Like a Train Wreck - 7. Chapter 7: Secrets Lies And Alibis

It was that day again, the day when the family stood together singing Christmas songs, opening presents and everyone seemed happy. Christmas was suppose to be a happy day but for Miracle it was always sad and this one in particular was worse than any of them had ever been.

Miracle stood in the bathroom, looking down at the bottle of pills as he swallowed, looking at himself in the mirror thinking about just how easy it would be to take them all in that very moment.

The bottle was opened and a single pill was spilled into his hand then he closed the bottle. He reached over to grab a small plastic cup and filled it half way with water before taking the pill and washing it down. A hand lifted to wipe his mouth as he stared into the mirror and sighed.

"You worthless whore." He whispered softly. "I hate you."

He stared at himself for several moments before moving off to his bed room to hide the pills. Once that was done he wandered down the hall and into the living room. He didn't say anything, nor did he do anything.

He stood there, taking in the sight of happiness and joy while on the inside he felt so hollow, so vacant and empty. He couldn't bear it and he hated himself for causing all the hell that he had subjected himself to. Miracle managed to slip by them and into the kitchen.

Once in the kitchen he headed out the back door and into the snowy backyard where he found himself laying down, staring up at the stars while those arms and legs moved to create a snow angel and then he became completely still.

His eyes closed as he felt the affects of the drug and when they opened he found Hunter standing above him, looking down at him, blocking his view of the night sky and all the stars that filled it.

"Well hello there lonesome. Did you plan on joining the crowd or were we going to have to celebrate without you?" Hunter asked, lowering down to crouch beside Miracle.

"I'm not in much of a celebrating mood." A sigh escaped his lips.

"You never have been but you weren't this bad." Hunter looked down for a moment.

"You've acted so weird the past few weeks. You've hardly come out of your room, you don't eat much. You've just...laid in your bed staring at the television but not really watching it."

"Maybe that's how I want to be." Miracle rolled over and sat up.

"Sterling's called every single day since winter break started. He's worried about you."

Miracle drew horns on the snow angels head. "Why worry about Satan's little helper? That's all I am, all I ever have been."
Hunter stared at Miracle, getting frustrated.

"Okay, you know what? I am sick of this self pity crap, I'm sick of your vague and cryptic answers. If you're going to be all sad and depressed around me then at least tell me why."

"I don't think you want to know."

"If I didn't want to know I wouldn't be asking. My god, you're my brother. I love you and I know when things are wrong. You've lost your spark...that fire inside of you that makes you the awesome person you are."

"Brad..." He looked down, shaking his head. "His friends...they raped me."

At first Hunter couldn't believe what he was hearing, it was unreal to him, as if he thought that such a thing couldn't or even wouldn't happen to Miracle. He was silent for what seemed like the longest time. He could feel the anger burning inside of him.

He didn't say anything, instead pushing himself to stand up, ready to go and make those people pay for what they had done to his baby brother.

"What are you doing?" Miracle pushed himself to stand up, brushing the snow off.

"Getting ready to make them pay, that's what." Hunter tried to walk past Miracle only for his brother to grab him by the sleeve of his jacket.

"Don't. Please just don't, just..let it go. I don't want you to get in trouble because of me and...I don't want Mom and Dad to find out."

"That's why you stayed at Sterling's house, isn't it? You didn't want our parents to find out."

Hunter watched Miracle confirm his theory with a nod of the head. At this point he was at a crossroads. Their parents needed to know so Miracle could get help but at the same time he did not want to betray his brother.

"I'm just going to go in there and act like everything is normal. It'll hurt, Christmas always hurts, especially now but they can't find out because it'll ruin the entire holiday. Swear to me that you won't tell."

Hunter stared at his brother and sighed. "I swear." He said.


January 2008

Miracle was standing near the entrance of the school. Christmas break seemed to fly by but by the end of it Miracle believed he was with who he should be and that person was approaching him. Miracle smiled and pushed himself away from the wall.

"Hey." Miracle said, a shy smile accompanied his greeting.

"Hey." Sterling said, his smile a little more confident but he, like Miracle, appeared very unsure of how this was going to work out.

"Listen...if you're having second thoughts..."

"No." Sterling gave a shake of his head, looking down, reaching out for Miracle's hand.

Miracle took his hand and the two looked into each others eyes, the sunlight from the double glass doors shining in behind them. They turned and walked down the hall. Miracle's head leaned against Sterling's shoulder.

"So what are you going to do today?" Sterling asked, shifting his head to kiss Miracle's forehead.

"Be positive...no matter what happens." He smiled as they stopped at their lockers, taking both of Sterling's hands.

"And what else?"

"Well...love you, of course." That smile brightened more and he leaned in, pressing a kiss to Sterling's lips.

Sterling's eyes drifted shut and his arms moved around Miracle as he pulled him close. Both had changed in many ways over the past few months it seemed. Miracle was growing weaker and Sterling was growing stronger and in that aspect they needed each other like a fire needed air to survive.

"I love you." Miracle said, his voice almost breaking up.

"Hey...strong, remember?" Sterling smiled. "I love you too." He planted another kiss to Miracle's forehead.

"Right...I'll see you at lunch, okay?" The question was left hanging as Miracle smiled and turned around to head to English class.

While all seemed fine at this one of many high school's, things were not as they should be. Fate was about to take a twisted turn and karma was going to stab someone in the back, literally.

This was evident by the knife wielding, mask wearing intruder that lurked around the corner of one of the rows of lockers that were inside the boys locker room. His eyes took in the sight of Brad as he got out of the shower, clothed in nothing but a towel, innocently heading for his locker.

The intruder moved forward and creeped closer to Brad. A hand drew back only to thrust forward. The ice cold metal of the knife made contact with Brad's flesh and forced it's way inside of him resulting in the loudest, most agonizing scream.

The intruder pinned him up against the locker and stabbed him several more times. He stood back and allowed Brad to fall on the blood soaked floor. Soft and weak cries could be heard coming from Brad and he watched the black leather shoes of the intruder before things began to blur and then everything faded to black.

Miracle sat in English class, not paying attention as usual. principal Johnson wouldn't of described him as an honorable student had it not been for Sterling offering to do a majority of the work for him because he was kind.

However, the sound coming over the loud speaker caught his attention. He dropped his pencil and his head lifted to hear the announcement.

"All staff and students are to report to the football field. I repeat all staff and students are to report to the football field."

Something bad happened, the woman on the loud speaker didn't sound so deathly serious for no reason at all. He looked around and stood up, quickly gathering his things, carelessly dropping them in his bag. He quickly followed the other students.

Outside he saw Kyler heading down the hall way and started to pick up his pace as he weaved through the crowd, pushing and shoving like all the others were doing.

"Kyler!" Miracle called out, reaching out to grasp his shoulder.

Kyler turned around when he felt that hand on his shoulder, seeing Miracle get eaten up in the crowd, he reached out, wrapping his arms around the boy and pulling him close.

"What's going on?" Miracle asked.

Kyler wouldn't answer Miracle's question until he helped to escort the boy out the side door and off to the side so that they could avoid the crowd.

"Brad is fucking dead."

"Dead?" Miracle looked confused, shocked even.

"Yeah and I'd love to know who did it. I bet you know..."

"Why would I know?"

"Because of what happened." Kyler said, lowering his voice.

"Woah, okay slow down." Miracle took a step back.

"I did not hire a hit on him if that is what you think. My god...I hated him and what he did to me was horrible but you make me sound like some kind of lifetime movie."

"That's not what I thought. In fact I don't think you could hurt anyone. Now...your new boy toy over there, the quiet ones always are the crazy ones."

Miracle looked over to see Sterling moving down the steps that lead to the football field before his eyes focused on Kyler's again.

"If I were you...I'd rethink that statement. You aren't exactly rowdy yourself." Miracle said. He moved away from Kyler to go catch up with Sterling.

He ran down the steps, again pushing through the crowd as he needed to. Those white tennis shoes made contact with the neatly trimmed grass that sat beneath a bright sunny sky.

"Sterling!" Miracle ran over to him and wrapped his arms around his new lover.

"Hey!" Sterling wrapped him in his arms, even picking him up and setting him back down.

"Brad is dead." He said, that head tilted back to look up at Sterling.

"What? Oh my god. Where? When? What the hell happened?!"

"I don't know the details."

"Well a guy like that ... I'm sure he had a ton of enemies." Not to say anything bad about the recently deceased but it was known that Sterling disliked Brad.

"Yeah, well it's important that what he did to me never gets out." Miracle spoke, just above a whisper.

"That would give you a motive."

"Yeah...and we both know that I'd never..."

Sterling brought a finger to Miracle's lips to shush him. "I'd never believe that. You're many things but you aren't a killer."

"What about the others that were there?" Miracle looked at Sterling with a worried expression.

"They won't say anything. They can't point out a motive without implicating themselves in the.." Sterling trailed off, not wanting to mention what happened anymore.

"You know what's weird about cops? You tell them something good and they think you are lying but you tell them you did something bad, they believe you."

Miracle looked around at the crowd of people, their voices filling his ears with nothing more than undistinguished chatter, hearing the police sirens in the distance. School had been dismissed for the following three days giving investigators time to go over the crime scene before a cleaning crew came to clean up the mess.

"My god...I've seen this boy before." Martha sat at the table with the news paper. "Wasn't he one of your friends?"

Miracle poured some cinnamon toast crunch into a bowl. "We weren't as close as it looked. He just gave me a ride home sometimes and helped me study, that's about it."

"I can't believe this happened inside of a school. I thought they had better security than this."
Martha folded the paper and laid it on the table, going through the coupons she had cut out earlier.

"It happens in the movies all the time. Guess someone wanted to do it for real? I don't know." Milk was poured in the bowl of cereal and Miracle made way for the table.

"If school's had better security then you wouldn't see massive school shootings everywhere. I'm telling you, America is violent." Hunter took a bite of his toast.

"Everywhere is violent." Miracle said in a plain tone.

"Well they need to do something. So much potential going to waste." Martha collected her coupons and made her way out of the kitchen.

"Going to my room. I've suddenly lost my appetite." Miracle pushed the bowl towards Hunter. "You can have it if you want."

Before Hunter could say anything, Miracle left the kitchen and made it to his room. The door was shut and he moved over to sit on the edge of his bed.

A sigh was released as he sat there, leaning towards the shelf at the foot of his bed, plugging his MP3 player into the stereo and turning it on. His head nodded to the music, closing his eyes and falling back on the bed.

A knock on the window caught his attention and as he looked over in that direction he saw a shadowy figure outside. His eyebrows shifted inward, confusion taking over. He slipped off his bed and moved to the window, lifting it up.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Miracle asked, quite upset by Jaemin's appearance.

"I had to see you." He said, climbing in the window.

"Why? My god...my parents are home. A guy at my school just died today. You know?"

"Yeah, I know we agreed not to see each other for a while but I can't help it."

Miracle stared at Jaemin and rolled his eyes. He turned around and moved to lock the door. "What couldn't wait a few weeks?"

"I love you, Mir. I had to tell you, it couldn't wait. It was just swelling up inside of me and...well I don't know."

"You love me?" Miracle looked at Jaemin as if he had lost his mind. "I thought we agreed. This was suppose to stay secret, no strings attached. Hell this wasn't even suppose to really happen."

"I know and I'm sorry, it just happened."

"Yeah and I bet you lead a mob boss or something here. Who ever owns the sex slavery thing you escaped from."

"It's human trafficking." Jaemin corrected Miracle.

"I don't care what it's called. You probably lead them here and if you did and they bust down the door I am going to be in huge trouble, that is if we all don't get killed."

"You're going to be in huge trouble if anyone finds out anything about us. I don't even want to list off all the things that could possibly happen."

"Yeah, like Sterling showing up and finding you here." Miracle sighed in frustration.

"Just relax...everything will be fine. Just tell me you love me too, that is all I want."

"But I don't. You're just some guy that...just some guy, okay?"

An angered look appeared on Jaemin's face as he walked closer to Miracle. He hated to do this but he knew deep down Miracle had to love him too. Sterling couldn't give him what he needed, no one else could. In Jaemin's mind he was the only one that would love Miracle unconditionally.

"I think otherwise...because if you don't? I might just have to tell a secret."

A secret? Miracle had to many secrets but out of all of them he knew which one Jaemin spoke of and he couldn't believe that some guy he found sleeping behind the dumpsters was now black mailing him. Worst part of it was the fact that it was his fault.

Miracle didn't know what he saw in Jaemin. Maybe it was his looks? Maybe it was the way he styled his hair in those thick black spikes or the eyeliner that lined those hypnotic hazel eyes. Maybe it was the way he dressed, the spiked dog collar and the matching wrist bands or maybe it was simply that sharkish grin that he had every time he got excited.

Something about the darkness within Jaemin just drew Miracle in, even turned him on. At the same time it was so intense. Everything had gone way to far and it was his fault, he never meant for it to actually happen, it had now become obvious that Jaemin took his words literally. All Miracle could do is stand there in shock while Jaemin ventured out the window and off into the night.