Chapter 4

     I heard a couple car doors slam. My head was resting on the ground and my eyes were glued shut. I hurt too much to get up or open my eyes to see anything or anyone. "Grab her legs," I heard a familiar voice say. Then all of a sudden, I was being lifted off the street and carried. I felt the back of my head rest on a familiar cotton tee shirt that I had bumped into earlier that night. I still didn't feel like opening my eyes. I heard a car door open and I was put down in the backseat. I could tell because I could feel the fabric once I was put down. Someone was trying to bend my legs after I was laid down. So once they got my legs bent, I heard and felt the car door shut.

My stomach was in knots. I felt like I needed to throw up. I heard two more car doors shut and quiet, low voices in the car. I was going to throw up. I was going to throw up any second. Luckily I was on my side, so that way if I did throw up, I wouldn't choke on it and die. I could feel it slowly inch up my esophagus. Then suddenly it came up all at once and I emptied all of it on the car floor.
     "Oh shit man, she just threw up!" I heard another familiar voice say.
     "God damn it, now I'm going to have to clean my car again," I heard the first familiar voice say. I leaned back from the floor and moaned. I could begin to smell what I just put out. It was disgusting. I tried not to think about it and ended up falling asleep...


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     When I awoke I was laying in my bed in the same clothes I wore to the party. Sunlight gleamed through the windows in my room. How did I get in my bed? What the hell happened? I sat up in my bed and a strike of pain hit me in the skull. I clutched my head. What did I do to make myself hurt so much? I examined my body and bruise spots were in a couple of places. I appeared as if I was beaten up. Was that what happened? I remember going to Victoria's party and bumping into her, but after that everything was a blur.

 I moved my feet out from under my bed covers and placed them on the carpet. I stood up, but felt dizzy all of a sudden. What day is it? I sat back down on my bed to keep myself from falling forward. Once my dizziness fizzled away I got up, slower this time, and moved to my dresser.

I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like I just went to Hell and back. My eyes were all puffy, my skin was pale... everything didn't look right.
     I turned myself and stepped over to my desk.

I sat down and turned on my laptop. I logged onto Chatter.com to check for any messages or notifications.

After I got logged on, I had thirty two messages and twenty five notifications. I clicked on the first notification and a picture of Victoria and I kissing blew up onto the screen. There were also a hundred and twenty comments beneath it. Now I remembered what happened. I apparently got drunk and kissed Victoria, and now the picture of us is blown up on the web. I scrolled down the page to read the comments:

Tina said: Ew, that's disgusting. Are they using their tongues?
George said: I heard they had sex right after this picture was taken. Things got wet and messy.
Avery said: Who r those 2?
     Mason replied: victoria gladstone and some chick named amelia
     Avery replied: Amelia Gates? She goes 2 Charleston Girl Academy. If I was her, I wouldn't wanna show my face anywhere.
Tristan said: Hard as a rock ...c(^8

I shut my laptop quickly. My heart was racing at an unhealthy rate. I swallowed hard. The picture was blasted all over the internet. Anyone could see it. So anyone who had a Chatter account and had been on in the last 24 hours possibly knows that I was gay. My life was ruined... so, ruined.
     Suddenly there was a knock on my bedroom door. "Come in," I croaked. I sounded like Mrs. Snozz. My throat was so dry. I felt gross. Chase came walking into my bedroom. "How are you feeling?" he asked.
     "Fine," I attempted a fake smile.
     "Are you sure?"
     "Why do you care?"
He pulled up my polka dotted chair and sat down on it.

"Because I'm your caring older brother. You didn't seem so perfect after that party you went to."
     "Um, do you know how I got home?" I asked.
     "Yeah, Ty and I had to bring you home. We were worried about you."
     "How did you know where Victoria's house was?"
     "You left a torn piece of paper stuck on your clipboard with her address on it. We knew you usually didn't tack something up there unless it was important. So that's how we knew."
     "Oh." I sat in silence.

"Yeah, it was a good thing Ty and I got you when we did. You could have got killed."
     "How so?" I asked, crossing my arms across my chest.
     "We were sitting in the car seeing if you were going to walk out of the house. And when you did, you were stumbling out like a drunken irresponsible teenager. Luckily when you fell on your own on the street, you fell in front of our car. And not farther out on the street where we would have had to watch our sister be flattened."

I bit my bottom lip. "Oh, yeah. That's right."
     "How many drinks did you have last night?"
     "Um, maybe two, three, I don't know. Most of the night was fuzzy, so I don't quite remember exactly."
     "Why would you do something so careless? With alcohol, comes screw ups. With screw ups, come consequences. And those consequences could have possibly led to your death."
     I looked down in shame. I hated getting scolded. Being scolded my mom, I felt bad, but I got over it. But being scolded by my older brother, whose opinion matters a lot to me, I felt horrible. I felt like I let him down. "Chase, I swear I won't do anything like that again, okay? I only drank because some other people were drinking and I wanted to fit in." Yeah, I wanted to fit in with Victoria.
   "As long as you're safe, I don't care what the hell you do. Well, except I don't want you to get pregnant." Yeah, that was not going to happen when I'm as gay as I can be.
     Chase stood up from the chair. "Um, wait. Does Mom know that I went to the party?" I questioned.
     "Nope." And then he walked to my bedroom door and stepped out.

At the back of my mind I was still thinking about that picture of Victoria and me on chatter.com. I did not want to go back to school on Monday.


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     But that's exactly where I ended up: at school. Things were suddenly different. People paid more attention to me. But it wasn't the kind of attention I wanted. I'd often get glares and fingers pointed at me, and some more glares. I just ignored them. But when it came to my friends, things got difficult. Rumors spread fast, that's for sure.

     So once it was lunch time, I stepped into the cafeteria and immediately felt forty-five pairs of eyes set on me. It was like if I made one wrong move, at least one person would catch it. The trying-to-be-confident-and-optimistic side of me just briskly ignored the stares and stepped into the lunch line. But the insecure side of me wanted to quickly get my lunch and dart out of there so I could eat my food alone in the bathroom stalls. I did my very best to not let that side of me show through. I was going to be strong.

I grabbed a hotdog out of the lunch line and took my small body to the usual lunch table where my friends and I sat. Lori and Melanie were seated at the lunch table, but it appeared Nicolette wasn't there yet. I stepped up to the table and sat myself and my food down.

     Melanie was looking down at her salad, moving her fork side to side in the green leaves, acting like it was more fascinating than anything. Lori wasn't looking down at her food, she was looking at me. I looked up at her but then back down again because of how cold her stare was. And the worst thing was, was that no one was talking. Usually Lori or Melanie would be chattering away, but they weren't. There was just this awkward silence lurking in the air, poking at our ears. I shifted my position on the bench a little and then began to eat my hotdog, acting like we did this every day.

     So after a bite or two into my hotdog, Lori stood up. "Where are you going?" Melanie asked, breaking the silence.
     "I think I like it better sitting over there," she pointed to some table across the lunch room. "Let's go to it, Melanie," she commanded. Melanie obeyed and stood up with her salad plate in hand.

Then they quickly fled the table like there was a bomb ready to explode on it. That bomb would be me and my explosion would be a waterfall of tears. I held them in though, afraid of being humiliated some more.

I peered around the cafeteria to see if I could spot Victoria. I sadly couldn't find her. I hadn't seen her all day, actually. Even though it was sort of her fault that my huge secret was exposed, I missed her. I missed her a lot. She'd be the only one to know how I was feeling. And even in that short period of time that I was around her, she made me feel good inside. She made me feel like I actually mattered in this crazy, messed up world. I wanted to be with her so badly.

     After a minute of sitting alone, Nicolette plopped down on the bench beside me with her food. "Hey. Sorry I'm late. I had to ask my teacher about something," she unwrapped her hamburger. I sat in silence, taking another bite of my hotdog.

"Um, so I noticed something. Why are Lori and Melanie sitting over there?" she pointed to where they were sitting.

     I swallowed the hotdog bite in my mouth, "No, the question is, why aren't you sitting over there with them?"
     She quickly raised one eyebrow, "What are you talking about?" She obviously didn't hear that I was gay yet. I knew she didn't have a Chatter account, but I'd thought by now she would have heard the gossip about me.
     "You haven't heard the news about me yet?" I asked.
     "What news?"
     "So you haven't heard yet?" I was just trying to stall. I didn't want to have to tell her about my amazing kiss with Victoria. She wouldn't understand and flee off like everyone else. I mean, just last week she rudely told me how she felt about gay people. I knew how she was going to react.
     "No, I haven't heard yet. That's why I'm asking you what your news is!" she smiled and made a slight laugh.

Gosh, I never wanted this day to come. I didn't want to tell her my news. But then again, I didn't want her to hear it from someone else and have some odd rumor added with it. Like how that one guy on chatter.com said how he heard that Victoria and I had sex after that picture of us kissing was taken.

  

So I cleared my throat. Things were about to get scary.

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