Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2015 22:50:25 -0700
From: Douglas DD DD <thehakaanen@hotmail.com>
Subject: Rough Edges  Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11
TOUCHING BOTTOM

<Chandler Ecklund>

Coach Sanders is the absolute coolest high school coach in the whole state,
if not the entire world. What other coach will listen patiently while you
ask him to give you a place to fuck your boyfriend before a game. Of
course, being a coach, he had to pretend I was out of line, and being a
coach he totally had to say he couldn't help me. But I knew that was how he
would have to react—I might be just a high school kid a couple of weeks
away from graduating, and I might be a few days away from being eighteen,
but I have a clue how the world works. My dad is a coach and a teacher,
too. Still, I had to ask, because everybody has an occasional moment of
weakness.

The big deal with Coach Sanders is that you know he listened and
understood even if he pretended he didn't. But not only is he cool, he
knows baseball and how to coach it. Dad said that when Coach Sanders
was his assistant at the middle school, there was no doubt that Coach
knew more about coaching than he did.

So, even though Coach couldn't give me and Korey a spot for our night
before the game fuck, I knew he wanted to and he would do it if he could.
But when Korey and I got back from watching the other Class A semifinal
and saw that Raul and Zack weren't in the room, we decided to strip and
fuck.

We were instantly boned up. I locked the dead bolt so our roomies would
have to knock if they got back from wherever they were and wanted to get
into the room. As for Korey and me, we knew this was going to be a quick
fuck. This wasn't about lovemaking, it was about our usual pregame ritual.

Here is why the ritual was important. In our lovemaking, Korey was usually
the top. By usually, I mean maybe seventy percent of the time. I liked
having a big cock in my ass and I always have. Not that Korey doesn't like
bottoming—I mean his twin brothers taught him all about it when he was
like ten or so; I just like it more. Plus, even though both of us are
competitive leaders, Korey is a little more dominant than I am, probably
because he had to deal with three older brothers and I'm an only.

Whatever, during a game that I pitch he is the total boss of me since he's
my catcher. Okay, not total, but close. I mean he all but has me by the balls
during a game. He's the top and I'm the bottom. We figured back in middle
school that if he's gonna top me during a game, then I have to top him the
day or night before to give us balance. It's how things have been for us
since we were twelve or so.

We kissed and petted each other a little to warm us up, but the pregame
sex between us wasn't about foreplay and making love. It was about me
fucking his amazing muscular catcher's ass hard and deep. Not like Hunter
fucks Kraig, because those two have some all-out wrestling matches when
they fuck—sometimes with bruises. I've been fucked by Hunter, and let me
tell you, it's an experience you don't fucking forget. But still, I fuck Korey's
ass good and hard.

Those guys in Hunter's class were serious about their sex, and even
though they were two years older than Korey and me they had no problem
messing around with us. And let me tell you, we loved it, especially when
they were in high school and we were still in middle school. Having sex with
the big jock dudes made our day. I haven't done much with younger kids.
Jeffrey Bednarzyk and Nicky McCall love messing around with me and
Korey a lot. Jeffery will suck anybody with a cock it seems, but he only
does anal stuff with Nicky, Eric, Noah, Marty, and his little brother Sammy.

Anyway, I'm bullshitting too much. I fucked Korey hard, I fucked him deep, I
kissed his mouth and bit his neck and shoulder, and filled his ass with my
cum. Gawd, I was so fucking ready for the championship game, I wished I
could skip sleeping and go right out and play.

Speaking of sleeping, when Korey and I finished we were surprised Raul
and Zack hadn't come back. I mean it was like fifteen minutes before
curfew. We thought maybe they knocked on the door and we were going at
it so hard we never heard them. We decided to pull something on and go
down to the lobby and get their asses into the room before curfew ended.

We could've called them, but we both wondered what we'd do if they didn't
answer their phones, or even if they did answer. Whatever, we were sure
they were down in the lobby with the coaches and the old graduates and
everybody. Not that Raul and Zack hung out with anybody on the team all
that much, especially not the coaches. Not everybody thought that Coach
Sanders was the coolest high school coach in the world, especially guys
like Zack who was pissed about being a reserve as a senior, and guys like
Raul, who got pissed when somebody got on his ass for not doing his best.
Raul wasn't a big fan of Korey either, which was why we wondered how we
ended up with those two as roommates, instead of, say, Toby and Justin,
the other gay boys on the team who were also very cool dudes.

Maybe Coach Sanders thought us captains would keep things in line. Toby
had another way of seeing it. "Maybe Coach doesn't want us staying up all
night fucking like Eric and those guys did when they went to state." Toby
probably had it right.

Well, no matter, when we found out Raul and Zack weren't downstairs and
weren't in anybody else's room, Korey and I told coach they were AWOL.
It's not that we were a couple of narcs, ratting out our teammates. But we
were the co-captains, we were playing for the state championship, we all
knew and agreed to the rules, and there was no way we were going to let
two unhappy players fuck things up for the rest of us. We didn't run around
looking for guys breaking rules so we could tell the coaches about it —a lot
of the shit we saw going on were things where we could look the other way,
or, as we did most times, deal with ourselves.

Korey and I saw Coach Sanders and Coach Miller talking with Marty and
some other guys. We went over to where they were sitting and I told Coach
Sanders I needed to talk to him—privately.

Coach Sanders thought it was about us getting our pregame sex in, but I
told him this could be something really serious. I told him about Raul and
Zack not being in the room or anywhere else in the hotel that we could
figure out.

"We're not trying to dime them out or anything," I told him. "But this is the
state tournament, Korey and I are the co-captains, and we both think things
should be done right."

Coach thanked us. We went back to our room, took a quick shower,
together, of course, brushed and flossed the fangs, and got under the
covers. We'd just turned the lights off when Raul and Zack, along with
Coach Fitz, came into the room. The fact that Coach Fitz was with them
could only mean that the two of them were in some deep, deep shit. They
didn't say anything to us and we didn't say anything to them. They got all of
their stuff and left with Coach Fitz. We didn't find out until morning that
they'd been suspended for the championship game. I figured that's what
happened as soon as they came into the room, but it still really hurt when
Coach Sanders made it official by telling us.

"The one bit of good news I have is that I put Nick and Jeffrey on our roster
as back-ups. We're allowed two of reserves in case of injury or something
else happening," Coach told us. "Those two have their uniforms with them
and will suit up this afternoon. They don't have the experience of Raul and
Zack, but you all know them and you know that they are an important part
of the program and this team."

Coach told us that even though Nicky, a sophomore, had only played in a
few varsity games and Jeffrey, a freshman, hadn't played in any they were
needed to fill our active roster with Raul and Zach gone. But even cool
coaches like Coach Sanders have to spew out the BS sometimes. The only
reason Nicky and Jeffrey were the extra two players on the roster was
because they were our batboys. Coach said he told them it was unlikely
they would play, but without them we only had three substitutes, so we'll
see what happens.

Sitting at breakfast we all talked about the suspensions. We were all pissed
at Raul and Zack for letting the team down, but we agreed to be behind
Nicky and Jeffrey, and to totally support the decision of the coaches.    We
welcomed the two of them to the "championship" Mustangs. Even a pile of
shit wasn't going to stop us from going out and kicking ass this afternoon.

<Larry Sanders>

It wasn't the best of mornings for me. This team was definitely not the team
of Eric, Noah, Marty, the Corcoran twins, and that whole bunch. But, I didn't
expect them to be. That didn't mean I couldn't hold them to the same high
standards those boys had set. All season they'd required more careful
watching and more nurturing, but they had grown and won big games and
were now playing for a state championship. I was really more disappointed
in the two suspended boys than I was in the team as a whole. In fact,
they'd reacted rather well to the news and were doing what they could to
make Nick and Jeffrey feel welcome.

Coach Hernandez of the Richfield Mules gave Phil and me some
encouraging words just after I'd made the final arrangements to add Nick
and Jeffery to the active roster. The Mules were playing in the B
championship game, which was scheduled to start at ten. Our A game
started at one.

"Tough break, coach," he told me. "Looks like it's a good thing you started
the Garcia kid yesterday."

"I have a feeling he might not have followed the senior's lead if he knew he
was starting today." Which is what had happened, I found out from Raul's
father, who called me this morning. He wasn't excusing his son. In fact he
said his son needed to learn to quit following others into trouble. This
wasn't the first time that he had found himself in hot water because of his
propensity to follow.

"But with kids, you never know."

"That is all too true, coach. You just never know."

I wondered if every kid had to reach some kind of bottom in order to grow
up. It might be a behavioral issue, as with Raul, or even Connor from the
old Go to State Team. It could be alcohol abuse, as with Marty, or a
personal tragedy, as with Noah. I wondered what kind of bottom a kid like
Eric Simmons had reached in his life.

I knew what mine was, and compared to most it seemed a trifle. Mine was
having my overtures of friendship rejected by Phil. It was learning that not
everybody I wanted to be friends with wanted to be friends with me. It was
learning that I wasn't as good a judge of others as I thought I was. But I
later learned that maybe my instincts were better than I thought.

I knew that Phil's bottom was deeper and darker than mine. I knew that we
reached our respective bottoms at about the same time. And, I knew that I
had a lot to do with Phil's bottom not getting to the point where he would
end up in juvenile detention. But, it was oh, so close.

<Phil Miller>

Larry was going through a tough time. He took a great deal of pride in
coaching teams that did things "the right way" both on and off the field.
He'd coached a lot of kids who were not only top notch athletes but top
notch human beings. He expected nothing short of perfection when he took
a team on a trip. It was the same with me when I coached his kids in
summer ball.

Raul and Zack had fucked up. I could identify with fucking up. While my
major fuckups had been as a headstrong eleven-year-old in sixth grade
who was right on the cusp of puberty, I managed to make a few other less
serious mistakes in my life.

Because Larry came from an environment where he was given a great deal
by his parents in love and guidance, not to mention material things, he
sometimes couldn't identify with the bad boys in the same way I could.
Some of Connor's shenanigans made perfect sense to me, even if I had to
discipline him because of his actions.

I have a brother who was a hard core alcoholic at age twelve, about the
same age as Marty was. The difference was Marty got help and is in
recovery. Keegan lives on the streets of Seattle somewhere, showing up at
Troy's house when he needs money or some other kind of help, promising
to stay sober this time. It's a promise that usually lasts a day or two. I often
wonder what would happen if Keegan met Marty.

After I punched Larry in the gut in the cafeteria corridor, I went all-in with
Tim, Carlos, and Skyler.  I didn't like what was on their list of tasks, but I
wanted to be accepted by somebody without having to really commit myself
emotionally. I wanted to be with kids who were bad and angry so I could be
bad and angry. I wanted to make trouble, but without the burden of getting
caught. It was the threat of getting caught that had me holding back at
times. I wanted to be all-in, and yet I had trouble totally committing myself
because in the end, I wasn't really a bad kid. Angry and misguided, but not
a thug and punk like Tim, or like the second rate bullies and dishonest,
lying sacks of shit that Carlos, Skyler, and some of their buddies were.

I cut Larry out of my life. I quit doing the little flirting business with him on
the bus. I was pleased when the seating order in homeroom was changed
and I no longer had to sit behind him. But I soon missed being in that seat. I
liked looking at the back of his head. I liked admiring his brown hair. Even
though it was well cut, he always seemed to have just the right amount of
hair out of place—like he was proud of his looks, but not to the point of
flaunting them. I loved it when he moved his head enough so I could see
his stately face, his cheeks smooth without a hint of peach fuzz on them. I
missed his turning around before the bell as he tried to be friendly. I found
myself sneaking looks across the room in his direction.

One of the things on my list of tasks was to jerk off in the shower. I asked
Skyler what this had to do with being a friend.

"Just do it. It proves you'll do whatever we do," Skyler told me.

"You mean you guys have jerked off in the shower?"

"No, but it means we want to and will do it someday."

In spite of Skyler's total illogic, I jerked off in the shower after PE. I stood at
the farthest shower stem and did it after most of the other boys had finished
their showers. Jung, the Asian kid who was Larry's friend, saw what I was
doing and had a boner.

"What are you looking at chink?" I snarled. He cringed and I felt badly about
being an asshole.

One of the tasks I kept putting off was to give each of the three punks a
blow job. That was the kind of shit they had Andy doing, and they were
bullying him. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was being bullied
just as Andy had been bullied. With him it had been physical bullying. They
knew I'd kick their asses in a fight, so they took to psychological bullying
instead. They were too young to realize what they were doing, and for that
matter so was I. But what I slowly started to figure out was that Tim, Carlos,
and Skyler were predators and were ready to prey on anybody who was
vulnerable—and for all my outside toughness, I was vulnerable on the
inside. They instinctively knew that.

I also had to smoke weed with them. While I really didn't want to do that
either, it was something we would be doing together, so I figured I could
handle it. In order to look like I knew what I was doing, I picked an evening
when Keegan was home and Troy wasn't.

Troy was spending a lot of time with his girlfriend and would go to her
house after football practice to study, eat dinner, and do who knows what
else. Dad had left for his deployment a few days ago, so it was just me and
Keegan when mom was at work, and often it was just me and Keegan
when she was home and had pills to space out on.

"Shit, bro, you really want to get high? I thought you were all goody-goody
like fucking Troy," Keegan said incredulously.

"I just want to try it, see if I like it," I said lamely.

And so he showed me what to do and we got high together three or four
times over the next week. I wasn't concerned about Troy smelling weed in
the house, since he knew Keegan smoked it. I knew he wouldn't have a
clue I was toking, too.

I thought smoking pot would make me feel really cool and really special.
Instead I felt closed in and paranoid. I felt like with dad gone and Troy not
at home, Keegan and I were vulnerable to the evil shadows outside of my
bedroom window. Then I began to wonder if Keegan was one of the
shadows. I fell into a restless sleep on my bed, fully dressed except for my
shoes.

Troy shook me when he came into the room. "Hey bro, wake up. Looks like
you ended up taking a long nap," he said in a friendly voice.

I buried my head under my pillow, uttering a muffled, "Go way. Leave me
alone." He kept his hand on my shoulder. "Don't touch me!" I yelled at him
as I brushed his arm away.

"What's the problem, Phil?" he asked in a concerned voice.

"Just go away."

"Okay, but I can't go far; we do share the same room, you know." I kept
silent. "Well, I'm here for you if you need me." He took a step away and
then said, "You might want to get out of your school clothes for bed."

I wordlessly took off my socks, shirt, and jeans, tossing them on the floor.
Turning my back to my brother, I pulled the top sheet and blanket over me
and tried to get to sleep. I didn't bother brushing my teeth. While Troy didn't
get on my case that night, my behavior made him suspicious, and my
subsequent behavior convinced him that something was seriously wrong.

Keegan and I smoked weed together two more times before I felt confident
enough to smoke it with my three new "friends". The second time we toked
together, Keegan and I got naked and I gave him a blow job. He kept
saying, "Suck my dick faggot," as my head bounced up and down on his
four inches. I was stoned and I didn't care what he said, but later I
wondered where he learned to talk like that. I saw he had a few stray pubic
hairs as well, and the more I sucked him the darker and longer they
became in my mind, until they looked like snakes creeping around his pubic
region. I choked and coughed when he came in my mouth, which was
strange as well since his cum wasn't nearly as thick and plentiful as Troy's.

It was Monday morning after I sucked off Keegan that I got high with Carlos
and Skyler. I went to Skyler's house where I met him and Carlos. Tim lived
in a different neighborhood which was in the opposite direction of the
school.

"Tim's gonna take a hit in the boys' room before school," Skyler said as he
took a hit.

"And if you pass this test, then we'll all take a hit before school in the
bathroom really soon," Carlos added.

I wanted to ask why I needed to take a test to be a friend, but I grabbed the
roach from Carlos and took a hit.

"Oh, shit, nice hit Phil. You've been doing this before."

I took a second hit for good measure, even though we'd agreed on one
apiece. I wasn't going to be a wuss. If I was with the bad boys then I was
going to be bad. Skyler and Carlos followed suit.

We barely made the bus. As soon as Keegan saw me he knew what the
three of us had done. "You could have at least invited me," he griped. I
ignored him. "And my goody, goody little brother is going to school stoned."
He started giggling and so did I. Some of the other kids at the bus stop
looked at us, but they didn't say anything. There was nothing unusual about
kids in this neighborhood going to school high, or stoned, or buzzed on
booze. Skyler said he'd gone to school stoned when he was in the third
grade.

We watched Tim take his hit in the boys' room. We waited until the final bell
for homeroom rang, which gave us the room to ourselves. Skyler and I took
a hit from Tim's bong, but Carlos passed. We were all late for homeroom,
which meant detention, but we didn't care.

I certainly didn't care. I was in a zone completely different from everybody
else. I was in school, but I wasn't in school. I would have felt really great,
but when I looked over at Larry, my paranoia took over again. I knew that
he knew that I was high. I tried telling myself I didn't care, but my mind kept
saying I did care—that I didn't want Larry to know I was sitting in home
room, stoned. The idea that I might actually care what he thought made me
angry.

I had two tasks left in order to become a full-fledged member of Tim's little
gang. He claimed to have more followers than just the three of us, and
while I saw him hanging with some other punks he never introduced them
to us. I was slowly realizing that I didn't like or trust Tim at all. I could deal
with Carlos, Skyler, and their buddies; after all I'd known them and kicked
their asses last year in elementary school.

But I also had the feeling that I was dirty and slimy for hanging with them.
While it wasn't apparent to me, subconsciously I wanted to be better than I
was. I wanted to go back to being the person that Andy loved. Hell, I
wanted to be the kind of person a guy like Larry wanted as a friend. I
wanted to be back on the baseball field, being a catcher and having my
teammates like me and listen to me. I was lost and lonely. I had dug myself
a hole and didn't know how to get myself out of it.

My first remaining task was to shoplift something from a store. I won't go
into the details of how I pulled it off, but Skyler helped me. I took candy on
three different occasions and was so fucking grateful each time that I didn't
get caught. My last theft was a Seahawks t-shirt that I took off of a display
table.

The other task was the blow jobs. I decided I wasn't going to give them. Not
that I had a problem sucking cock; I'd sucked Andy, Troy, and Keegan after
all. But even at age eleven I had a pretty good idea of what a whore was,
and I wasn't going to suck their dicks so that they would pay me with their
friendship. Right then stealing seemed less onerous than being a whore.

The three of them finally gave in on the cock sucking idea. They thought
that because I had been a friend of Andy, they'd be able to manipulate me
into giving them blow jobs like they'd done to Andy. When they saw that I
wasn't going to give, they backed down some.

"Here's the deal," Tim told me. "One of these days you're gonna give me a
blow job, just because. But you can be part of the gang for now if you do
one more thing."

"What?"

"Beat the shit out of your faggot friend, Larry."

"He ain't my friend. And I already punched him out."

"That was one fucking punch. I said for you to beat the shit out of him. And
this time there will be witnesses. Me, Skyler, Carlos, and my BFF Vance.
We'll even help you beat up the dumb shits he hangs with."

With the tradeoff of sex for friendship being removed, I felt like a burden
had been lifted. I didn't want to beat up anybody, but doing so would
cement my reputation as a tough dude who was not to be trifled with.

I felt so good I actually jerked off with Skyler and Carlos as we got high
after school that day. It wasn't a get naked and have sex kind of thing, it
was just some boys entering puberty who were stoned and horny. We
pulled down our pants and undies, pulled up our shirts, and lay on Skyler's
bed smoking a joint and whacking our puds. Carlos had hair and shot a lot
of cum. Skyler was hairless, but dribbled some clear stuff when he came. I
was still hairless and dry. I didn't care. I was doing something cool with
Carlos and Skyler, not because doing so was on a list, but because they
said we were friends.

Carlos rubbed his cum around his chest and belly. "See, that means I am a
man and not a little boy," he said in a high-pitched voice that hadn't started
to drop yet. He ran his hand through his sparse pubic hair. "You guys get
hair and cum and you be men, too."

"Are we gonna have a rumble, like in the movies?" Skyler asked.

"Yep."

"But isn't it kind of dumb to go into their neighborhood?" I asked.  It
certainly didn't seem smart to me to try to start a big fight in their neck of
the woods, especially when we were the punks from the east side of
Stevens and they were the rich kids on the west side.

"They're all pussies," Skyler stated confidently as he pulled up his pants.

"And Tim's brother is going to be close by with his car if you're wondering
how we're gonna get out of there," Carlos explained.

"Yeah, it's gonna be like a hit-and-run," Skyler smirked.

The whole situation sounded crazy nuts to me and I didn't like it. I pulled up
my pants, wondering what I was doing jerking off with two guys I didn't
even like. I don't know if it was the marijuana making me paranoid again or
if it was giving me a moment of clarity, but I had no doubt when I walked
out of Skyler's house that I did not like him, Carlos, or Tim and that they
didn't like me either.

When I got home things started to go really bad. Keegan was home, but
mom and Troy weren't. Keegan had an open bottle of Jack Daniels. I didn't
ask where he got it because I didn't care. I grabbed it and took my first swig
of hard liquor, hating it from the first swallow. I asked if he had more pot
and he laughed. "Little brother goes to middle school and becomes a
stoner. I love it."

He went up to his room and came back with a couple of joints. We sat on
the couch toking with impunity. I took another swig of the JD and this time it
didn't seem so bad. I was thoroughly fucked up. My mind was a mess. I
could see nothing in my life that was going right—everything was fucked
up. I wanted to be dead.

That was when Troy came home. When he saw (and smelled) what was
going on he blew a gasket. He was mad at Keegan for corrupting me and
he was mad at me for having no balls and getting fucked up with Keegan.
He was more than mad, he was furious, but I was so stoned and fucked up
I was hardly affected by it. I just stumbled away and went to our bedroom.

Troy followed me upstairs. I was on my bed, making sure my back was to
him. I knew he was going to keep yelling at me and I wanted him to know I
was going to ignore every word.

Instead he sat on the bed and put his hand on my shoulder. It was the first
time we'd touched since before the night he found me on my bed dressed
and high on weed. "I love you, bro. I know it's been tough. It's been tough
on me, too. But, you're doing this all wrong."

"Shut up," was the only thing I had to say.

"We'll talk about it in the morning." The next day was Saturday which meant
no school. My muddled mind told me it didn't want to get up to listen to my
brother chew me out.

After he left the room I took off my clothes and didn't leave my bed until
mom had dinner ready. I spent the time tripping out, living in a whole
different world from reality. I came down to dinner in the nude. Mom
ordered me to get dressed, but I ignored her in the same way she then
ignored my nudity. All I wanted was food. Keegan acted like everything was
normal while Troy looked at me with concern.

I gulped down everything in sight at dinner time. Mom complimented me on
being a good eater, but Troy knew I had the munchies in the worst way.
Luckily I hadn't had enough to drink to get me sick and lose my dinner.

Troy tried to talk to me again after dinner. I was back on my bed trying
unsuccessfully to get oriented. I was naked, thinking my nudity would clear
my mind and body. I ignored Troy as I stared at the ceiling, locked in my
own world. I noticed him going through my drawers and my backpack. I
wanted to yell at him to leave my stuff alone, but I didn't have the energy. I
fell asleep, naked, on top of my blankets.

When I woke up the next morning I was surprised to find myself in Troy's
bed, wrapped around his naked body. I vaguely remembered going to his
bed after he did. I remember him putting his strong teen arms around me. I
remember crying uncontrollably.

But that didn't finish things. Troy might have comforted me during the night,
but after breakfast he confronted me again. He held up some things that
had me blushing with shame.

"Lots of candy to munch on," he pointed out. "You'd think Halloween wasn't
less than a week away. Oh, and what a nice Seahawks shirt. Nice to see
you saved your nickels and dimes to buy it."

Even though I was feeling thoroughly humiliated, I tried to project an aura
of uncaring stoicism.

Troy held up an envelope and pulled a sheet of paper out of it. "I found this
in your backpack. It's only two weeks old...way to be on top of shit, bro."

"You have no right to go through my stuff," I protested lamely. He had
found a not so flattering progress report and a request for my parents to
schedule a conference during upcoming conference week.

He ignored me and went on. "An F in math. Isn't that your best subject?
And I'm willing to bet there are some reports that didn't find their way into
your backpack. What the fuck is wrong with you, Phil?"

"Nothin'." I mumbled the usual young adolescent copout. I wasn't about to
tell him I'd been kicked out of class twice for refusing to do my work and
that I'd handed in one test where I had zero problems right. I intentionally
missed them all by converting each mixed fraction to a decimal instead of
an improper fraction. If Mr. Rodman, the math teacher, had any brains he
would have seen that I essentially had turned in a perfect test.

Troy sat next to me on the bed. With dad gone, he had all but taken his
place. But then, he'd had practice playing father a lot even before dad was
deployed.

We talked for almost three hours. We talked about my smoking pot with
Keegan. I confessed to smoking with Tim, Skyler, and Carlos, and to being
high in school. I confessed to stealing the candy and the shirt.

We talked about my loneliness and my wanting friends I wouldn't become
attached to the way I'd become attached to Andy. I didn't want the hurt of
losing them. We talked about my wanting to prove myself a tough guy.

"Tough guys don't have to prove themselves," Troy said. "Everybody just
ends up knowing they're tough, like the way you were when you came to
the aid of Andy against the same assholes you're trying to be friends with."

We kept talking through lunch and when we finished we managed to agree
on some things. I said I'd stop smoking weed, but that he'd have to tell
Keegan not to give me shit about it.

"Why should I have to tell him that?" he asked. "You're tougher than he is,
you tell him and then you enforce it if you have to." I saw no problem with
that.

I did not agree to quit hanging around with Tim, Skyler, and Carlos, even
though Troy insisted that I should. Hell, I knew I should quit hanging with
them, but I was afraid of being totally alone again. I didn't tell Troy that, but
looking back, I'm sure he knew about my fears. He knew I wasn't as tough
as I tried to appear on the surface.

We spent the next part of the afternoon taking candy back to the
convenience store where I'd stolen it and the shirt back to the department
store that I stole it from. In both instances I had to talk to the manager,
apologize, and, in the case of the candy, pay back the purchase amount for
the candy I thought I'd eaten. I received two well-deserved lectures and
was asked to not return to the stores.

I gave the math progress report to my mother, who was sober. She was not
pleased, telling me I would be following in the steps of Keegan if I wasn't
careful. I also was told I would have to spend two hours a night catching up
on my back work.

Troy received a great deal of praise for steering me in the right direction
and making me return the items I'd stolen. In fact, the manager of the
department store told Troy to look him up after he turned sixteen if he was
interested in part-time work. I had received a lesson in humility as well as
one in the rewards of honesty and integrity.

Even though Troy had been hard on me, I ended up respecting and loving
him more than ever. I promised myself not to let him down again, a promise
I sometimes had problems keeping. For starters I still didn't have the
resolve to take care of what would do more to keep me out of trouble than
anything else—dumping Tim, Skyler, and Carlos as "friends".

That was how I found myself in the boys' room next to the foyer on
Tuesday after school watching Tim, Carlos, Skyler and Tim's friend Vance,
who was a seventh grader, sneaking swallows of alcohol. Vance had
smuggled a bottle of vodka into school and it was being passed around for
"instant courage" as Vance put it.

I managed to be sneaky, too. The other three were talking up a storm and
paying little enough attention that I was able to fake taking swigs. They'd
each had maybe four swigs of vodka out of the paper bag covered bottle
before a sixth grader wandered in, giving us a suspicious look.

Carlos said we had to go so we wouldn't miss the bus. We picked this day
because the bus had a substitute driver in the morning and probably would
have a sub in the afternoon. That meant that Tim and Vance could sneak
on the bus. Substitutes never knew who belonged on their bus and who
didn't. I was hoping our regular driver would be back, but that wasn't the
case.

Larry and his buddies were sitting in the middle of the bus. Jung, the kid
who saw my boner in PE, Q, the nerdy jock who seemed to be Larry's best
friend, the redheaded kid, the tall skinny kid, and Ben, the weirdo with the
Mohawk, were all there. I had been hoping that they all would have some
reason for missing the bus that afternoon.

Skyler took the seat next to me. "Rumble time," he slurred. I could smell the
alcohol on his breath. "Just like in the movies."

My stop was the first one, but none of the gang moved when we got there.
Keegan looked at me as he walked past. "Ain't you getting off?" he asked. I
shook my head. "Cool, you're gonna stick with the punks. Don't let Troy tell
you what to do."

Vance stood up and grabbed Keegan's jacket. "Who are you calling a punk,
stoner?" Tim yanked him back into his seat, telling him not to be an idiot.
Keegan laughed and hopped off the bus, leaving me wondering what the
quick little exchange was about.

The bus crossed Stevens Avenue and we were soon on the winding streets
of the west side neighborhood, making stops along the way. It was a
neighborhood of large houses and green, well-manicured lawns, not at all
like the east side neighborhood I lived in. We had made a couple of stops
when the big one came. We knew it was the big one because our targets
rose from their seats and disembarked. We followed them.

"Did you guys fall sleep and miss your stop?" the redheaded kid asked with
a touch of sass that I respected.

"You wish that's what happened," Tim said. "You guys are gonna wish you
missed your bus."

"Yeah, you're gonna be so fucked up," Carlos added.

There was way too much talk and not enough action, not my kind of scene
at all. I decided somebody had to get things started, and that somebody
might as well be me and so I landed the first punch.

Next: Interlude