THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL
"All in all
You´re just another brick in the wall"
PINK FLOYD "From the album "The Wall" (1979))
Author´s Note: I already had this chapter finished, so I decided to release it a little earlier than my usual schedule. If you haven´t read chapter 24 yet, which is "Part 1" to this chapter, please be sure to do so, before you continue with this one. I hope that you´ll enjoy the chapter and thanks for supporting the story!
Sent: January 16th, 1999
From: MightyMissMorgan
To: AGirlNamedJoey
Subject: I need your advice on something
Hi, Joey. I hope that things are going splendidly over there in France. Bessie and Bodie say hi (I´m sure that Alexander would want to too, if he could talk yet!), but I´m not only writing to exchange pleasantries. I´m sure that I don´t need to tell you this, but my history when it comes to making big decisions could be better and I have sort of a big one to make.
You´ve heard about Jack and Andie by now, I´m guessing? Yesterday, myself and Jen had a run-in with their mom and it seemed like there was something wrong with her. As in, something seriously wrong with her brain. She was confused over where her son Tim was and if it hadn´t been for Jack showing up to get her out of there in a taxi, I totally believe that she would have had a mental breakdown, right there in the middle of the street. What´s even more suspicious, is that I´ve never heard either of the twins mentioning having another sibling.
Part of me thinks that I should mind my own beeswax and that getting involved in other people´s family issues never ends well, but another side of me thinks that I should at least try to see, if I can do anything for them. I´m kind of torn on what to do, so I´m asking for your sound advice.
Your friend, Abby.
Sent: January 16th, 1999
From: AGirlNamedJoey
To: MightyMissMorgan
Subject: The best advice, I can give you.
Hi, Abby. I can´t say what I would have done in your situation, had it been me. The only time I´ve had to deal with mental illness was when my great-grandmother, towards the very end of her life, had also reached one the final stages of dementia and started appearing constantly confused and was having trouble recognizing people, she´d known for most of her life. I still remember like it was yesterday, how the thought that the same thing could happen to myself someday, scared the living hell out of me and kept me up for several nights, where I couldn´t stop thinking about it. Whenever we´ve talked about her, since her passing all of those years ago, none of us want to mention with a single word, those terrible days towards the end of her life. I think it´s because mental illness is something, us "normal" people have such a hard time wrapping our heads around, that it´s much easier for us to try to ignore it and pretend that such a thing doesn´t exist.
Whatever you do, try to be understanding towards what both them and their mom have to be going through. It can´t be easy for them, that´s for sure.
Best of luck!
Joey.
"I´d rather be ... lying in my bikini on a beach in Hawaii, than be in school today!" Abby threw out there, starting off yet another round of "I´d Rather" with Melissa, while they were standing by Melissa´s locker and waiting for the next class to begin. It had quickly become their go-to game, whenever they were having a particularly boring day at school.
"That´s too obvious of an answer! I´d rather go bungee jumping, than be in school today!" Melissa came up with and Abby had to smile at her answer, just from knowing that Melissa was far too much of a scaredy-kitten to ever do something that daring.
"You´d chicken out, way before they got far enough to put the cord around your waist!" Abby quipped, making Melissa smile back at her.
"We didn´t say that it had to be realistic, did we? I guess that I´m just not as adventurous, as you are".
"Moi, adventurous? Yeah, with going to school, doing my homework, working as a waitress and if we´re really talking about me getting crazy, babysitting a boy, who hasn´t turned a year old yet, my life is so adventurous that sometimes, I´m thinking that I should write a book about how exciting it is!" she replied sarcastically, bringing a sweet giggle out of Melissa.
Just seconds later, their cute little moment was ruined by a shocked looking Jen coming over to them.
"Abby, have you been by your locker, since the last class ended?" Jen asked, sounding concerned.
"No, I only had the one book to bring for my last class, so I took out my books for the next one as well. Did someone break into it? I´ve tried to tell them countless times that our locks on those lockers are so old and easy to pick, that it was only a matter of time!" Abby answered, a little annoyed, but at least relieved that she hadn´t had anything of value in there.
"It´s worse than that" Jen answered, before leading them towards the hallway, Abby´s locker was located in.
When they got there, a crowd had already begun to gather and what they were all staring at was what someone (not that Abby needed too many guesses, as to who it was) had written on her locker in large, red permanent marker letters: "Disgusting Dyke!" and "Rug Muncher!"
Abby had a far tougher hide than most of those her age, when it came to taking verbal (or in this case written) abuse. She´d been called just about every nasty name or slur that you could think of over the years, many of them from her own mother, and for the most part, she´d developed a knack for either ignoring it or giving back, as good as she got. The sheer humiliation she felt at this moment however, went beyond anything the world had thrown at her before. With everyone staring at her, as she made her way up to her locker, it had her feeling like it was the entire world that was watching her passing through Hades for their amusement.
"Welcome to the open-minded township of Capeside! Where we´ll gladly take your money, if you´re gay, but if you dare to do anything to show it ..." Jen began saying sarcastically, only too late realizing that she´d basically just outed Abby to the entire school.
"You´re actually a lesbian?" a younger girl, whom Abby had never talked to before, asked and within moments, whispers started spreading throughout the many on-lookers.
It was all she could take, before she ran away from that school, determined to never set foot there again.
"I´m the worst friend in the history of the entire world!" a despondent Jen stated to Jack on her way to the outer doors. Jack himself was still reeling, after he´d heard what happened to Abby and her locker. "I have to find her and tell her how sorry; I am!"
"How do you plan on finding her, when she could be anywhere by now?" he asked her and by doing so, was also stating the obvious problem in her hopeless plan.
"I´ll look for her all over town, if I have to! Jack, I´ve done a lot of things, I´m not proud of! Many of which, you won´t want me to ever tell you about, trust me! This is so much worse, than any of those other times were. Abby trusted me, like she´s perhaps never trusted anyone before and like the complete idiot, I am, I basically announce her biggest secret to the entire world, just because I had to make a moronic, sarcastic quip!" she frustratedly said, clearly still extremely upset with herself over what just transpired in the hallowed halls of Capeside High.
"You need to give her time to digest it" he suggested, thinking of how he would have reacted, had it been himself who´d been forced out of the closet, in the way that Abby had just been.
"No offense, but I don´t think that as an untroubled, heterosexual male, there´s any way, you could put yourself in Abby´s shoes. When first I got to know her a handful of months ago, her life was a mess! It´s only recently, that things have finally begun to start looking up for her. Then, I have to go and do this to her!" she snapped back at him, without having a clue how wrong, she in reality was.
"Maybe, you´re right and I can´t put myself in her shoes or stand here and try to claim, that I know her anywhere close to, like you do. One thing I know all too much about is what it feels like, when your world seems to have been turned upside down in an instant. I can tell you that when it happened to me, the absolute last thing I wanted was to be forced to talk about it, before I felt ready to" he semi-confessed to her, while leaving out a few vital details.
"What happened to you?" Jen asked him, with a mix of curiosity and concern on her face.
"If I tell you, will it stop you from running after Abby and doing something, that could ruin your friendship forever?" he asked back, thinking that if any situation warranted a confessional to stop someone from doing something dumb, this was it. Jen was bound to find out about Tim at some point either way and after she´d seen his mom asking about him, there was little point in trying to keep it from her anymore.
"Is it about Tim, the little boy your mom was asking about?"
"Tim isn´t a little boy. Or at least, he wasn´t" he started off, before needing a moment to regain his composure. "He was mine and Andie´s older brother by six years. If he hadn´t been taken from us in an accident last year, our entire family would have been looking forward to attending his college graduation ceremony this coming summer. Tim was the kind of guy, who could make friends with everyone and I´ve never met anyone, who had a bad word to say about him. Losing him felt like my soul was being torn asunder piece by piece in the time afterwards" he told her truthfully and the pure shock strewn across her face said it all, as she tried to comprehend what he´d just relayed to her.
"I, ehm ... wow, Jack! So, your mom is ... I don´t know what the exact medical term is?".
"I´ve been told it´s precise name a few times, but I can´t remember what it´s called and I can´t say, that I give two shakes of a rat´s ass what it´s called either. All I know is that she still doesn´t want to admit to herself, that he´s gone. When she doesn´t take her medication, like she hadn´t when you saw her yesterday, she starts believing in things, that aren´t real. Like Tim still being a little boy, for example".
"Will she ever get better?" Jen asked, through her fight to not start crying on his family´s behalf.
"Her doctors tell us that they have every reason to hope, she will eventually. I have to keep reminding myself all the time, that it hasn´t been a year and the wound is still fresh. I´m still not close to being over his death and I´ve been the one out of us, who´s arguably done the best at dealing with it. Andie went through her own personal hell for months on end afterwards and my dad decided, that it was easier to bury his head in work, than it was to deal with having a delusional wife, who refuses to accept reality for what it is".
"Here I always thought, my parents were a nightmare! Sorry, I didn´t mean it like that!" she said apologetically, probably deciding that she´d already put her foot in her mouth one time too many already that day.
"I was lucky enough to have a few friends that understood, why the best thing they could do was allow me to deal with it on my schedule. It took me over a month, until I talked to anyone outside of Andie and a few times, my dad, about my feelings. When I finally did, it felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. I needed that time to be ready to start opening up though, or I simply couldn´t have done it" he told her from the heart and it seemed to him as if, she got what he meant.
Abby went straight back to Bodie and Bessie´s house after she´d left the school, not wanting to talk to or hear from anyone. It was therefore not to her liking, when she saw the family´s truck parked in front of the house. She walked up it, just as Bessie was coming out of the front door and the look that she got for having skipped school told her, that she´d basically just thrown herself into a pot of boiling water.
"I can see that you aren´t visibly missing any limbs, so why the hell aren´t you in school right now?" Bessie rudely snapped at her and to her own enormous surprise, that was all it took to make her start crying.
She only got an "It´s a long story" out through her tears, as Bessie´s anger with her quickly turned to caring concern instead.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Bessie asked in the motherly kind of way, that her own mom hadn´t done, since before the alcohol and the depression took over and began poisoning her mind.
"Not really" she answered quietly, while trying to stop the tears from flowing by thinking happy thoughts. Not that it was working.
"I´m sorry to tell you, but that won´t fly with me. We´ve had more than enough secrets being held in this house, to last all of us a lifetime and if there´s one thing that our downfall as a family, if you want to call it that, has taught me, it´s that they always lead to more problems in the end and rarely any solutions. Anyway, do you really think I can leave you here alone, crying your heart out and go about my business, like it doesn´t matter to me?" Bessie asked her and just hearing someone tell her that they cared for her that way, helped enough for her to stop weeping at the least.
"As I said, it´s a long story. Don´t you have to be at the Ice House for the lunch rush soon?"
"When I tell Bodie why I won´t be there to help out, he´ll understand. You´ve become so much more than just a houseguest to us, Abby. You´re an extended part of our family now and with that comes having a handful of us, who want to look out for you, the best we can. So, will you tell me what´s up, or do we have to break out the ice-cream from the freezer and have a sit-down over this?" Bessie asked with a kind and sympathetic smile. After Abby had nodded along to the suggestion, it wasn´t long until they were seated at the dinner table, both of them with a serving of chocolate chip ice-cream in front of them.
"There´s this girl at school named Belinda. Just saying her name out loud makes me want to gag!" Abby began, while Bessie nodded along.
"I seem to remember that Joey has told me about her a few times. I went to school with more of her type, than I care to remember".
"Joey should consider herself extremely lucky, that she´s never been in Belinda´s crosshairs! I haven´t been as lucky and she´s been after me pretty much constantly, since we were kids. Today, she did something so horrible though, that I wouldn´t have expected it of her in a million years. That´s coming from someone, who couldn´t possibly have had a lower opinion of her, than I already did!" she continued, before working up her nerve for what inevitably would come next.
"What did she do?"
"She ... wrote some nasty homophobic slurs on my locker, or got one of the girls that follow her around, like she was some goddess to do it for her, I don´t know for sure. I won´t repeat them here, but they were some of the worst ones, you could think of" she explained, while trying to judge Bessie´s reaction, before coming out with the announcement of a lifetime to her. "Bessie, I´m gay and I´m pretty sure that I have been, since I was born".
It felt amazing for Abby to finally come clean to the young woman, who had been treating her like a mixture of a daughter and a little sister, ever since Bessie and Bodie had taken her in all of those weeks earlier. What felt even better, was when Bessie (instead of just responding with words) got up from her chair and invited her in for a big hug.
Never in her life up to that point, had a hug ever felt so warming and nurturing, as that one did to Abby. It took most of the next three hours until she was done telling Bessie about all of it, from the urges that she´d had to stare at the other girls and their developing bodies in the shower after P.E, when she´d only just started to hit puberty, to the stage she´d reached now, where she was on the verge of jumping into her first romantic relationship with Melissa. Throughout it all, Bessie knew when to just sit and listen and when to throw in a small remark, that would help her to remember something important, that she probably would have left out otherwise.
"Do you think that you can forgive Jen? I´m sure that she didn´t mean to out you" Bessie asked softly, before they got started on their third portion of ice-cream that afternoon.
"I´m not really mad at her. I mean, a tiny part of me is, but at the same time it´s felt like I´ve been living a lie for so long, that I can´t remember when it began anymore. First, it was trying to hide that my homelife was horrible and today, it became about my sexuality getting announced to the world. I´m so sick and tired of it, you have no idea!"
"In that case, it sounds to me like she actually did you a favor. Look, I know as well as anyone what Capeside is like and how they treat anyone here, who dares to stand out from the crowd. Back when I was your age, I was kind of like you or Joey, an outsider who got picked on for the slightest things, they could come up with. High school can be horrible that way for those, who are like us, but another thing I remember is how I was far from the only one, who was fed up over it being that way. Those so-called "Cool Kids", that get to set the agenda in your school aren´t the majority, they´re a tiny minority and if you come out and say "Fuck you and your stupid rules for who and what I´m supposed to be" to them, you´ll have lots of girls and boys, that are just like you deep down, agreeing with you. That´s how you begin to make a difference!"
Abby had to smile to herself and not only because she´d just heard Bessie for the first time use a word, that she´d heard her heavily scolding Bodie a few times before, over having used in front of their son.
"Can you drive me back to school, Bessie? There are things that I need to tell some people and it isn´t something, I think that I should put off".
After he´d talked Jen out of going on an impossible hunt to find Abby, Jack had felt even more like an outsider at their school, than he already did most of the time. He´d seen a small handful of minor cases of homophobia back in Providence and heard stories about people getting beat up or even killed, after they´d come out. To have it happen that up close and personal to someone, he was starting to get to know and was a close friend to a friend of his, still hit him hundreds, if not thousands of times harder, than hearing some third-hand re-telling of a story had ever done to him. More than that, he felt like a hypocrite for still hiding who he was, out of an in-grown fear of the same thing happening to himself.
Their final class of the day was Peterson´s class, a fittingly terrible ending to an already awful school day (for the most part). It was almost at an end, when the door opened and to his great surprise, in came Abby with the most determined look on her face, he could remember seeing anyone have before.
"Miss Morgan! So nice of you to join us, right before the final bell of the day!" Peterson said sardonically, as Abby walked up to him without a flinch to her demeanor. This, Peterson clearly wasn´t expecting and he barely knew how to react to what Abby said next.
"Do you know what you are, Mr. Peterson? You´re a terrible teacher! Everyone in here thinks so!" Abby said straight to the teacher´s face, as many nodded in agreement with her and no one said anything to the contrary.
"Who do you think you are? Go to the principal´s office, now!" Peterson tried ordering her, in disbelief that any of his students would dare talk to him that way. Not that it helped, since it only made Abby that much more defiant.
"Who am I? I´m Abby motherfucking Morgan and I´ve had more than enough of the shit, that goes on in this school! I´ve had enough of teachers like you treating me and everyone else in here like I´m some tool, who doesn´t know Jack about anything! I know all about how cruel the world can be towards you, because it´s been my entire life here, in ways that someone like you will never begin to understand! You want to know another thing, I´ve had enough of?" she asked Peterson, who by now was so shocked, that all he could do was shake his head.
"I´ve had enough of being treated like I´m a piece of garbage by the "Cool Kids", just because they´re lucky enough to be born into privileges, I could only dream of having had! I´m gay and I don´t give a damn anymore, who knows about it! You´re looking at a girl with nothing left to lose, Mr. Peterson, so tell me: What´s your comment on that?" Abby asked her stunned teacher defiantly, as whispers quickly began to spread among his classmates. Jack didn´t say anything and only watched in awe as this girl did something, he would never have the courage to do himself: Openly be herself to the core and not care in the slightest, what anyone thought about it.
After Abby´s "coming out party" in Peterson´s class and after having reconciled with an extremely relieved Jen, they felt it only fitting that they should celebrate it in fashion with one of Bodie´s best root beer floats from the Ice House.
"I´m so insanely proud of you right now, that I can´t put it into words!" Jen told her with an ear-to-ear smile and Abby could see, that her friend wasn´t understating it.
"You don´t think that I just dug my own grave as well?" she had to ask, since the question had been in the back of her mind, ever since she´d begun her barrage of words against the school´s least favorite teacher.
"I´m almost positive, that you´ll have a hard time getting better than a C in Peterson´s class from now on!" Jen joked and, in all likelihood, she wasn´t wrong there!
"Seriously, Jen. If my name wasn´t number one on Belinda´s most hated list before today, I can´t see how it couldn´t be at the very top now!"
"Who cares? Listen to me, Abby! This is what Belinda´s life will be like ten or fifteen years from now: She´ll either be a bored housewife with practically no life and zero friends, after those supposed friends, she has now will have all moved on to better things and all of them have realized that life is too short, to waste on someone like her. Her husband, who only married her to be his trophy wife, will cheat on her constantly, because he realized too late that he married an utter bitch, or that husband will already have left her and taken their kids with him, none of whom will want to have anything to do with their mom, because they know as well as anyone, that she can´t see further than the tip of her own nose. Girls like Belinda are perfect for the pecking order in High School, but they always end up as pathetic sob stories, once they have to deal with the real world" Jen told her imploringly.
"How do you see me ending up?"
"If you stick to this new "Screw you, if you don´t like it" approach, you´ll end up as someone, who´s so much cooler than Belinda has ever had the potential to become. I just wouldn´t do it right in front of one of my teachers again, if I were you! Or you employers here, for that matter! There´s no reason to deliberately shoot yourself in foot, if it´s that easily avoidable!" Jen answered wisely, just as the door opened and Melissa came walking in. It was only just now that it came to Abby, that by what she´d just done, she´d also essentially outed Melissa in close to the same way, Jen had outed her a little earlier that day.
"What do you know? I just now felt the need to go and use the women´s room!" Jen excused herself, before giving them their "Semi-Privacy".
"I heard about what you said in Peterson´s class. I thought, it was pretty cool" Melissa said sweetly, filling Abby´s belly again with the sort of sweet warmth, that she so often did.
"You aren´t mad at me? I essentially told everyone, that ..."
"I´m a lesbian? I don´t care what they think anymore, either! After what was done to you today and how I was frozen out and bullied by all of my old so-called friends, after I quit the squad and told Belinda off, they can kiss my ass, for all I care! I care what my parents think and I guess, I´ll need to have a much overdue talk with them tonight, but I doubt if it, if they´ll be too shocked. My mom has always been a master at telling when someone has a crush on someone else and she´s seen us together enough times, that she has to have picked up on how crazy I am about you. My dad just wants me to be happy, so he´ll be cool with it as well, I´m pretty sure" Melissa explained, right before the younger girl, who´d asked Abby if she really was a lesbian earlier that day, and another girl who looked to be the same age, came up to them.
"We´re sorry to interrupt, but we just want to tell you how cool we think it is, what you did today!" the girl praised her and Abby couldn´t help feeling a little proud either.
"You´re like, my new hero!" the other girl exclaimed and although Abby rarely blushed, this was one of the times, where she did.
As it turned out, those two would be far from the only ones, she heard things like that from throughout this afternoon and it wasn´t only girls either. Even a handful of the senior class boys told her that they thought, she was brave and Pacey and Dawson unanimously agreed, that she had to have the biggest balls of anyone at their school. While she couldn´t help herself from giggling a little, when they told her to her face, it also felt like they may have been right. In the figurative sense, of course.
Later that day, while Jack and Andie were setting the table for dinner together, they got the chance to talk about what had happened that day with Abby.
"I think, it´s crazy, what she did. Something like what she did is bound to end up on her permanent record!" Andie, who´d always had an innate fear of anything damaging her chances of getting into either Harvard or Yale, said.
"I thought, it was the greatest thing, I´ve ever seen! You should have seen Peterson´s face, it was priceless!"
"You don´t think that by getting this angry over it, she´s only set herself up for more bullying? Greet the world with a smile and it´ll greet you back in the same manner, that´s what I always say!"
"Sometimes, smiles will only get you so far, Andie. If there´s to be any chance of changes being made to the intolerance that reigns at that school, then someone has to make a stand and go for nothing".
"It almost sounds like you wish that it had been you?"
"We both know that we´re so new here, that it wouldn´t have meant nearly as much coming from one of us. Abby´s lived here for her entire life and can make a difference to that school in a positive way, I truly believe it" he told his sister, who from the looks of her might not have agreed with him entirely, but wasn´t disagreeing with him all that much either.
"What about the whole "Her being gay" part? Does it make you think of her differently now?"
"I can´t say that it does. You?"
"It could take me a few days to get used to all of a sudden having a classmate, who´s openly homosexual. I suppose, it´ll be like it is with almost all other new things, where after a short while it starts to just feel natural, that that´s how it is. Do you think Abby and Melissa are more than just friends?"
"I hope so for them. It shouldn´t matter if you´re gay or straight. If you ask me, everyone has a right to find someone, they can fall in love with".
"Amen to that, my dear brother!" Andie agreed, just before the doorbell rang and they looked at one another in confusion, over who it could be at this time of day.
Opening the door, just about the last thing he or Andie had expected was to see Abby and Jen standing there.
"Abby told me about experiences her mom had with others, who are like your mom is. I want to understand, so it won´t become something that can come between us" Jen told himself and Andie.
"We all go around hiding way too many things, because we don´t think people will be able to accept them. I did my part to hide from the world, that my mom was breaking apart inside and it only ended up making everything so much worse, than it ever had to be. Everyone has problems, but when we try to hush them down, it doesn´t help anyone" Abby said understandingly.
"I won´t say that it´ll be easy for me to fully understand, or that I can know what it´s like to go through what your family has gone through, but there´s no chance of me doing so, unless you give me a chance to. All we´re asking for here is to be given that chance" Jen pleaded her case, just as their mom came out to see what was going on.
"Are your friends staying for dinner?" she asked, with no knowledge of what they´d just been talking about.
"They are" he answered in unison with his sister.
END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
While this won´t be the last Anti-Intolerance themed chapter of this story by a long way, I think that it´s only fitting that I end it with a quote from the song that inspired this entire Abby/Melissa storyline more than anything else, Lady Gaga´s self-empowerment anthem "Born This Way".
"Don't be a drag, just be a queen
Whether you're broke or evergreen
You're Black, white, beige, chola descent
You're Lebanese, you're Orient'
Whether life's disabilities left you outcast, bullied, or teased
Rejoice and love yourself today
'Cause, baby, you were born this way
No matter gay, straight, or bi', lesbian, transgender life
I'm on the right track, baby, I was born to survive
No matter Black, white or beige, chola, or Orient' made
I'm on the right track, baby, I was born to be brave"
Whether you´re gay, straight, bi, trans or more than one of the above, thanks so much for reading and have a wonderful day.