Hey homies! shot Yeah, so I only put up the first chapter a little while ago, but I liked this chapter a lot, and I had it done, so I was like, "meh, what the hell." Plus, my iPod's still charging.
Before the chapter starts, I'd like to thank my two first reviewers for, well, reviewing. I read both of your stories and I am glad to say that I liked both of them. I don't remember your names, but you guys rock. Thank you.
Also, a random tidbit for you to think about: "If someone with multiple personalities tries to commit suicide, is it considered a hostage situation?"
Anyway, without further ado, here is chapter two!
Chapter Two: Seven Years Later
"Lennox, what are you having for dinner?"
"Ramen." Oh ramen, my one and only true love. Its slurpy goodness will always have a fond place in my heart.
"You can't live on ramen, sweetheart," my mother critiqued. She was a short woman, too short if you ask me. I'm not being rude, I'm just saying that if a woman is going to be only five feet and two inches at her peak she should not have the energy of a little kid on a sugar high. My mom was the kind of lady that could do a million things at once: do the laundry, make the dinner, schedule appointments, balance the checkbook, iron a blouse, knit a sweater, buy a birthday present for a distant relative via the Internet, write an absence excuse to the school explaining I was not there because I was uncontrollably vomiting for six hours straight, save the world from global warming, and juggle chainsaws all while criticizing me on my meal choices.
"I know you don't like hamburgers," my mom explained, "but you know Brett does. I just don't see why you don't make something a little bit more filling or something. There's chicken patties in the freezer, or you could have some leftover pizza." With my mom leading the busy life she leads, she has never been able to sit down and enjoy a bowl of ramen. Poor Mom. I rolled my eyes as I opened up the pantry door, fishing through the cabinets to find a package of chicken-flavored ramen to feast on.
"Hey mom, I'm home." I steamed a little at that comment as Brett entered through the kitchen door. Brett is my brother… well, not really. My parents got divorced when I was very young, and my mom got remarried to Rick, Brett's father. I only had to see him every so often when my dad was alive, since I would constantly switch between houses, but after my father's death I had to put up with him. He always called my mom "Mom" instead of "Lillian," which got on my nerves, since she's not his mom. It's not like I call his father "Dad;" I call him "Rick." Brett was three years older than me and was the jock type to say the least. He kept himself busy - if he wasn't doing football, he was doing wrestling, if he was not doing wrestling, he was doing baseball, if he was not doing baseball, he was doing football camp. Consequently he's a big kid, with bulging muscles and a matching appetite. Of course he would like hamburgers. "Hey Lenny."
"Hey Brett," I muttered. I didn't like talking to him much. To be honest, there are walls with better personalities than Brett. Big dirty brick walls with gross scratches that little kids bounce balls off of.
"Whatcha do today, play chess with your dork friends?" Brett solemnly believes all kids that are not on a sports team are chess-playing dorks. Well, it does make sense to him, as the only people he associates with are involved with sports. All of his friends are either on the football, wrestling, or baseball team with him, and everyone else he pretty much bullied at school. Even his girlfriend is very into volleyball and soccer. I never got the concept of chess, to tell the truth. I never could remember how any of the pieces moved.
"Yeah, it got so heated up we had to use our inhalers to catch our breaths." I tried to make the sarcasm really clear and easy to grasp, but I had a sinking feeling that he thought I was telling the truth.
He gave a quick loud laugh to show his amusement at my statement. "You guys are such dorks." He doesn't even know who any of my friends are.
Dinner was so-so, I guess. For the beginning part, at the very least. By now Rick was home too. Rick and Brett were living proof that genetics clearly exist - Brett must've been conceived by putting Rick in a Xerox and resizing him at eighty percent. Rick also happened to be a very sporty kind of guy and was into athletics a lot. His muscles, from eons of working out at the local gym, are even larger than Brett's, making him look like a talking Slaking with clothes on (during good days, of course). Unfortunately, he ate like a Slaking too. I sat there sick to my stomach as him and his probable product of asexual reproduction gorged themselves with hamburger after hamburger. I could never eat them myself - I was never big on beef, with no clue as to why. Even the ramen did not taste as fantastic after watching the burger grease drip down their chins and the ketchup drop in globs on their muscle shirts, staining them. The worst part was that my mom didn't care. Her love for Rick must be quite strong, too be able to put up with two giant slobs like the two of them. Maybe my mom was dropped on the head as a child or something. I know, what a terrible thing to think about your mom, but these two were just plain gross.
I'm built a lot like my mom, actually - we're both tiny and frail. Even if I wanted to be on the football team like Brett, I would've never made it. At least I'm not as short as my mom, as being five foot six for a freshman is not bad at all, at least at our school. I have really small feet, however, and at my house it's very obvious, with my miniscule size six shoes running away in fear at the clones' size fourteen shoes. It's disgusting how anyone can have feet that enormous.
"So, Lenny, what'd you do today?" Rick asked me between mouthfuls of his cow ass sandwich. I just wanted to add play chess with your dork friends? to the end of that. Yes, I know that Rick does try to like me, he drives me to my friends' houses, and he gives an ample allowance, but I think that, like Brett, Rick just seems to notice that he's the jock and I'm the nerd of the family. He always paid more attention to Brett's victories than my good grades, but I guess I just accepted that as part of life after I moved in permanently. He has always made suggestions of my sub ordinance: "Nah, Lenny doesn't wanna go to the game, that's not his kind of thing." "Brett, help me move this refrigerator. Lennox, you can go inside and help your mother with dinner." Not that I'm angry that I wasn't included in those activities - Rick's right, I wouldn't be happy in either of those situations anyway - it's just that the way he says it makes me feel that because I don't play several sports and am not very useful at manual stuff means that I'm less of a person than him or Brett.
"Lenny, I actually got a letter in the mail today," my mother randomly said in the middle of dinner. That made the ramen taste putrid. "From the school to top that. It says you're failing a class."
I turned redder than the underside of an Electrode; I knew exactly what she was talking about. But still, I tried to pawn away from the subject. "You sure it's not Brett?" My step-brother was about as useful in algebra as I was in tackle football.
"Oh, don't worry, I checked," my mom retorted, casting a quick glance at Brett. The last thing she wanted to see was that Brett was failing out of his senior year at high school. (Oh well. Turned out that the school mailed his fail letter the next morning.) "It's not like you're failing out of an academic class. The school said that you're failing P.E." I literally died in my chair - the last thing I wanted Rick, or anyone to hear, is that I was failing physical education. I just didn't feel like participating most classes, it was usually something stupid like badminton or floor hockey. It's not like I couldn't do anything that they told me to; I just didn't see the point in running around in circles for a grade.
Surprisingly, Rick seemed to take it okay. Well, until I heard what he had to say on the subject. Without even looking up from his burger, he simply replied, "Well, it's not like it's Lenny's fault. We can't help it if he's gay."
I literally dropped my fork. The ramen was metaphorically rotting in the bowl. I could not believe what I had just heard at all. So, that's what Rick has thought of me this entire time. Seven years. Seven years he has lived with me and thought that the totally "obvious" reason I had no interest in sports or trucks or westerns was because I was a homosexual. That did it. My face was boiling over, I couldn't stand the idiocy of my household any longer. In my rage I tried pushing the table over, but it was made of a strong durable cedar, so it didn't really budge at all. Tears welling in my eyes, I just ran to my bedroom to avoid further embarrassment.
My room was small, but it was one of the few things I liked in my house. The walls were painted a plain white, but there was barely a plain white spot on them. In my free time I enjoyed decorating the walls with doodles of random stuff. Like, really, random. A noticeable doodle on the wall I was facing was a guitar that I was looking at in a magazine that I wanted for my birthday one year (of course, I got an air hockey table instead. Rick thought that if I didn't like real sports then I must love fake ones.). On another wall was a really bad attempt at drawing a Pachirisu. The one eye was much bigger than the other, and its teeth were too big. It's not like I'm a good artist or anything; drawing on my walls was just something to do. It was more interesting, in my opinion, than posters of athletes or shockingly vivid colors.
I flopped onto my bed and bawled like never before. I wasn't much of a crier, but I felt like I was just rejected by my own family. Of course, I was rejected seven years ago, but right then it was all the same to me. I didn't want to talk to anyone at that moment. I silenced my cell phone so I wouldn't want to try to talk to my friends in such a miserable state. I lay on the bed and just sulked about how crappy my life was.
Hell, maybe I am a queer, I thought to myself. Maybe there is something wrong with me. I don't like sports, I don't like the girls Brett brings home, I don't think I like anything. Maybe I should just ki- No! I didn't want to think about those kind of thoughts at all.
Just then, I heard a knock on my door. I could've been my mom, or Rick, or even retarded Brett for all I knew, but I did not care at all. "Fuck off!" was all I screamed. Mental note: learn how to deal with people.
But then I started to think about things more intricately for a minute. Maybe I don't have to learn how to deal with people. Well, at least not these freak shows. I had no clue as to whether I decided to group my mother in that category, but I was moody and all three of them seemed like antagonists at the time. I lifted my head from my pillow for the first time in an hour and forty minutes, as according to my alarm clock, now reading 7:30. I sat myself up and looked out the window. Yes! The window! Thank all forms of goodness that I'm on the first floor!
I quickly emptied my school bag and started loading stuff I knew I would need to run away. My brain was not thinking rationally at that time (and I am forever grateful for that); all I wanted to do was get away from these homophobic ay-holes. Cell phone. Important. I dropped it in, still on silence. Wait, they'll try to track me with it if they can't find me! I took the cell phone out and threw it in my garbage can. I opened my drawer and pulled out some clothes and shoved them in my bag. I had to wear something, no? I then put a few other things in there - a pocket knife I once received from Rick (the one he gave Brett was much better, but whatever.), a bag of spare money I had hiding in my sock drawer, and some old candy I had lying around from Halloween a few weeks ago. Yay trick-or-treating!
As I looked at the setting sun from my window, I knew I only had a few more hours to prepare. Like I was staying another day in this house? Hell no. But, like any good action star knows, the best sneaking out is done at night.
Before I get comments about this, I would like to say that the opinions of my characters do not exactly mirror my own opinions, especially those of Brett and Rick. Homophobia and gaybashing is not cool at all, and Lennox gets really upset by that because he realizes that Rick thought he was gay because he's more of an artsy kind of guy than a sporty one.
Once again, thanks for reading! Please review; it would really make my day.