedly I start tracing small circles on his t shirt, around his belly button. I like how flat it feels. Without really thinking about it I lift his shirt a little bit to touch his bare skin. I try to pay attention to the movie, which is a pretty good movie, but the feel of his skin is too distracting. I think this is the first time I've experienced something like this and I hope it’s not the last time.

In some way I feel dirty for liking this, but I’m not sure whether that has something to do with the fact that Codey is a boy, something I thought I accepted a long time ago, or if it's maybe because I lied to him - and I am still lying to him. But, it feels good, so it is good, right? My circles are slowly growing in size, as if my fingers have a life of their own and want to discover what there is above his stomach. I feel some soft whispy hairs around his navel, but they disappear when going upwards. I feel the start of his ribs, they are very absent, but I can feel them. I’m looking for his nipples, I know that much, but I can’t feel them. Codey chuckles a bit and takes my hand in his to guide me. I feel them now, they are hard. I like them, more than I would have thought.

I guide myself to his belly button again and rest my hands there, ready to continue watching the movie. The character in the movie is looking for someone and a guy he met in a bar tries to help him, I think? And now they are…

Is Codey hard, like me?

They are in a van driving to a place that could help the main character find his lost…

Does he want me to do more, or does he hope I will just watch the movie? I secretly glance over Codey’s shoulder to see if his jeans reveal a bulge. I can't see anything.

I just can’t help myself. I start tracing circles on Codey’s stomach again, but this time a little bit under his belly button. I should stop now, I can’t do this. I don’t want this, do I? I’m his step brother! He is cute. Not forgetting, he likes me.

I reach for the waistband of his boxers, but I skip it. I only want to know if he finds this as exciting as I do. I kind of hover over his jeans, then glide my hand along the inside of his leg. In response Codey gently pushes back against me, surely feeling my hardness now. I trace his leg back towards his belly button, feeling it like I expected to halfway through. He is hard, I can feel it through the rough material. Again the boy responds pushing back against me. Quickly I guide my fingers back to his stomach, to continue my circles.

Oh shit, I’m not really watching the movie anymore and from now on I’ll see even less. The sensation of briefly touching his hard-on through his jeans stays with me. I’m tracing circles, enjoying the touch, while thinking about what I'd felt through his jeans, at that instant my heart pounding in my chest. Suddenly Codey’s hands are on mine again, gently, slowly, if I wasn’t paying attention I probably wouldn’t even notice that he was using any force. He moves my hand, guiding it, and I let him.

Very soon my hand is where it was a few minutes ago. Codey’s hand covers my own and he starts moving my hand to rub him. He moans and pushes back again, back against my hard dick. I think I almost exploded with that motion. Codey moans again and tilts his head upwards to look me in the eyes. I see pure joy.

His hand isn’t on mine anymore, but we both know I won’t stop now.