Author's Ramble: Hello again! So here's the second chapter already. XD Just warning you that this is a story that contains homosexuality, identity issues, the works. Thanks to Chuu-Chan who reviewed oh so nicely. Well, here you go, second chapter! Please Read and Review!

October 14th

I first found out that I was judgmental when I was in the first grade. My teacher, Miss Rhodes, did not like how I rudely stared at her, my classmates and anyone else who happened to be interesting to watch.

But the thing that Miss Rhodes didn’t realize was that human beings are some of the most interesting things in the world.
I would stare at her, noting that she had a definite pear-shape to her and could sometimes look like a gourd when she wore her favorite brownish yellow dress. I noticed the dimples in her round face that meant she used to once smile.

See, when people say that you can’t judge a book by its cover, it’s a lie. Someone’s outward appearance can tell you a lot about them. Miss Rhodes probably once had a very happy life, or at least had reason enough to smile enough to give her dimples. Then worry lines began to appear along her forehead, showing that she frowned more often. You would think she’d have learned that it actually takes less muscles and energy to smile than to frown. This shows she was making special effort to be unhappy. Actually, we all would then, wouldn’t we?

Anyways, I would stare off at my classmates or Miss Rhodes herself for what could have been hours at a time. Finally one day she told me to stand in front of the class full of giggling six year olds. She was wearing giant hoop earrings and a smear of bright red lipstick. I was imagining her in a grotesque clown suit when everyone started giggling as she led me to the front. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I hardly took my eyes off of her. She’d have been a very scary clown with that look in her eye.

“Face your classmates, Liam,” Miss Rhodes simpered. She was the type to have a very high voice with a body that didn’t match. This was another reason why she fascinated me. I used to blow into different sized bottles and listen to the different sounds. A bigger bottle made a deeper sound. Miss Rhodes defied the laws of childhood logic with her high-pitched voice. Reluctantly, I stared straight at all the students wearing the same uniforms. The girls in their blue and grey skirts and the boys with their sweaters that they constantly fidgeted with due to the scratchy, all too warm tendency of wool. None of them were really interesting to me, but all the same I stared.

“Now, everyone, I want you to stare at Liam for the next five minutes,” Miss Rhodes instructed the other children in her squeak. Everyone giggled again and then I had fifteen pairs of eyes boring into my sweater that was no different than theirs.

Miss Rhodes was trying to make me feel embarrassed and out of place. It was supposed to make me feel guilty for staring at people so rudely. But to most children of that age, five minutes was as good as eternity. I shifted my weight and stared at a girl named Penny who sat in the back of the class. She was the only remotely interesting one of this bunch. She drew funny pictures with lots of dark colors and no one could ever see her eyes behind her dark hair. Secretly, I thought we had a bit of a connection. Both of us had the air of not wanting to be in that room with Miss Rhodes or the other fourteen children. Penny wasn’t paying attention as usual. I noted how Miss Rhodes didn’t make her stand in front of everyone. I moved down the line of kids in their desks, all of them slowly loosing concentration. I didn’t waver at all in my gaze, while they all seemed to be glancing away, or at the clock. We’d all just learned how to tell time, and I saw Jaime counting on his fingers for how long they had to go.

By the time the five minutes were up, everyone was very ready for the early recess Miss Rhodes granted them. She sent them off with the other teacher, Mr. Holland, before telling me to sit down at my desk.

Penny was the last to leave the room, and her head turned back towards me. Her lips were pulled back into a pale smile. I waved back, wishing I could watch her draw at recess instead of listening to Miss Rhodes’ too high voice. She knelt down beside my desk and made me look her in the eye. It was rather hard, due to her distracting outfit. “Now, Liam, did you learn a lesson today?” she asked in the voice I’d already learned was reserved for when you were being treated like a baby. I wanted to huff, but I knew that that would mean only less time outside in the shade of the single oak tree in the fenced in lawn of the private school.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied soberly, trying to sound sincere. At the time, I honestly had no idea what the exercise with the class was meant to do for me. But nodding and looking like I did works the same as if I really did learn my lesson.

“Good. It’s not polite to stare at people. You miss things in class, and it makes your classmates not want to be friends with you,” she warned. It didn’t occur to her that I didn’t want to be friends with any of them. I nodded again and she patted my arm and sent me on my way.
Outside, I sat down next to Penny under the oak tree to watch her draw Miss Rhodes in a clown costume.

“You won’t be able to avoid him forever,” Lin tells me over the noise of the dishwashers and constant running of industrial sinks. We’ve both been placed on the lovely duty of the nonstop dishes. The problem about buffets is that people don’t think that they might be able to use the same plate again. People try to convince themselves they aren’t eating nearly as badly as they truly are because they just use more plates and put smaller amounts of food on them. In the end, they end up eating just as much as the guy who had two full-to-bursting piles of rice, General Tsao’s chicken and hot fresh egg rolls.

“I’m not trying to avoid him,” I say as I scrub at the sticky sweet and sour sauce of a particularly stubborn plate. Even the dishwasher wouldn’t be able to get whatever the heck that is next to the crab ragoon off. “I called him and he didn’t answer. I went to his apartment and his mom said he wasn’t feeling well and didn’t even let me up. I tried talking to him between classes and he walked away. I haven’t seen him at lunch, either. So please, don’t look at me like I’m not even trying.” The fact is, I had been trying to confront Will for two days. He’d been giving me the slip each time I try to catch him. It also doesn’t help I can’t navigate through our crowded school hallways when I’m not tracking someone down. I’d tried, but like most things I do it’s never good enough.

Lin gives me a pitying look that also somehow manages to be sizing me up in the same instant. A strand of hair falls out of her messy bun and stands out on her pale face. Lin is ideally pretty, but I never once thought of her more than a friend. She has long silky black hair and dark, intense eyes that always seem to see through to the truth. She’s petite, but a force. I’d learned this the moment she’d met me 7 years ago when she moved into the area from San Diego. Just as I’m being pulled into the memory, Lin splashes my hand with a bit of very hot water.
I yelp and she scowls at me. “I was talking to you, bonehead. Or are you too busy not-thinking?” she grumbles. This is the term she’s cleverly come up with when I zone out, thinking about things that don’t matter instead of focusing on what’s going on right then and there.
“Sorry, Lin,” I mumble, rubbing my hand with a towel and trying not to snap that she should be apologizing too. “What were you saying?”
“I was saying that maybe force is going to be what you need to do,” Lin replies good-naturedly, back to her cheerful self as she loaded up another huge pile of dishes. “Make Will listen to you. There’s no other way to get to him.”

“Uh… Lin… Isn’t that… sort of your department?” I blurt, careful to keep my hands away from the fire of hot water and my eyes away from the chance of a glare.

“Yes. Which is why I’m going to help you.”

“How?”

“Will has sort of been avoiding me too, but not as much as you. I’ll find a way to corner him, and you’ll be close by and we’ll all settle this. All three of us.”

“Right. All for one and one for all,” I reply, knowing she wouldn’t recognize my sarcasm. She is happy to be weaseling her way into a battle she will ultimately win.

It hadn’t always been all three of us, but I don’t doubt she forgot that.

When I get home, it’s late and my mom’s apartment smells like something salty and filling. I’d had enough of the smell of food for one night. Working over time always means that I’ll come home and have no appetite. After spending five hours inhaling the smell of deep-fried egg rolls, dumplings, bread and baking crab, it’s as good as eating a feast for my system.

Our apartment in the Lower East Side is nothing spectacular, and that’s how I like it. There’s a dining table directly in front of you as you walk in, and to the left is a miniscule living room. Through a small arch is the cramped kitchen. To the right of the entrance is the small hallway that leads to my room that I sometimes share when Angela comes to visit; my mom’s bedroom and the only bathroom are the remaining doors. All of these rooms are in varying shades of tan and cream. Simple, but home. As I walk in and throw my backpack and jacket onto the couch, I hear a squeal from the kitchen that alerts me that Angela’s come to stay.

She’s running at me before I even have time to brace for impact. A huge mass of blond hair obscures my vision as she hugs me enough to the point I start to gasp for help. Angela hadn’t come over in weeks. Columbia is a great school, but it seems to be keeping a very tight leash on her.
“Liam!! I’ve missed you so much!” Angela cries as she finally decides to release her iron-grip on my slowly breaking spine. I give her the grin that always signals that I miss her too. She never gives me time to talk. Much like Lin in nature, Angela loves to have someone to listen to and guide through life. I apparently have a magnet in my head for girls who like to nurture me.

Wait… that came out wrong.

Angela had been visiting me at Mom’s place ever since I decided to sever all ties with my father. She’d been understanding, not really liking her step-dad at all anyways, and had come to help me with Mom every once and a while. Mom, as it was, wasn’t completely there. I think she’s a lot like me in the sense that she can’t help but let her mind wonder. Only, when Mom’s mind wonders, she’s lost completely and no one ever learns what she’s thinking about. Sometimes I imagine her thinking about having a house out in the country. Or what my father’s doing right now. Whatever it is she thinks about, I hope that it’s creating her a better world than the one I have to deal with.

Chinese food and pants-ing people aren’t exactly the world’s most common past times.

“How’s everything been going?” she asks, those bright eyes the color of blue sidewalk chalk are not like Lin’s nosy interested stare. They hold a love only a family member could have, only a sister wanting to know the scoop could have.

“Let me help you make Mom dinner,” I say with a sigh of defeat. Angela knows. She always knows.

When everything had poured out of my mouth after constant prodding and encouragements from Angela, we are sitting in my room getting ready to sleep. I’m fingering the shirt I’d worn to bed since I was ten. It was huge on me then, but now it is probably just the right size. Why haven’t I ever got rid of it? It is incredibly simple. Just a grey cotton tee with one of those mini chest pockets. What makes this certain shirt so special that I don’t want to throw it out? And how in the world hand I managed to get through almost seven years without getting a single hole in it? There has to be something wrong with that.

I’m standing in front of the mirror I keep over my dresser. It’s small, just big enough for me to see my face every morning to make sure there isn’t a zit that’s too huge on my face. I stare at it, still fingering my shirt. I try to understand what it means to have sandy blond hair and pale green eyes. Does it mean that I’m bound to only attract other blondes? Do my eyes mean that no one will ever stare into them and feel like their falling into pools because they’re a plain, pale color? Maybe we’re all color-coordinated, we just don’t know it. Maybe the people we are destined to get along with or be attracted to have to compliment our own colors. Like it’s in our genetic make-up as human beings. A hard-drive network setting that was programmed since the day we were conceived. Maybe it isn’t just the colors that made up you either, maybe it’s the ones you like.

I turn back to my bed, stepping over Angela’s sleeping bag. I shift my attention to my comforter still thinking about people matching their colors, unaware that Angela had stopped singing along with the radio. In fact, I’m so intent on the stitching of my navy blue comforter I don’t hear her get off her sleeping bag on the floor and sit down next to me. Suddenly, I feel her hand resting on my shoulder. I jump, wishing she wouldn’t give me that look. It’s the same look Lin gave me at the Red Tiger today. That same “I feel so sorry for you” stare that makes you want to just strangle a small animal. Especially chipmunks. They look strangle worthy.

“For once, I might have to say that your friend Lin is right,” she sighs. This is a new thing. For what feels like centuries, Angela and Lin have only clashed horns with their opinions on what is best for me. Lin, from the perspective of the best friend, is always trying to get me to “be more independent”. But really she probably just wants to tell me what to do. Angela, from the perspective of the concerned sister, wants me to be more independent from Lin. Both mean well, and both clash terribly in a civil war that’s bound to have some casualties.
“Huh?” I reply rather intelligently.

“Lin knows how to get down to the bottom of things. Normally I’d use the word snoop but for right now, I’m going to be as kind as I can muster,” Angela says with a wave of her hand, as if her kindness is the greatest gesture in the world. In her world, it probably is. “Give this thing a chance.”