NOTE: I’ve had a plagiarism issue and I took all my stories down. I was going to start them again in a more regulated setting, but I realized that any such situation would be inconvenient for at least some of my readers, so I’ve decided to just repost it here.

Claimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to me. Don’t steal.

WARNINGS: This story is about a relationship between two men. If that makes you uncomfortable, please don’t read this. There may even be lemony content, which means depictions of actual sexual acts between men. Don’t flame me about that fact, for you have been warned. Also, this is about the relationship between an adult and a minor, so if that squicks you, stop reading. You have been warned.

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By: Chantrea Johari

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I sat back in my seat, watching the other students milling about the classroom loudly, with a roll of my eyes. Any time there was a classroom without a teacher, all the immature idiots just had to start throwing things around the classroom and yelling about the latest gossip. It was as if they were a bunch of grammar school children as opposed to sixteen and seventeen year old high school students. It was almost sickening.

I turned back to the paper I was doodling on with a deep sigh, trying to ignore the other students the best I could. It was a difficult task, especially when a paper airplane landed on my desk and one of the other students in the class ran over and pulled it out in front of me without even apologizing. I cursed at him under my breath and continued scribbling on the paper.

I stared at the clock, bored, waiting anxiously for the end of the period. We had had a substitute teacher since our regular English had gone on maternity leave barely three weeks before, and the middle-aged, slightly overweight, balding substitute that our eleventh grade class had been given made a practice of being late. I didn’t see how that was possible, seeing as this was the last class of the day, and he should have been in the classroom even before this period started. I ventured a guess that to a person like that, anything was possible.

I hoped silently that if he wasn’t going to show up at all, whatever God existed would take pity on me and let the time move faster. It didn’t really seem possible. God had never liked me all that much, probably because I was gay. That was what all the religious people I’d known in my old town had said when they had found out about my sexuality.

Yet I didn’t know if I could last another second overhearing giggling girls recount sexual experiences, jocks bragging about their prowess on the playing field, and people recounting how what every person but themselves and their clique was wearing was the greatest fashion disaster in a century. I didn’t have the patience. I didn’t want to imagine girls in any sort of sexual situation, I didn’t enjoy sports, and I wasn’t interested in fashion. And most of all, I just didn’t care, and I found them to be annoying.

I watched the clock tick impatiently, running the pen over the same spot on my paper repeatedly, until it made a dark black line. I tucked a strand of light brown hair behind my ear and sighed. The teacher was already almost fifteen minutes late for class. That was just typical of him, and this pathetic school system. How could anyone expect us to ever learn anything worthwhile when our teachers were so incompetent?

Another five minutes passed and I began stabbing at my paper in frustration. I imagined the face of our substitute there as my pen connected with the paper, but the rest of the students ignored the sound and my presence, as usual. I didn’t mind; I didn’t want their attention after all. And it wasn’t that I wanted our substitute to get there because I wanted to do work—I only wanted him there so he could control the loud and annoying class. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at that either.

I was about ready to stab a pen through my eye after another five minutes had passed when the door finally slid open and our substitute entered, murmuring apologies to the class. I rolled my eyes again, irritated and ready to snap. This was unacceptable. I hoped that the school system would find a replacement—and soon. If they didn’t, I’d surely go insane.

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I spent a few hours after school was released milling around the local park aimlessly. I truly had no reason to be there, but I didn’t feel like going home and sitting in my room alone. My apartment had always given me an oppressive feeling. I always felt the uncontrollable urge to get out of there, but I disliked being in large groups of people. However, posed with the alternative of that unquenchable, itching feeling of being caged that constantly plagued me in my home, I would take the presence of other people any day.

As it was, not many people came to the park, and when they did, they were usually quiet. That was, unless people decided to bring their children there, but that usually happened at around lunch time when I was still in school, or on weekends. At any other times, I just made sure to stay away from the children’s play area. But young screaming children weren’t something that I normally had to deal with (unless one counted my English class), and for that I was truly thankful.

I weaved my way down the paved path surrounded by trees, quietly taking in the scenery. I stopped at a small pond near the end of the path, collapsing onto a stone bench off to the side. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, letting the serenity of the scene around me calm my frazzled nerves. It was a welcome change after the day I had had. It had started with me waking up late for school because my alarm didn’t go off, which had meant that I hadn’t had any coffee that morning—and it just went downhill from there, all culminating in the twenty-five minute late seventh period English teacher. I needed some peace, away from the frustration.

I wasn’t aware of the passage of time, but the next time I looked at my watch, I found that it was already nearing six o’clock. Sighing softly to myself, I picked up my backpack from where I had set it down beside me and stood up, heading for home. I still had homework, after all, and I didn’t want to have to stay up all night to finish it. I didn’t really consider it worth the effort. Very little seemed worth the effort recently.

I trudged back to my apartment building dejectedly, still not in the best of moods. My apartment wasn’t in what you could call one of the best parts of town, but I knew that there were worse places I could be. Being raised by a single parent, I knew that we were lucky to be as well-off as we were, even if that meant that I had to work weekends and even after school sometimes to have any spending money for myself. It didn’t matter all that much to me anyway; I didn’t buy many things for myself except books, and so working at a bookstore was very convenient for me.

I stepped inside my apartment building, taking the elevator up to the small apartment that I shared with my mother. I assumed that she wouldn’t be in, since she worked late almost every night, so I pulled my key out of my pocket and unlocked the door, stepping inside the apartment. To my surprise, my mother’s voice greeted me.

“Evan, is that you?” she called out from the kitchen. I almost jumped, startled by her voice, before I answered.

“Yeah, mom, it’s me,” I called back, stepping into the kitchen. My mother turned from where she was standing at the stove to look at me.

My mother was a petite woman, but as I was only five foot six, she was only a few inches shorter than me. She had a slim build, just like I did, and the same chestnut brown hair. Her eyes, however, were green, where mine were a kind of blue-grey. Her eyes, too, held a warmth that mine never seemed to possess. My cold silvery eyes often made people uncomfortable around me, but I didn’t mind; I had never craved for the presence of others anyway. My mother said that my eyes came from my father, as had my rather reticent manner, but I had never met the man. He had run out before I was born. I hadn’t always been so closed off, though. I didn’t think that personality traits could be passed down by an absentee parent.

“Why are you home so early?” I asked my mother quietly, my backpack still slung over my shoulder as I leaned onto the doorframe.

“Remember the Jeffries case?” she questioned, turning back to stir something cooking in a pot on the stove. I wasn’t sure, but I thought that it looked like spaghetti. My mother had never been a great cook. In fact, I was usually left to do the cooking in the house, since she was never really home early enough to make dinner. I didn’t mind that either. In fact, I rather liked cooking, though I had never really been that good at it myself. Generally, I ate alone, though, so I had no one to impress with my cooking but myself, and occasionally my mother.

“Yeah,” I answered to her previously asked question, thinking back to the minute details my mother had told me about the case. My mother was a clerk at a local law firm, and they had been working on a big case involving some politician’s daughter. I didn’t really recall the details, but I knew that it was a big political hot button in the state.

My mother turned her head over her shoulder to smile at me. Her smile was another thing that it seemed that I hadn’t inherited; I hardly ever smiled. It wasn’t that I was trying to be depressive or get pity, as some of my school counselors had thought—but I found very little to smile about. I didn’t bother faking smiles like other people did, and I didn’t feel compelled to smile when I heard a pointless joke or a funny story. It wasn’t that I never smiled—it was that I only did when I felt that there was something truly worth smiling about.

“Well they got the verdict in today; innocent on all counts. The senior partners gave everyone the rest of the day off, and a bunch of the others went out to celebrate.”

I raised an eyebrow at my mother. “And why didn’t you go with them?”

She looked at me with an expression that was almost scolding. “Evan, you know that I don’t drink,” she said evenly, her eyes almost accusing, before turning her attention back to the pot in front of her.

I shrugged. “Yeah, I know,” I replied, eyeing her for another second. “I have homework to finish. I’ll be in my room.”

“Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes!” my mother called after me as I retreated into my bedroom. I collapsed onto my bed, sighing. Another monotonous day had passed in my eternally unchanging life. I took my homework out of my backpack and started working, waiting for my mother to call me for dinner. This daily routine was getting depressing, tiresome. I wished desperately for something—anything—to change.