Chapter 2

Ethan

The face in the mirror couldn't be mine.

The innocence in my sparkling blue eyes was gone. The childish smile had disappeared. I pondered on why I felt so different. The experience and memories of the night's event repeated in my head.

The dream felt so real but I knew it couldn't be true. It could never happen. I was too different. I always had been.

In Junior High School, when all my friends had girlfriends, I had no one.

I was alone

Now that I had found someone to relate to, I knew there was nothing to do to know if the feelings were mutual.

No way to know if he felt the same way.

No way to know if we were meant to be.

No way.

But I wanted to know.

I needed to know.

I was determined to find out the truth about Jason. No matter what I had to do.

Anthony

I couldn't focus on what needed to be done.

I stared at the phone.

I couldn't get the courage or strength to call her back. I knew I had gone too far, even though she had wanted that but I knew I was the one who made the mistake.

My brother lay broken in a hospital bed.

With my head on Matthew's cold, casted arm, I prayed that I could have made everything that happened in the last on disappear.

"Anthony!" Allison giggled as I chased her through the fields behind my large farm house.

The clouds were growing darker as a storm rolled in but neither of us could stop laughing as we both tumbled onto the ground.

Allison smiled as I pulled her into my arms and protected her from the now falling rain.

The air was cool and the wind brushed against us lightly.

Our lips touched for the first time.

Passionately.

We held each other as the rain fell faster and harder.

I felt different with her.

A lot different than I ever had with any other girl I had been with.

My stomach jumped and shuttered.

Thunder broke out kiss and Allison leaped from my arms.

Having to say "goodbye" was hard but Allison sprinted back to the house, leaving me with the now fading feeling.

Jason

I pulled on my clothes.

Running out to my car, my little sister Sarah tagged along pestering me about my "strange" mood.

I started to get into my car when Sarah grabbed my arm.

"Jason! Why are you moping around like you are crippled?! That is no way for the fastest boy on the track team to act!" Sarah jokingly tried to get me to confess my situation.

My mind was clouded so I shoved her away and got into the car silently. I watched as Sarah stuck out her tongue and walked back to the porch.

I drove to a small house on the other side of town and watched as a dog chased a squirrel around the yard. As I parked and stepped out of my red Mercedes, the dog ran up and greeted me without fear. I walked straight up to the house and knocked. Nearly two minutes after my knock, a tall, powerfully-built boy answered the door and invited me in.

William was the captain of the football team and had the heart of every girl in our school. I watched him flop down on the couch and pull two joint out of a small black box.

Catching the joint William tossed me, I seated myself and lit the drug I held in my hand. I finally spoke.

"Did you hear that Anthony knocked up the head cheerleader? Bet you're pissed at that shit."

William blew smoke and smirked. "That's a damn rumor. There's no way he fucked her. He's a nothing."

I sighed, "I suppose so. Hey, what do you think of that new kid who transferred here right before Christmas?"

"Ethan?" William looked at me with interest. "He has to be gay."

"No fuck," I responded, "he obviously is. I'm talking about whether you think he will last or not."

William leaned back on the couch to blow smoke into a cloud toward the ceiling.

"Maybe." Was all he said.

My heart pounded with desire. I knew what Ethan was and all I wanted to do was tell him the feelings I had. But I knew I could never reveal my secret sexuality. I knew I was gay but as the right-hand man to the football 'king', I wouldn't be able to handle the humiliation that came with what I wanted.

Allison

I sat in the waiting room, praying that it wouldn't be too late to get rid of my problem. I had yet to hear from Anthony and I refused to raise the child alone. I was the head cheerleader. My squad had a spot at Nationals and an abortion seemed like the best idea at the time. Anthony had seemed so sweet and the perfect choice. I had been secretly seeing Anthony, hiding my relationship from William who was set on getting me and had been trying for nearly four years now. I remembered the night that I made my final decision. The night that lead to the position I was in now: alone and scared in the waiting room, waiting for the doctor that I had been recommended.

One by one, women were called into the office. I remembered the cold I felt that night and every little detail of the conception.

I pressed my hand against the thick ridge in his pants. Anthony slowly slid away from me.

"What's Wrong?" I asked. " Isn't this what you wanted?"

Anthony looked at me for a long time. I could almost tell what he was thinking.

'What makes this girl so different from everyone else?'

Although his eyes spoke to me clearly, his voice shone through.

"I don't know what I want. You're nothing like any other girl that I have dated."

"Do you love me?" I whispered.

"Didn't I just say that?"

This time when I reached for the button of his jeans he didn't try to stop me. In my palm he was so hot and I imagined that he would scar me. Anthony proved that unlike me, he knew what he was doing. He kissed and slipped, pushed, and cracked me wide. Then he went perfectly still.

"You never said you were a virgin." He said quietly.

"You didn't ask."

But I knew he assumed. Anthony shuttered and began to move inside of me, poetry of limbs. I reached up and grabbed handfuls of grass from the petrified field. The damage was done.

I was shaken out of my trance when my name was called. I stood to proceed to the room. All of a sudden my phone rang. Normally I would have ignored it but it was his ringtone.

I quickly answered it, but before I could say a word, I heard his shaky and sincere voice.

"I am so sorry Ali. Can we talk?"

Alana

Smoke filled the house as I rested in the steamy bath I had drawn for myself. I knew my brother had his friend Jason over. I had always had a crush on Jason and I wanted today to be the day he finally tried to make a move instead of my attempts.

I had been trying so hard to get him to notice my attempts. William made fun of my desire to win the heart of the high school senior.

I stepped out of the tub covered in rose petals that contrasted my deep caramel skin and wrapped myself in a towel that barely covered my body. Trying to hide my new wounds, I proceeded to walk into the living room where William and Jason sat watching the game.

William watched me sit as close as Jason as possible and lower my towel slightly to reveal my small slender back.

I looked at Jason who was too engrossed in the game to even notice how skimpy I was dressed. Pissed because I was being ignored by the man I "loved", I stood up quick nearly dropping my towel that was stuck between the couch cushions, and stomped out of the living room to my bedroom.

From my bedroom I could hear William burst out laughing and the low mumble of Jason's voice. I was devastated.