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TEENAGEDOM by: Caisele

Enterlude

I twiddle my pencil, staring at the blackboard and zoning out. The weather is incredibly nice outside and I can't concentrate. The rest of the guys in the class are either sleeping or punching each other. Matt and Kyle have their heads bent together in front of me, talking lowly. I can't help but hear snatches of their conversation.

"I heard the police showed up," Matt is saying. I frown a little, ears perking up.

Kyle shrugs. "We were long gone when they got there. But they know we did it."

"Well, yeah. Belmon and us have been rival schools for decades."

"No, it's not just that," Kyle drops his voice, "they're calling it a hate crime."

Matt sneers. "It is a hate crime, dude. We don't screw with Belmon because it's all good wholesome fun, we screw them 'cause we don't like all the faggots that go there."

Kyle looks up at the clock. I follow his gaze. Class is almost over. I straighten up in my seat and wait for the bell to ring. Kyle glances at me. He knows I heard. "Hey, Simon," he nods at me, "Evans was looking for you earlier."

I grunt. "Yeah. He found me. He said he's quitting student council."

Matt looks over at me and grins. "I don't blame him. Whenever shit goes down it's the student council that gets the heat."

"I heard," Kyle says carefully, "that he's gonna nominate you to take his place as president."

"Yeah, apparently," I shrug.

Kyle grins. "Okay, cool," he says just as the bell sounds. He shoulders his bag, standing up. "You coming to practice today?"

I nod. Kyle turns to leave. I dump the textbooks in my bag and follow him out into the crowded hallway. "Oh, by the way," Kyle says over his shoulder. "How come I didn't know you had a twin brother?"

I cringe.

"No one knew," I say. Kyle gives me a funny look. I make a face. "Where did you see him?" I ask.

Kyle makes a vague gesture. "In the office. At least I think that was him. He's got that I'm-gonna-fuck-shit-up look on his face, y'know? And a stupid fauxhawk."

"Yep," I groan, "that's Dillon."

"Why is he here all of a sudden?"

"He got kicked out of his school." I roll my eyes. Kyle raises an eyebrow. "How?"

I shrug. "Because the principal thinks he's a hazard to himself and everyone around him."

"What did he do?"

"He lit a fire in the girls' bathroom 'cause he wanted to roast marshmallows."

Kyle bursts out laughing. Even I can't help but grin a little. Dillon may be a moron, but at least he's got imagination. "Alright," Kyle says as we get to the stairs. "I gotta get to class. See ya later."

I wave after him distractedly. I have a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach. Kyle saw Dillon in the office. Dillon was supposed to have registered yesterday. So what was he doing in the office? He can't have gotten into trouble already…can he?

I freeze and turn the other way, pushing through the crowd. The freshmen mill around. They haven't learned how to disappear into the wall when they see a higher year coming. But I'm not in the mood to intimidate a couple of fourteen year olds. I push through them.

"Simon!"

I look up. It's Eli, one of the sophomores on the council. He grins at me idiotically, dangling off the railings along the stairs. "I didn't know you had a brother," he says. I cringe again.

"Have you seen him?" I ask loudly, over the noise in the hallway.

Eli points to the ground. "He's in the office, with his friend."

I feel like someone pummelled me with a baseball bat. "His friend?"

"Yeah. Skinny kid with the emo hair. Looks like a girl?"

Fuck my life. No.

I shove the freshmen out of the way and fly down the stairs. No, no, no, no, no. Please, God, don't do this to me. I don't deserve this. No.

I slam into the office door, hands pushing at the handle before my brain can make out the "Pull" sign above it. I open the door so fast that I almost hit myself with it. I tumble in. Mrs. J, the receptionist, looks up at me, surprised. "Hey, Simon. How're you doing?"

"Dill…" I wheeze, "Dillon."

I see him standing inside, at the registration desk. He's wearing his new uniform all wrong and grinning like a mad man. He's holding a piece of yellow paper in his hand. Behind him, on the bench, sits Liv.

I would have screamed if my throat hadn't closed up.

Liv sees me first. He's wearing a green shirt that's too big for his little body and black skinny jeans. His shoe laces are undone and flapping all over the place as he bounds towards me like an over-eager puppy. His eyes are all wide and happy. He trips as he nears me and I have to reach out to catch him before he hits the ground. His lip ring catches the light and I make a mental note to tell him to take it off later. At least he's got rid of his bubblegum pink highlights, I console myself. He smiles up at me, giggling. I realize he's not wearing his usual multi-neon-colored nail polish.

"Hi, Sy," Liv laughs, pulling himself up into a standing position. Liv lives two blocks up the street from my house. He's been home-schooled ever since he was teased in junior kindergarten for looking like a girl. He has the face of a doll, with cherry lips and big brown eyes that remind me of the home-made hot chocolate at my Oma's cottage when I was little. Ever since he and Dillon became friends he's been hanging around at our house everyday after school. He used to be shy, and would only stare at me from far away, making me all nervous and fidgety. He's grown up now, and has gotten into the habit of sleeping over in Dillon's room. Mom thinks he's cute, dad thinks he's funny, in an odd way. I like to think of him as the family pet.

His legal name is Tyler. But after he became obsessed with that girl from Lord of the Rings, he insists that everyone should call him Liv, after the actress. He's the kind of kid who still plays with Barbies at sixteen, and wears hot pink boxers (I don't know how I know, and I don't want to remember). He eats spoonfuls of sugar cubes at breakfast and has kissed everything that walks, including my conservative ex-Nazi Opa (I don't know what came of that, but I think it had something to do with Opa's sudden heart attack last January). All in all, he's the kind of kid that Kyle and Matt would pummel half to death and be left for some poor jogger to find on a side street - in other words, the kind of kid that you'd never find at my school.

I glare over his head at Dillon, who's standing rooted to the spot, like a frightened buffalo, unsure of whether to flee or to charge, or to crack a stupid joke and make me want to push him out of the third floor bio lab window. "What are you doing here?" I ask Liv, my eyes still trained onto Dill.

Liv cocks his head to the side, reminding me suddenly of the little ginger kitten I had when I was a kid. "I'm a student here now," he says slowly, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

I force myself to count to ten before I reply. "What?"

"Erm," Dillon speaks up from where he's standing. "It's my idea, actually."

"Really?" I snap sarcastically.

Liv instinctively backs out of the way. In two strides I have Dillon by the collar. "Are you fucking insane?" I demand in an undertone, all too aware of Mrs. J's curious ears. "Have you finally snapped, Dill? Do I need to go visit you in an asylum next week? Are you FUCKING INSANE?"

Dill scrunches his nose up and glares right back at me. "When mom said I had to come to your homophobic, Hitler-loving, white-power, screwy excuse of a school you told her that I wouldn't fit in and I would get in more trouble than before, that I was going to ruin your reputation, and that I would have no friends. And I totally agree with you. I can't make these Nazi-youth accept me, I'm probably gonna get in a lot of shit and ruin your life, but, I thought if I can't make any friends, I can at least bring one, right? So–"

"So you brought Liv?"

Dillon shrugs. "Well, yeah. He's my best friend. Besides, I registered him already. It's crazy easy since he's been home-schooled all his life, and they don't even care that–"

"No, Dillon, you moron, listen to me," I hiss. "Look at him," I point to Liv who's now sitting cross legged on the bench, facing the blank wall and chewing his sleeve. He looks like the poster boy for a childhood development disorder. "In any other school he's just be the pretty girly boy who's a little socially challenged, but here, he's dead. Dead. Understand? We'll be standing over his grave tomorrow morning and it's all your fault."

Dillon looks at me strangely. "You think he's pretty?"

"Is that all you got from everything I've just said?"

"You know you'd be dead if any of the guys here finds out that you called another guy pretty," Dill says.

I scowl at him. "Right. Exactly. I'm on the student council and I'm on both the soccer team and the football team, but they'd still kill me. Me. So what do you think they'll do to an androgynous emo kid who wears nail polish and has a lip ring?"

"Relax," Dill sighs, "I got him to take off his nail polish last night, but he couldn't get the lip ring off and it started bleeding when I tried, so I don't think we should touch it for a couple of days."

"Dill, he can't come here."

Dillon gives me his winning smile. "Don't worry. I heard you're gonna be the student council president."

Aw, shit. Gossip spreads faster here than at church.

"That doesn't mean shit," I say quickly.

"Don't lie, Sy. Even I know that the prez is at the top of the hierarchy. They hold more power than the principal. You can take care of Liv and me. No problem."

I glower at him. No, there is a problem.

My school, the George Danshaul School for Boys, is the breeding ground of teenaged terrorists who prowl the surrounding gated neighborhoods, spray-painting swastikas and beating up gay kids for fun. Nation-wide newspapers have labelled our municipality as a hate-crime factory. (But not all the hate-crimes come from us. Down the street and up the millionaires-packed hill they call Mount Moore is our brother school, Mount Moore Academy. They're known for their elitist policy of accepting only white students with respectable pedigrees. Of course they don't say that in the mission statement on their website but take one step onto their meticulously mowed lawn and you'll see what I'm talking about.)

Point is, from the extremist schools, the political neighborhoods, and the kinds of people I live with and see everyday, I have gained an acute sense of alarm regarding how my retard of a brother and his best friend will fit in here, especially at Danshaul. Because, for one thing, Dillon and Liv are practically attached at the hip. They eat from the same plate, they sleep in the same bed, and I swear they even showered together. In an anal (no pun intended), high-strung place like Danshaul, that spells death.

Really, it's all my mom's fault. 'cause she's allergic to latex, and was scared the pill is against the will of Jesus…and, well…out comes Dillon.

Because no Dillon means no annual Halloween trips to the Playplace at McDonalds, where I wouldn't be stupid enough to pour Pepsi down the red tube thing 'cause I wanted to make a water slide, which wouldn't result in Dillon hitting his head really hard on the way down 'cause I pushed him and he slipped…all the waaaaay down. And he wouldn't have woken up thinking he was dead, and he wouldn't have mistaken a fat baby Liv as an angel because he thought he was in heaven (plus Liv was wearing angel wings and a white lacy shirt 'cause his obese McDonalds-addict of a baby sitter thought it was an appropriate Halloween costume for a six-years-old boy).

If they ever get around to inventing a time machine I would go back in time, to that delivery room where the doctor yanked me out of my mom, and instead of yanking Dillon out right after me, I'd get the nurse to sew my mom right back up and tell her that they made a mistake and she wasn't having twins after all.

But as I'm staring down at the yellow registration form in Dillon's hand and the "Approved" stamp over Liv's name I realize there is really nothing I can do now.

My life, as of this day, is going down the shitter.

I look over at Liv. He's still chewing his sleeve. But now he's staring down at my pants with a weird look on his face that makes me think I spilled something on myself. I look down. Then up again. He sees me and his cheeks turn red. I scowl and turn back to Dillon.

"Alright, let's go," I say, giving up.

Dillon smiles really wide and Liv leaps up from the bench, whooping. His shirt rides up and I get all uncomfortable. "C'mon," I tell them, walking towards the office door. "We need to get to the auditorium. Evans is gonna make his resignation speech."

Dillon gasps exaggeratedly. "Evans? No! You mean the seven-foot senior who smokes so much pot that he only has two brain cells left?"

"Why do you associate with people like that?" Liv asks, affronted, mimicking my mom perfectly.

"He does not…he beat me on our entrance exam," I say, defensive. Dillon puts his hand over his mouth, and his eyes go all wide. He's going to get an Oscar one day, I just know it.

"Wait, wait," he says "If a kid with only two brain cells beat you on the entrance exam…how many brain cells do you have?"

"Shut up," I groan, leading them out into the hall.

Just my luck. Kyle turns around the corner with an attendance sheet in his hands. He sees me and raises an eyebrow. "Who's the skinny kid?" he asks lowly as he passes.

I grit my teeth. "Later," I reply.

Two more steps down the hall and I spot a couple guys from the soccer team. They nod to me and grin at Liv. "Who's your girlfriend?" they ask. I glare at them and they walk away laughing.

That's it.

I turn to Liv. "We have to get you a uniform. You're standing out too much."

Dillon perks up. "He can have mine. Hey, Liv, swap."

And Liv begins to pull off his shirt.

"No!" I shove them into an empty classroom and scan the hallways frantically before closing the door. "What the hell is wrong with you two?"

But Liv already has Dillon's shirt half on, and Dillon is pulling off his pants.

"Y'know," Liv is saying, "I've heard of something called the Single-Cellular Cranium Birth Defect."

"Oh, yeah?" Dill laughs and grins at me. "That's what you have Sy."

Liv turns his puppy dog eyes to him. "It's not funny, it's a real disorder, and it's genetic."

I snort. Dillon pauses. "It's what?" he turns and glares at his best friend.

Liv goes pink. "I meant, um, situationally hereditary…that means…uh…depending on where you were made. You know, like, if you were made in a car, or in a hotel room, or on the beach, against a wall, down on the knees – doggy style…"

"Yeah, okay, we get the point," I cringe. It always surprises me when Liv thinks dirty things in that angelic little head of his. He must be hanging around Dillon too much.

"Well," Liv continues, "There's a good chance you two were made in different, erm, ways, even if you're twins. So you know, perfectly possible for you to not have the defect, Dill."

"You're the one made in doggy style, Sy," Dillon sneers.

"Why?" I ask cautiously.

Dillon shrugs. "'Cause you're fuck puppy of the family," he says simply.

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

"In that case, you're made at the carnival," I retort.

"What?"

"'Cause you like to pitch a tent wherever you go."

"Oh, screw you. That's so lame…"

Liv laughs. "I was made in China," he declares.

Silence.

"What?" Dill and I say in unison.

"Oh, it's 'cause," Liv explains, holding up his jeans, "that's what it says on my pants."

Author's Note:

This is a re-write of Forever & Ever Until We're Doomed to Danshaul.

Those who read the original will probably notice that significant changes have been made. This is because when I first wrote it I was just making it up as I went along, and there was no particular direction that I wanted to go. Now, I want to put a beginning and an end to this story for my own peace of mind. So enjoy :)

Next chapter should be up by next week.