It was the hottest day of the summer. The sun beat down on my slightly tanned skin and my beads of sweat were like rainfalls. I shaded my eyes and squinted forward. It seemed like the cracked sidewalk was slithering around. I swallowed saliva to sooth my dry throat and licked my lips with my dry tongue. I could just manage to see the silhouette of the old playground that was put up years ago.

My stomach turned in nervousness. I wondered the whole walk there what my boyfriend, Shawn wanted to talk about. He sounded nervous on the phone. I could think of a few reasons why he was like this—almost all of them were not good.

Shawn was sitting on top of the monkey bars. His lips were pressed tightly together and his knuckles were white. I pulled myself up next to him and grabbed his hands to give it some color. "What's wrong?" I asked with concern.

"I don't know how to say it," Shawn said. He looked like he was going to be sick.

"You know that you can tell me everything."

"I know! I just… I just don't want to say this particular thing."

I gripped his hands tighter. "What is it, Shawn?"

For a long time, he just sat there in an uncomfortable silence, thinking about what he was going to say. Even though it was really hot and I wanted to desperately move to the shade, I sat there and waited. What felt like hours was only a couple of minutes. Shawn opened his mouth, letting out choked air like he was struggling to form his words. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

"You know that I'm moving onto college, right?"

I nodded slowly. "With a scholarship." I already knew what was going to happen. I didn't want to believe it.

"I just think that with me going to a far-away college, I mean, not that I didn't want to be closer, but with all of my work and I don't want—"

I held up my hand to stop him, eyes stinging with tears hat I refused to let spill. "Are you saying that you want to break up with me?"

"Yes! I mean, no! I want to be with you but it would be hard to keep up a long distance relationship."

"I understand," I said as I gave him a small smile to hide away any sadness.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah." I wasn't really but I wasn't about to say so. I didn't want him to go. I wanted to stay with him forever but that was just a farfetched fantasy. It was going to happen anyways. Besides, it's better this way. I knew how much this scholarship meant to him. We have to break up. "You have to go or else all that work with improving your grade would have been for nothing." I wish I haven't helped him, at least then he wouldn't be leaving, but in the same time I was glad because we wouldn't have had the relationship we had.

Shawn pulled me in the tightest hug that he could while remaining balance He pressed his forehead to mine, nose touching. "I love you."

"I love you too."

Shawn left soon after and I stayed behind for a bit longer. Now what? I thought about my past, present, and future and how a lot of points that stuck out circled around Shawn. Everything felt off. Until now, I didn't realize how I tied my life with his to make his life my own. I thought everything was the same as it was, with a little bit more perks, before Shawn. I had been more or less neglecting the gang because of how caught up I was.

When I got home, it was awkward. How was I supposed to react? Nothing changed from when I left them. I just didn't know how to react to these things anymore.

I made my way through the gang to my room without saying a word and lied down on my bed, burrowing my head in a pillow and cried, everything catching up to me. It was after I stopped crying when the door opened and Johnny walked inside, giving me a curious stare after looking into my red eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asked me.

"I don't know what to do," I answered.

"What do you mean?"

"Shawn broke up with me."

"Golly, Ponyboy, I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

Johnny was expecting me to look at him with a look that shouts out, 'Do I look like I'm okay?' but I surprised him by answering, "I think so."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm just lost. I don't know how easily I'll adjust to a new life."

"Not a new life, man. It's an old life that you're already used to."

I let out a breath that was a makeshift laugh. I think I'll be alright.

o-o-o

Summer break went by way too quickly. I wasn't excited to return to the hellhole but at least everything had died down. The drama was still brimming the cup but the news of me being gay was long passed. They all moved onto new topics. No one even gave me a second look. Sure, I am still treated harshly for my sexuality but that was to be expected since society hasn't exactly opened up on the idea of gay marriage or rights.

Right now, though, even though I have my friends walking next to me, I felt alone. With Shawn, I knew that I wasn't the only one who liked guys in the school. Now, I'm not only one that came out of the closet in the school. There were probably a handful of guys and broads who are still hiding but for right now, I am alone on the battlefield.

I sat myself down at my first period classroom in a spot where the teacher wouldn't look at quite as often and behind enough layers of students as well have a perfect angle of the board and an easy access to the door. The class quickly filled in and soon the teacher walked to the front of the room to introduce the course.

The class dragged on without any trouble besides the idiots in the class that kept interrupting the teacher and sprouting banter and jokes. The teacher rolled her eyes each time and disregarded the flirts who kept whispering how she would be a 'sex pot'. Finally, after many crude jokes, she counted everyone off into pairs to "better know each other". I mean, it was fine and all, but I was probably going to end up with an asshole with my rotten luck.

The teacher looked at me with a slight smile before giving me a number and moving on. Once every number was distributed, the quiet classroom turned into an uproar of numbers being called out. Through all of that noise, I faintly heard my number and moved around towards the voice.

I walked up to a guy around my size with brown hair that was parted so that the longer hairs would wrap around the top of his head and the short hairs would just grow straight down. He had eyes that were as light as the Caribbean Sea. He smiled at me, skin folding around his pink lips.

"Hello, I'm Barry."

I almost sighed in relief. He looks like he was actually friendly. "I'm Ponyboy."

"You're the one who came out last year, right?"

My body tensed up. "Yeah."

He smiled again, "That was far out."

Again I relaxed. "Thanks, man. What do we have to do in our assignment anyways?"

"I'm glad you asked," the teacher piped up as if she was waiting for someone to ask that particular question to start the assignment. "Now that you've introduced yourselves, please move to the lab tables in the side of the room. There lies your instructions for the project. This project is due in the end of the year. I expect you to present your projects in the end of the year in front of the class as well as in the science fair."

The class groaned but got back up to go to the lab tables. Barry and I swooped to one and looked at the sheet.

"So our project is to create a model that involves a combination of physics, mathematics, and chemistry," I started blankly.

"Already? But we didn't learn anything in this class yet."

Barry shrugged. "So what do you want to do?"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"I'm fine with whatever you want to do."

I let out a small, fake chuckle. "This is problematic."

Everything got awkward after that. I stared at the empty draft sheet. Some groups around us were already drawing their plans down.

"So," Barry started, "How are you with what's-his-face?"

"Shawn? We're no longer together."

"Oh, I'm sorry." If I didn't know better, I could hear his tone a bit on the happy side. It was probably because he didn't care though and was just trying to start a conversation.

"What career do you want?" I asked, helping continue the conversation.

"I'm really interested into space. Maybe I'll be an astronomer or a rocket scientist or an engineer or something."

"Space, huh?"

"Yeah, what about you?"

"I don't know yet." Then it hit me. "I know the perfect idea for our project!"

"What is it?"

"We can build a rocket."

o-o-o

Disclaimer: I do not own the Outsiders.