Chapter 1: Wyatt

The bell had just ringed, and I rushed out to my car with my best friend Keira trailing behind me.

"I want to get to the book store before anybody from school gets there." I said. The local Barnes & Nobles was the hang out for most of the student body of Florence High, not that anybody actually went there for the books, but they had a great coffee shop.

I heard Keira let out an exasperated sigh. We reached my car and hopped in. I pulled out of the parking spot so fast I nearly hit a sophomore from my 8th period geometry class.

"Chill out, Wyatt." Keira said and I slowed down as I exited the school parking lot.

"Sorry." I murmured.

Ten minutes later I was pulling into the Barnes & Noble's parking lot.

"Can we make this quick. I got a bag a weed at home begging to be smoked. "I rolled my eyes at her. I looked into her heavily eye lined and mascaraed eyes and gave her a look. I loved Keira like the sister I never had, but couldn't get over the fact that she was a chronic smoker.

"No, I am not going hurry up just because you want to go home and get high." We walked in and I went straight to the self-help aisle with Keira on my heels. I heard her murmur something along the lines of fuck you but I ignored her. I scanned the shelves for the book I had come here for. I stumbled across a book titled "How to Survive High School".

"Hey Keira, get a look at this. How to Survive High School. That's funny. Maybe I should buy it though, cause' at the rate I'm going I might not survive high school." I said sardonically.

"Shut up. As long as you've got me your fine." She smiled up at me. Keira was short at only 5ft 2in. She was gothic and wore heavy eye liner and mascara. She was beautiful and had gray eyes and pale, alabaster skin like me. I shrugged in agreement and returned the smile. I put back the high school survival book on its shelf and found the book I was looking for and walked over to the register.

I paid and we left. I drove in silence as I dropped Keira home like I did every day.

"By, Wy. Call me later, Kay?" She said and walked up her driveway to disappear behind her gate.

I always hated this part of the day, after I dropped Keira home and had nobody to keep my thoughts from wandering to dark places. I had nothing to do but reflect on the negative highlights of the day, because unfortunately, there were rarely any positive ones.

Ever since kindergarten, I had constantly been teased just because I was different. I used to think that it was because there was something wrong with me, but eventually, over time, I figured out that there was nothing wrong with me and that I was fine just the way I was. Nothing had to be wrong for people to be rude and mean to me because people are just that cruel. In a black and white world, anything or anyone different is wrong. I had hoped that when I got to high school things would be different, but of course I couldn't be more wrong. The level of ignorance is utterly astounding.

I'm gay. But not straight gay, girly gay. I'm not a drag queen or anything; I just have a feminine quality to me. At school I would get called every name under the sun, get pushed, and knocked around, thrown into garbage cans. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part is when it would follow me home.

I would go home and check my Facebook or Twitter and everybody would be saying how gay I was and contemplating how good I could suck dick or something equally disgustingly sexual or immoral. The truth of it, though, was that they were probably having way more sex than me seeing as though I was a virgin and had yet to so much as meet another openly gay person. I logged on to my Facebook.

"Wyatt's mouth has probably seen more dicks than a urinal."

- Zairian Cohen

"His asshole's probably as wide as a tire."

-Brody Cagon

Wow. How creative and original. I thought to myself. Though I heard things like this all the time, it never made it hurt any less. I felt the tears well up in my eyes and decided to call Keira. She picked up on the 4th ring as I was about to hang up.

"Have you seen what they're saying on Facebook? It's hilarious." I said sarcastically, trying to cover the fact that I was on the verge of sobbing.

"No. I honestly can't figure out why you go on there anyway. You already know the gist of what's being said. Why torture yourself. I mean, nobody's forcing you to look at it." She said, sounding bored.

"I know. I just feel like…after a while… I'll stop caring if I look at it enough and it won't hurt so bad." My voice broke at the end because I was now crying. The tears were flowing like a faucet I couldn't shut off.

"I have to call you back. My mom's calling. Bye." I heard a click and then the dial tone that meant that I was alone with my thoughts once again.

I buried my head under my pillows and sobbed for what seemed like a lifetime. The words kept replaying in my head. Faggot, lady face, dick sucker, cum face. They kept replaying in my head over and over again. I wished more than anything, that, if only just for a little while, I could forget about the pain and the misery that was slowly killing me inside.

My head was throbbing and my nose was running like a waterfall so I decided to get up and go to the bathroom to clean up my face and get some ibuprofen. It was a short walk to the bathroom connected to my bedroom. I walked in and stepped on the white shag rug and cried out as I felt something stab my foot. Almost immediately, blood started pooling onto the rug. I hopped over to the toilet, put down the lid, and sat. I grabbed my foot to examine what had injured it. It was my razor and it was in there deep.

I heard someone knock on my door and I dropped my foot. I quickly reached for a towel and wiped off my face as best as I could.

"Come in!" I yelled.

"Hey, are you – oh my gosh! What happened?" My mom asked as she rushed forward to grab my foot and examine it.

"Stepped on a razor." I said, wincing at the throbbing pain in my foot. It hurt so bad I could barely pay attention to what she said as she rushed out the bathroom as quickly as she'd come in. She had said something about a first-aid kit.

She came back a minute later, bringing the first-aid kit with her. She picked my foot back up and put it in her lap. She looked at it for a few seconds.

"It's in there pretty deep, Wyatt. Just try and hold still, Kay?" She took a tweezer and before I could protest, she grabbed the edge of the razor and gave it a good yank. I cried out and just barely stopped myself from letting out a stream of curses.

"Sorry, Wy. " She winced when I cried out again as she poured some peroxide on the wound before wrapping a cotton bandage around my foot. She put my foot back down and helped me up.

"Try to stay off you're foot and I'll come check on you later, okay?" she said as she deposited me on the foot of my bed and walked out of my bedroom.

"I will. Thanks." I called after her.

I was sitting there; mad at myself, trying to remember why I had even gone into that stupid bathroom in the first place when I realized something. I had forgotten all about my emotional pain for a few minutes.

I had escaped my emotional prison for a little while because I was so focused on my physical pain. I think I've just found a new outlet. I thought excitedly. A way of getting rid of some of the emotional pain without unloading on Keira. For a while, I just lay there on my bed, dumbfounded as to how I hadn't thought of this earlier. This was brilliant. This was a way to, if only for a little while; stop the hamster wheel of insults in my head from spinning. That night, Keira didn't call me back, and I slept more peacefully than I had in a long time.