Jason couldn't believe that things had gotten so bad so quickly.
Never really a popular boy in school, he still had his friends who he hung out with, laughed with, had lunch with. Friends who would sit next to him at each Friday's football game, making fun of the real losers, as they called them. The kids in the science club; the kids whose only friends were the teachers; the fags.
But Jason held a secret, a secret so dangerous that he had buried it deeply inside himself years ago. A secret so deadly to a boy of sixteen that he himself never even dug it up to acknowledge it existed.
Jason was gay.
He had known since he was younger. When all the other twelve and thirteen year old boys were noticing the girls, Jason was noticing the boys. The way their shoulders were widening, their hips becoming more narrow. In gym, he noticed how several of the boys' legs were beginning to develop muscle, especially on their calves. And he especially liked the way those calves and thighs were becoming covered with fine hair.
But Jason knew that admitting he was gay was a death sentence to a boy in a small town like his, so he kept his secret to himself. He didn't pretend to like the girls in his class; that would be too much like lying. But he made it a point to not notice the boys either. He was always careful about where his eyes landed. When an especially hot guy would pass and his eyes instinctively wanted to look down towards his butt, Jason would be extra careful to keep looking forward. Being so rigid and controlled all the time left him drained of both mental and physical energy, but he had no choice.
And today, all that work came to an end. Patrick had grabbed Jason's memory stick thinking it was his own and found Jason's collection of gay porn. His friend immediately looked disgusted at Jason, threw the stick in his face, and announced loudly to the class that Jason was a faggot. By the end of the day, almost every kid in the school was talking about him. Jason could barely get to his locker since the jocks kept bumping into him all the way down the hallway.
Now it was 6:00 in the evening. He had been sitting in the old drainage pipe for a couple of hours, avoiding the world, but he had to get home. He wasn't looking forward to that. His dad had already called him on his cell phone and did not sound happy.
If only he could stay here forever.
Written by Dr Mandragora
