January 18th
Not really sure... where to begin. In fact, you honestly don't feel like writing in your stupid journal right now. But what else are you going to do? Isn't this what you always do? Isn't this the answer to everything, writing in your journal? No.
It never has been. It's not now.
January 19th
If it wasn't for the fact that this journal isn't a person, you'd probably feel guilty for writing what you did yesterday. Yesterday wasn't easy. Today was even harder.
From the beginning, yesterday started off normal enough. You went to school. After school, you're hanging out by Dawn's locker, talking to her.
"Have you talked to Sunny lately?" she asks.
"Earlier," you reply. "I'm giving her a ride home from school. Why?"
"She hasn't really talked me in a while... I don't blame her, I guess, but it's been like a month, and she's been pretty short with me."
"What happened?"
"Oh, we went to this party and she got trashed and I yelled at her. It was... normal, I guess, but I was just so disappointed. But... has she said anything?" Dawn looks at you with this look that is obviously "tell me what's going on, but I'm not going to ask you to say anything you don't want to."
"No, she hasn't... if I'd known, I would have asked her. If you want, if you don't mind."
"I know you'll be discreet. But don't... if you don't want to." She looks a little pained.
"I'll talk to her," you say. You end up not, mostly because you have other things on your mind.
"Thanks, Ducky. I just wish she wouldn't shove me away all the time. I guess I do the same thing, though." Dawn sighs. "I miss my best friend, you know?"
You nod.
"So, what are you doing tonight?" she asks. She rummages through her locker for something. Notebook paper falls out, so you lean down to pick it up.
"Not much. I'm off today, but Justin has track until four-thirty. He's meeting me at my house and we'll... do whatever."
Dawn raises an eyebrow and takes the paper from you. "Whatever?"
You laugh. "You're just as bad as Sunny!"
"Me? Never!" She laughs too.
"All of you, you're all perverts," you say. "You all take everything the wrong way. Not everything is about sex."
"You know," Dawn says casually, "I'm just discovering exactly a lot is about sex."
"Dawwwwwn! Spill it."
She raises her hands in defense. "Nothing has happened. Just some innocent kissing."
"Mmhmm." You wait for her to complete the thought.
She blushes slightly. "And some less than appropriate touching."
You laugh. "See, two can play this game."
"Fair's fair," she agrees. "We'll just drop it, then."
You say good-bye to Dawn, still laughing a little, feeling pretty good. You walk out to the parking lot where you're meeting Sunny. You cross over to where the lot goes from blacktop to gravel (the crappy end of the lot) and you see something strange about your car.
And there it is. Across the entire passenger side of the car, from the back all the way to the front, spray painted in huge red letters, FAGGOT.
Writing that gives you chills and makes you sick.
You just stare. You sort of fall against the car next to yours and just stare. Things had been getting better. You hadn't been bothered in a few weeks, you thought it was dying down. But now this. Out of nowhere. No, not out of nowhere. Just a planned attack.
Probably some club initiation, you think, trying to rationalize this in your head. Probably some stupid dare. Idiots. Cro-Mags. Whatever.
You wonder if you actually know these people. You wonder if you went up to Jay and asked him who did it if he would be shocked, or hem and haw an unconvincing "I don't know." You wonder if you're going to cry, hit something, or scream, but you just stand there, leaning against that car, staring at that awful word, feeling numb.
You can't even manage emotion.
"Ducky, why are you just standing- oh. Oh my god." Sunny has come up behind you. You're pretty sure that you can figure out when she sees it.
"Who did this?" she asks.
"No idea," you say. Or at least you're pretty sure you said it. The amount of thoughts running through your head, it's possible you just thought it.
She heaves a sigh and wraps her arm around your waist. You put your arm around her shoulders and the two of you, leaning against each other, stare at your car for a while.
Finally, Sunny stands up straight. "Let's go."
"In the car?" you ask, feeling pulled out of your haze for the first time.
"How else? There's nothing we can do about it standing here. So let's just get in the car and go. Let's go to your house. We can think of something there. If nothing else, we can get some cardboard or something to cover it until we can get the money to have it painted."
It sounds like a plan. It felt like a few extra hours were tacked onto the drive home. You know it's all in your head, but it was like you could feel every person walking down the street staring at your marked car.
Sunny sits up very straight with her head held high. Easy enough for her, it's not a slanderous remark about her spray painted onto her property. You try not to feel bitter toward her, since it's not her fault and she's doing everything she can to help you and protect you.
You finally pull into your drive and the two of you go inside. You wordlessly fix something for the two of you to eat. You and Sunny sit in the kitchen. She munches on the veggies, but you don't have much of an appetite.
"I hate this!" Sunny exclaims. "I hate it that you have to deal with this, and I hate it that you won't do anything about it!" She slams her fist down on the table. "You have to report this, Ducky."
"It won't do any good," you say dully. "Even if someone saw, it was probably some popular Cro-Mag that no one would dare cross, and you're going to sit here and tell me that I should? That it would honestly make things better?"
"If it would get one asshole out of the way, then yes!"
"But it won't. It'll just spawn two more."
Sunny is angry. You can tell. She's angry at the people who did this. She's angry at you. She doesn't say anything, though.
The two of you sit there in silence. Very tense silence.
You hear a car pull into the drive and you look at the clock. It's quarter to five, which means it's Justin, as opposed to Ted. Time passed quickly, you didn't even know it had gone.
Sunny looks at you and you stand up.
"It's Justin."
She nods and stays put. You walk outside.
Justin is standing out there looking at your car. The look on his face isn't unplaceable. Through it all, you notice that his hair is still wet from post-practice shower. He smells of soap and spearmint gum.
He looks at you and takes your hand. "Are you okay?"
"No," you say, much harsher than you meant. Or maybe you did. It came out sounding much different than it did in your head.
Justin flinches. "I... I'm sorry. I just... what happened?"
"It's pretty cut and dry. I came out after school-" You cut yourself off. Hearing the words "I came out" somehow struck some terrible chord with you. You stand there, hanging in mid sentence, and try to sort through your thoughts.
"Yeah?" he prompts.
"It was already there when school let out," you rephrase hastily.
"Oh. Chris, I'm so sorry." Justin pulls you to him and starts to hug you, but you practically rips yourself from his grip. He looks shocked, like you slapped him. "What?"
"Nothing, I, I just don't want to be... nothing. Nothing. You wouldn't understand." You can't put into words what you're thinking. You can think that you're suddenly afraid what might happen if you and Justin hug out in the open, but you can't bring yourself to say it. You can't seem to bring yourself to say anything.
"Maybe I would understand if you told me anything," Justin says, throwing up his hands.
"What's that supposed to mean?" you ask.
"It means that whenever it comes to anything real, anything that you're feeling, you shove me out. It's like telling me anything would kill you. I've done everything I can think of to be close to you, and I've got nothing. You keep me at an arm's length all the time. If you'd just tell me something."
Numbness is washing away and you're starting to feel angry. Most of the anger, you know now, is misplaced, but there's not much that can be done about it now.
"You want to know? You want to hear? Fine, here it is. Every day I get called a fag at least once. I spend every gym class fearing that ten minutes in the locker room. It's like a time bomb, wondering if today the assholes are going to make huge jokes about me sucking their dicks for the laughs. It's a huge hit. Last month, you know what was stuck in my locker? It was a note. You know what it said? Do you want to hear? It said 'God hates homos. Kill yourself and go to Hell.' Which makes me wonder exactly how Godly that person was, but I threw it away and tried not think about it. However, when I'm lying awake at night, dreading that next at school, it's hard not to."
"Why didn't you say anything?" he says. You can barely hear his voice.
"How could I when you're living in your perfect little world, where you're some gay superhero. Maybe if people admired me going into this, it would be different. If I had said anything, would you even believe that the wonderful people at Vista who admire you for your big hetero sacrifice could do something like this?"
"I'd believe you! I'm not blind, Chris. I'm not stupid. I know that shit like this happens. If you'd told me about it, we could have gotten through it together, but you always just bottle everything up and don't say anything. I never know if things are okay, or if there's something wrong. You always push me away when it comes to anything important. I'm not psychic. I don't know how... how to trust you."
"Then don't worry about it," you say. You start to back away.
"That's it, then? That's it, it's over?" Justin stares at you. "It's one fight."
"It's not fixing anything."
"How do you know? Why do you do this? Why do always just run away? You ran away from telling me, and now that you have, that it? I don't believe this. One fight and it's over? Did any of it mean anything?" His voice lowers into a strained sound. "Didn't... Christmas Eve? Didn't that mean anything? I... was it just some..."
You can feel tears building up behind your eyes, but you're refusing to cry. "I... I need to think about this." You go back inside. By the time you've closed the door, you're crying freely.
Sunny's waiting by the door and she holds you. She doesn't say anything, she just lets you cry. After some time, you're not sure how long, she asks, in this slow, gentle tone, "What happened?"
"We broke up," you say. "I broke up with him."
"Why?"
"All the stupid reasons."
"If they're right, they're not stupid," she says.
"I don't know, then. I just know that it's over. And all I feel is empty."
Sunny stays a while. We don't talk. She does homework, you stare into space. Finally, around nine, you walk her home. You'd drive her, but that would be a huge reminder of your day, so you simply walk. She doesn't even mention taking the car.
The walk back alone seems longer, even though it's not like you and Sunny were chatty or anything. When you get back, you find the house is empty and hollow, just like you.
You try to do some homework, but all the words are just blurring together. It's a waste of time. You try to write in your journal. You go to bed at ten o'clock.
It's eight-thirty the next morning when you wake up, already late for school. Instead of hurrying around, you take your time. You're already late, who's going to miss you?
You eat some breakfast that tastes like sawdust. It was cereal. Or maybe fruit. You can't remember. You walk back into the bathroom for a shower. You pull your shirt over your head and look at yourself in the mirror.
Despite the fact that you slept for ten hours, you have dark circles under your eyes. You notice the silver chain Justin gave you for Christmas. You grab it and pull it off. You toss it into the trash. Your shower and feels like you're drowning.
You walk to school.
Well, you walk halfway to school. You were on your way when you just end up at the beach. It's empty, but considering that it's the middle of January, it's not surprising. You sit on the cold sand and stare at the ocean.
It wasn't the most productive day. You suddenly can't imagine what it's going to be like at school. Does anyone even know? Who has Justin told? Did Sunny tell anyone? Probably. You suddenly remember Dawn saying that Sunny hadn't really talked to her a month. Would this bring them together? Do you want the questions why? They seem so far away, the problems, the questions, the reasons.
You go back home and pull the necklace out of the trash. The clasp is broken on it now, but that seems about right. Everything is broken.
