Black Star Cross - 45. Breakup and Breakdown (Part 2)

Black Star Cross

Chapter 45: Breakup and Breakdown (Part 2)

My eyes widened.

“Brett’s suicidal?” I asked in disbelief.

“I don’t know, bro,” Keith said, trying to stifle his tears. “I hope not, but look at the obvious! He’s obviously in some kind of trouble, mentally, so what else CAN he be?”

“I just don’t get why Brett, of all people, would be the one to snap. He’s more popular than Anthony.”

I finally let him down from the lockers.

“Shit, you don’t know the kinds of social pressures we have to go through. The pressure of living in the spotlight, constantly being seen by everybody, must’ve finally broken him. And as you can see, I’m the only one that can adequately calm down all the rumors in as many social groups as possible. I’m the only one that can do widespread damage control. I’m the only one who can save face like a motherfucker and can successfully maintain everybody’s popularity status while they’re away saving one of the most popular guys in school’s life, and I can’t be there to try to help them!” he spouted, growing louder steadily.

He suddenly looked exhausted. He was still fighting back tears. What the hell? Jocks aren’t supposed to cry. They’re not supposed to show ANY emotion other than rage and lust. They’re supposed to be too busy chasing tail to worry about each other’s lives. Especially as that would be “too gay” a thing to do.

And yet here was Keith, an honest-to-goodness jock, summoning every fiber in his being not to openly cry for the fact that one of his friends, another jock, is in serious, life-threatening trouble. He was concerned. All of Anthony’s friends were. Maybe even Anthony himself. I’m sure of it. Maybe these fuckers DO have some humanity in them.

“Bro, I need to go. I still have stuff to do.” Keith begged.

“Fine. Go. If Anthony’s at Brett’s, then I’ll have to go over today, too.”

He laughed a sorrowful, pitiful laugh.

“Really? You? Caring enough to go over? Or is it simply because Anthony’s there? Either way, you don’t even know where he lives, nor do you have the transportation.”

“Then tell me where he is.”

“No. This is a delicate situation, and the LAST thing I’ll do is turn it into a media event where just anybody can drop in and say hello. You want to go so badly? Talk to Anthony.”

I shamefully looked downwards.

“He and I aren’t really on speaking terms at the moment.”

“Yeah I know. That’s why I said it,” Keith snubbed. He then continued to walk away. I was left standing there.

~~~

I went through the rest of the day thinking about the situation with Brett. It was still hard to believe that somebody like him could be vulnerable. He just seemed so godly. And happy. Whilst Anthony was busy torturing me for the past few years, Brett was never the instigator. He seemed to never be around during Anthony’s abuse. It wasn’t like he ever stopped to talk to me (popularity had its rules, of course), but he was nothing like Anthony. And he always seemed to be smiling. No matter what it was; no matter when it was. Always smiling. He’d be the perfect poster child for Crest.

What was I going to do? Keith was right. I had no way of getting there, not that I knew where “there” was. And why would I go there? To help him out? Because Anthony’s there? But we broke up. And my friends were never his friends to begin with. So there’s no reason for me to go there. So then, why do I still have this incredible urge to go over? I don’t get it.

What was weird was that I saw Anthony roaming the halls at the end of the day. It was only for a brief moment, but it was definitely him. He soon disappeared into the crowd. I walked over to where he was, but couldn’t find him anywhere. I couldn’t spend any more time looking for him, however, as I didn’t want to walk home again today, and the buses were leaving soon. I gave up and walked towards the buses.

~~~

Mom said that I should start spending more time with the family. Considering that the “family” consisted of her and Kimberly, and the fact that all they ever do is sit in front of the TV and do something completely different, I had to say no. I will NOT be forced to do something against my will. Mom, naturally, was not too thrilled by my defiance. She started going off into some spiel about how I should spend more time with the family, and how it would help my apparent “mood problems,” and how we should love one another, and blah blah blah. I just went up to my room and closed and locked the door. I turned some music on and waited for the voices to stop. They eventually did.

~~~

Anthony miraculously showed up to class the next day. He didn’t show up at my locker, but he showed up to class. At least he ain’t thinking about dropping out altogether. And he was still stuck sitting next to me. He looked my way when I entered the room, but quickly shifted his head back so that he was looking out the window. That boy has the slowest reflexes I’ve ever seen. How’d he make it onto the football team again?

I sat down next to him. Neither of us said a word. Neither of us looked at each other. So this was how the rest of the semester’s going to be like, huh. Anthony kept tapping his pencil on the desk. He seemed impatient. Was he THAT uncomfortable sitting next to me? Was he that desperate to flee from this classroom and never look back?

I got my answer when the bell rang and class was over. He sprung up out of his chair, grabbed all his things, and made a beeline towards the door. What surprised me, as I was walking out of class, was to find him making his way back to me.

“Hey sorry I can’t stay to talk dude but shit’s really been hitting the fan with this whole Brett thing,” he said in one long breath.

“Keith told me he might be suicidal,” I stated.

“I don’t know, dude. Look, I’ve got to get going. We’ll talk later,” he said, then rushed off down the halls.

We’ll talk later? What’s there to talk about? Is he apologizing? Is he expecting me to apologize? What the fuck is going on here?!

And you know what the worst part is? We never got to talk! Anthony sat for half of the lunch period with the jocks before getting up and walking out. He seemed to be acting like his normal self in front of the guys. I thought about going after him, but I know that he knows how to use ninja disappearing tricks when he senses danger. I wouldn’t be able to find him in time. He can be smart when he wants to be. Though I wouldn’t doubt if Keith was somehow in on this, too. That fucker can’t be trusted worth a dime.

Speak of the devil, guess who stopped by me on the way to my next class after lunch? And might I add, holy fuck, did he look bad! His usually trend-savvy hair was a complete mess. It looked like bedhead. Unless bedhead was back in, it was obvious that he didn’t bother to groom it today. He also had stubble starting to come in. I didn’t even know he was CAPABLE of growing facial hair. And all in all, he just looked...out of it today.

“Holy hell, Keith. What happened to you?”

“Brett got worse, that’s what,” he growled. “And I’m getting desperate, hence my presence here. Look, do you have any classes with Pamela Stitt? Please tell me you do,” he said.

Pam? Why her? Wait...

“His crush?”

“Yeah. I figure if I can get her to say something to him, maybe he might get better. But she’s such a nobody that nobody I know seems to have a class with her! Nobody knows what her classes are, or where she is at a certain time of day! It’s like she’s dropped off the face of the planet!”

“Well, I’m sorry to say this, but she’s not in any of my classes either.”

Keith suddenly punched the nearest locker. Hard.

“God damn it!” he yelled. “Where the hell is she?!”

“Keith, I think you really need to step back and think about this a little bit,” I instructed. He looked at me with fire blazing in his eyes.

“What the fuck did you just say?” he challenged.

“Well think about it. Say you do find her. First you’d have to convince her to go over, which would involve you explaining the situation to her without freaking her out. That alone would be hard to do. Then you have to take into consideration as to what she might say. What ARE you expecting her to say? That she somehow has always loved him and that they should date immediately, regardless of what their friends might say? What if she rejects him? Did you ever think of that? What if she goes over to his house and says that they shouldn’t, or can’t, be together? What do you think that will do to him in his current state? If he wasn’t suicidal before, he would be then. Hell, he might even progress to homicidal.”

“Fuck,” Keith whimpered, lowering his head. I’m willing to bet that, like Anthony, he just didn’t want to admit that I was right. “I just wanted to help. I thought...I thought that maybe...she could...he...”

A stray tear fell down his cheek. He didn’t bother to try to wipe it off his face. I felt bad for him. I obviously wasn’t as immersed in this as he was, but I could still tell that he was giving it his all to try to fix everything on his own, and that just wasn’t working out for him.

“I gotta go,” he said. “I gotta think about things.”

“Go. Just don’t turn into a second Brett.”

He nodded and left. I breathed a huge sigh. Damn, I wasn’t expecting this high school drama to happen to me. Well, it wasn’t directly happening to me, but I was getting involved, one way or another. I left for my next class.

~~~

After that class was over, I got stopped AGAIN! What the hell is it with people and stopping me in the halls today?! Do I have a sign on my back that says “Please keep me from getting to my next class on time”? And why it is Peter Lamb that’s stopping me? And why did he know my name to begin with? Man, he had better not be asking me to fuck him senseless in the bathroom stalls, because I don’t know where that ass has been. He’s totally not my type either. He’s more flaming than a weekly California forest fire. And what’s worse is that as soon as he stops me, I see Anthony walk off towards the end of the hall with Keith! What the hell?! I was going to shove Peter aside and run towards Anthony when Peter got my attention.

“Like, I totally figured out your secret, Shawn,” he lisped.

That stopped me in my tracks. I turned back to him.

“My secret?” I asked, more for clarification than merely for him to repeat it again.

“That’s right, hun. I bet you didn’t know that I talked to your boyfriend a couple months ago. It took me awhile to figure out why Anthony Heinmann would make me swear silence about the whole 'double-outing' issue, but I finally figured it out!”

‘Took you long enough, you brainless blonde.’

I, instead, raised an eyebrow, amused by his enthusiasm.

“You and Anthony are SO going out,” he announced, with a victorious grin on his face.

Now, if I knew Anthony, he would want me to say...

“I haven’t got a CLUE what you’re talking about.”

But wait...we aren’t dating anymore, right? So why should I care? Why should I care if I or Peter out him? Or out myself for that matter?

“Don’t, like, play stupid with me, fellow brother,” he said, with unnecessary accompanying movements to go along with his every word. Seriously, why doesn’t he just start snapping his fingers and go “Oh no you di-n’t, girlfriend!”?

“I’ve noticed how much time you two spend together,” he continued. “No loner and jock spend THAT much quality time together, and no two STRAIGHT guys are THAT close. Not a chance in hell, girlfriend,” he overdramatized, the spotlight-loving queen that he apparently is. He was loving this. “You two should just totally come out, already. Like, half the school already knows you two are fucking. Just ask anybody, hun. It’d give us SO much more visibility! Like, we’d have a total hunky jock on our side! We can go on Gay Pride parades! Oooh, I bet he’d look tasty in some hot pink glitter,” he went on.

I couldn’t help but to laugh. Anthony would rather take a bullet to the head and die slowly of blood loss than wear “hot pink glitter” on himself.

‘Dude, that’s not gonna be US, is it?’ he asked, worriedly.

‘God, I hope not. I could never be out in public in only a speedo. And if I ever show that much pride over being gay, I give you full permission to shoot me in the head.’ I said.

‘Can do!’ he enthusiastically said.

Suspicious, I said, ‘On second thought, I think I’ll take you down with me.’

‘But you’ll be at that gay parade. I’ll be sniping you from across town.’ he explained.

The whole scene played itself out in my head. Though he didn’t say it at the time, I knew that Anthony would want me to snipe him too, if he ever got like that.

“Well, you go have fun with your ‘master plan,’” I said back. “And I don’t know about Anthony, but I’M definitely not some homo freak like you are. So good luck convincing everybody otherwise,” I said with a sarcastic smile on my face.

I started heading towards my next class.

“Oh, I’ll find a way, cutie-pie. I’ll find a way to expose you two. Closet cases are only hindering the gay rights movement. They show fear when they should be out and proud,” he commented.

I said nothing and continued to walk. Should I tell Anthony about this? Does he already know?

In an unusual bout of luck, I DID run into Anthony before the day was out. I managed to catch him in the halls after classes were done for the day. He looked stressed, and none too happy to see me.

“Dude, look Shawn, I swear we’ll talk eventually, but this whole Brett thing is really taking its toll on all of us. Wes, Liz, Keith, and I all came to school today pretty much against our will, but only because Keith said we needed to make an appearance today or people will think something’s up.”

“Then why don’t I tag along with?” I offered.

“Dude, you can’t do that. This is a private affair. It’s only between the five of us. Any more than that and it just gets out of hand.”

“Yeah, that’s what Keith told me. I don’t see why I can’t just sit in the freaking car while you’re in there. At least then we can talk while you drive there.”

“Dude, it’s not like he lives a half an hour away. There’d be no time to talk. It’s pointless, dude. Look, I gotta go. Everybody’s expecting me to be at Brett’s soon. Just go on the bus. Okay?”

“What? No, not okay! For fuck’s sake, I’m smarter than all you. Maybe I can help...”

“Just go, Shawn!” he yelled, fixing me a glare.

Quite frankly, I was getting a little peeved at how he seemed to think that our relationship just wasn’t as important as his friend. I mean, sure, it was really important itself, but Anthony has Liz, Wes, and Keith working on that problem already. Him acting like our relationship status is nothing more than another thing on his weekly “To do” list was REALLY starting to irk me. So I flipped him off and headed for the bus. Thankfully, the whole bus ride home gave me enough time to stew in my own fury.

~~~

Mom had the nerve to continue on her “spend more time together” rant. Is she so fucking stupid that she can’t see that I’m going through some things right now? She kept insisting that I not hide in my room the entire day and spend more time with “the family,” which, in my opinion, dissolved a LONG time ago, and I kept having to tell her that that wasn’t going to happen! She tried threatening to ground me, but those were nothing more than empty words to me. She had no power over me. Finally, I had had enough.

“That’s it! I’ve fucking had it with this fucking ‘family’ bullshit. You want to spend ‘quality time with the family’? Fine! I’ll make it easier for you by TAKING MYSELF OUT OF THE FUCKING EQUATION!!!”

As I reached for the door, Mom tried to stop me by grabbing onto my arm.

“Let the fuck go of my arm, woman!” I shouted as I shoved her off. I turned the doorknob at the same time. I heard a thumping noise. She must’ve hit the wall or something. Whatever. And with that, as like months ago, I stormed out of the house.

Luckily, I was not in the same situation as I was back in December, when I last ran away from home. Firstly, it was springtime. So I wouldn’t freeze. Secondly, I had thought that it might come to this eventually, so I kept wearing my shoes while at home for the past several days, just in case. So I won’t get frostbite this time either. I didn’t have a jacket, though. And it CAN get cold at night, even in the spring.

Unfortunately, just like last time, I didn’t have a plan. I never really got around to thinking what I would do AFTER leaving home again. Anthony was no longer an option. Not with the way he’s been acting. Soooo...where to? The park again?

I don’t know how I did it, but somewhere in my thinking, my feet led me to a familiar house. Looking at it, I figured I guess I could give it a try. I went up to the door and rang the doorbell.

“Just a minute,” I heard on the other side. The door opened.

“Oh my!”

“Hi, Emmy.”