AUTHORESS'S NOTE: Thank you all so much for reading and reviewing. Please continue to do so! Any comments are greatly appreciated. Thank you:) I apologize for the short length of this chapter. The next will be longer. :)

"As if being disposed of by the boy I loved after being beaten by the boy I hated was not torturous enough, I was faced with the inevitability of both enduring the rest of the school day and then dreadfully what I knew would follow it: coming home to a dad ready to nearly kill my with his iron fists and a mom forbidding my sinful tongue to even eat off her plates. This was the scenario I had to look forward to, that is, after three more hours of feeling my forehead sweat under my peers' stares and wishing I was deaf when endless gossip struck my tired ears.

I managed to get through the rest of the school day at least physically unharmed, but emotionally less so. I remember standing in the front of my school after the bell of my French class had rung, watching that lemon-hued bus ride away with the owners of all the eyes that looked at me as if I had some contagious disease that whispered of scandal and death. I began to wonder if those accusations were true. If maybe I was just sick, literally sick. I started to think that maybe I should see a doctor, that perhaps there existed some magical anodyne to my desires, a cure for all my heartache and misery and for these damnable feelings that I wished I could knife out of myself. Hope inflated in my heart at the thought.

So before I headed home to my doom, I decided to pay Dr. Lussac a visit. He had been our family physician for as long as I could remember but we had never developed a very close relationship. He, like everyone else it seemed, had an innate sense to be rather cold to me. Maybe, as a doctor, he had always known about my disease and therefore thought it wise to keep his distance.

Nevertheless, he was the only doctor I knew, and therefore I found myself trudging into the familiar waiting and about twenty minutes later into his office.

'What seems to be troubling you, Mr. Smithers?' asked Dr. Lussac, the professionalism in his entire manner never ceasing to discomfort me. I mean, why couldn't he have called me Waylon? Why couldn't I be treated like all the other kid patients he had?

Anyway, I replied uncertainly, 'Well, I think I might have a disease. A plague somewhere. I can feel it, and it certainly would explain my recent behavior.'

'And what behavior might that be?' Dr. Lussac inquired flatly yet suspiciously.

I took a deep breath. I knew that to be cured one must first recognize the problem. 'I kissed someone…'

'You think you have mononucleosis?'

'No, no…It's that I…it was a…a boy…a male whom I kissed, and I think I may be sick. Not because of it. It's the other way around,' I said quietly, keeping my eyes focused on the immaculate tiled floor.

Dr. Lussac stared at me with those beady eyes of his actually widening a bit before he said without hesitation: 'We don't treat your kind here. Please remove yourself from my office.'

I can still remember the sensation of my mouth actually dropping open at this remark. I had used to presume that level of jaw-dropping only occurred in cartoons, but this occasion proved me wrong. 'You're denying me medical treatment?'

'You don't need medical treatment. You need a big Bible and a whole hell of a lot of Hail Mary recitations. Now please leave my office before I have to physically remove you from it,' Dr. Lussac demanded before I walked out in a daze, more hopelessness only increasing with the thought that Bibles and prayers were the only possible remedies for me. I knew for certain that those would never work. Not on me anyway.

Once out of the sterile building and into the deceptively warm outdoors of Springfield, I realized that there was nothing left to do but to go home and die. I wished that I could have apologized and said goodbye to Margery before leaving the earth, but I knew I was the last person she would want to see. I considered biding my time with a stop to the ice cream parlor or maybe just a long walk around the town, but this would not bid me any happiness. If I was going to be beaten to death, I would rather get it over with.

I placed my tiny hand over the icy doorknob and slowly turned it. My dad was standing in the shadows of the doorway as if he had been waiting there all day. My mom was nowhere in sight, not like she would have helped me anyway.

After a moment of silence, my dad spoke: 'You broke your promise to me, Waylon,' replied my dad.

I nodded in the darkness. 'I know…'

We paused again as my dad found the right words. 'You broke your promise to me, but I won't break my promise to you,' he finally bellowed.

And although my dad specifically told me then that he wouldn't break the promise he had made to me, the promise that he would kill me if I sinned in such a profound and perverted manner again, he did break it. He didn't kill me. Well…in some ways, maybe, but not in the traditional way. Somehow my body sustained the blows and the sputtering of 'Sodom! Sinner! Devil!' until I was but a heap of mangled skin laying against the wall my dad had already stained with my blood. He then told me that he was not going to finish the job. He would rather me live in the despair I had created for myself. But certainly not living under his roof.

As soon as I could lift my legs up my stairs, I packed my bags and left on my dad's request. I had no where I could think of going except one warm domicile that I had always considered more of my home than any other place. I just didn't know if Ned would be willing to take me in.

I weakly threw a rock up at Ned's window and was relieved by his hasty response to it. 'Waylon? Is that you?'

I only possessed the strength to nod.

Ned came down immediately and examined me. He couldn't even speak his horror. Neither of us said another word as he carried my bags up to his room and tucked me into bed."