I don't know how I feel about this. Dr. Neidermeyer said she's going to read this later, so is it going to sound like sucking up if I say anything good about her? Well, we'll see.
So I'm supposed to try journaling for a while. At least I get to see Jordan this weekend. I haven't seen him since I was in the hospital. Mr. and Mrs. Sendic brought him up to see me just about every day, until the DFCS lady said that wouldn't be a good idea and put a stop with it until a judge decided a few things. I guess I should still call them the Department of Family and Children Services, and not what I really think of them. Ms. Kathy (she won't let me call her by her last name) has been tolerable though, I guess.
Ugh, I need to slow down. She's really not bad. At least she convinced the judge that there was some hope for me. As long as I keep seeing Dr. Neidermeyer, and she doesn't think I'm going to do anything else stupid, then I'll "be safe to be around other children". The court determined that I was putting Jordan at risk by everything I did with Duncan. They don't care that I did it all FOR him.
I guess there was the whole thing about getting into a knife fight with that bastard, Greg. Really though, I barely nicked him. He was too fast, and disarmed me before I could do what I REALLY wanted to do.
I can't figure out if I am mad at Nathan or not. Really, I'm not and I know it, but he did go behind my back. He swears he didn't give any details, but apparently back at Christmas he started talking to his parents about whether they would ever consider applying to be emergency foster parents. He SWEARS he only told them he had a gut feeling about our uncle and swears he didn't tell them any details. But they did it! So when everything went down last month, they were able to take Jordan home with them.
Dr. Neidermeyer Ms. Stacy (Ugh, I'll never get used to that. You don't call adults by their first name. It's not right.) Anyway, Ms. Stacy says that if I keep cooperating, then soon enough she thinks she can work with Ms. Kathy to convince the judge that I can live with them, too. Until, the group home is tolerable. At least it's in the same area of town so that I can go to the same school as Nathan now. I can't spend the night yet, but I was allowed to go to the D&D game at Nathan's house the last three weeks, so that's great. I missed it.
It looks like I dodged another bullet, maybe. It would seem that Mr. Gregory Harper Stone is going to be charged with aggravated assault, in addition to everything else he did to me. The way "sigh" Ms. Stacy explained it, he is being charged with assaulting me with a deadly weapon because he is HIV positive. I can't believe I just wrote that. I'm clean right now, but I'll have to get tested every three months for a long time, because they say sometimes it takes years to show anything. That scares me, because I still can't remember much at the cabin once Greg showed up. So I don't know if he used a condom.
Even worse, I had sex with James after the cabin, and we didn't use a condom either. So now I have to tell him. How do I possibly have that conversation? Especially since we've barely spoken since then? The second he found out Greg had put me in the hospital, James bailed. For all I know, he was already planning on ghosting me after the D&D club. Ms. Stacy says that she thinks it's better that I don't date for a while anyway. She says that I'm confused about the difference between sex and love, and I need to roll it back for a while. "Roll it back," that's how she said it. As opposed to rolling on my back? Damn, I forgot she was going to read this later.
I had to start seeing a nutritionist yesterday, in addition to weekly meetings with Ms. Kathy, and twice weekly meetings with Ms. Stacy. (Can't I PLEASE just call you Dr. Neidermeyer? Pretty please?) Anyway, Ms. Stacy told me that spending so long being food insecure, as she called it, always skipping meals to make sure that Jordan always had enough to eat, has given me an eating disorder. She said it is something like Anorexia, but not quite. She said that me viewing everything as transactional has also added to it. So now I have to start on a specific diet at the group home, and last night for dinner they gave me about twice as much food as I could ever eat. Then today, I had to report to the nurse's office for lunch hour and eat in her office. One, it was embarrassing, and two, I missed out on sitting with Nathan and his friends in the cafeteria.
This sucks. Apparently I am going to have to eat in the nurse's office for the foreseeable future, to make sure I'm not skipping any meals. I would mention some options I've already thought about, but you know, Ms. Stacy's going to read this eventually! How long is this going to go on?
Ever had a week that is the lowest of lows, and you just don't know if you can make it through? Talk about bad timing. I had to call James this week. I was kind of surprised that he didn't hang up on me when he heard my voice though. I didn't tell him everything, but I had to tell him about having sex with Greg. I still can't say the "R" word for what he did, so I said that we had sex, and I didn't agree to it. God, I'm such a baby. I started crying when James started cussing me out when I told him about the HIV thing. I don't know if he's going to take it seriously and get himself tested, but I hope he does.
On top of that, Tuesday I had to miss half a day of school because I had to go to court and testify against Greg. (How come I can call Greg and Duncan by their first names with no problem, but with Ms. Stacy and Ms. Kathy, it weirds me out?) Anyway, everybody was there, not just Ms. Stacy and Ms. Kathy, but also Mr. and Mrs. Sendic, and Jordan. They all came to support me, but sometimes it made it harder to tell what happened with all of them there to hear all the details. I had to tell about a lot of stuff that happened at the cabin. Ms. Kathy said that they tried to get the judge to let me testify on camera instead of in court, but the best he would do was clear out any media from the courtroom.
I about wanted to kill the asshole defense attorney when he started in with me, trying to make it sound like I wanted all that to happen. He kept confusing me, because he would talk about something I agreed to, and make it sound like I was agreeing to other stuff I didn't like. He made me admit that I let Duncan tie me up. He made me admit that I didn't fight Duncan when he was doing stuff like spanking me. I wanted to shrink up and disappear when I started crying up there in front of everyone. Ms. Kathy kept jumping up and yelling at the judge, and the judge would just turn around and tell the asshole defense attorney to stop with what he was saying, but then the asshole defense attorney would just change to another example and start doing the same thing. Greg just sat there with this blank face the whole time. I hope they give him the electric chair. Does Georgia have an electric chair? I don't know, but his attorney needs to fry right there beside him.
I am so glad I'm in a new school. Marcus reached out to me online to find out what happened to me. I didn't tell him much, just that I had moved and was going through some stuff. He said that James has a bunch of people calling me "AIDS Baby", and has spread a bunch of stories about me all over school. Supposedly the new rumor is that I was minutes away from snapping and shooting up the school. He said that he had been looking forward to gaming with me, and was disappointed that I wouldn't be back. I apologized to him for the stuff James had said to him, but he blew it off and said it wasn't my fault. When he asked, I told him he could tell Mr. Kape that I wished him well with the club. It's so weird that I was the reason they started the club, and now I won't be there for it.
I mentioned it to Nathan, and he said we would have to start one at Carlisle High, just so he could see me a little more often. DM did something really special for me last Friday. It may not have meant much to the other guys, but my D&D character, Caliban, was a member of the Harper's Guild. Somehow Nathan found out that Greg's middle name was Harper, so he planned this whole thing in the gang where Caliban broke away from the Harper's Guild. He told me after the game that he hoped it could be one more way for me to break away from everything that happened with Greg. Ms. Stacy said that she liked the idea as well.
Finally, it's official. I'm nervous, but really excited. Next Friday when I go over to the Sendic's after school, I get to stay! Ms. Kathy says it's a trial basis for now, but Mr. Sendic told her they are going to fight to make it permanent. I wasn't supposed to know this, but I overheard them talking, and the Sendic's have already petitioned for permanent foster status with Jordan rather than emergency status. Maybe they will do the same with me, maybe they won't. But at least Jordan is taken care of, and that's all I ever cared about anyway, right? I even told Ms. Kathy that if me staying away from the Sendic's would help my brother stay there, then I would stay in the group home. I swear Ron, my roommate in the home, is so jealous that I get to go over there every Friday.
And then this past Saturday, Nathan picked me up first thing in the morning and we spent the whole day at the skate park. Oh, and Friday when I was over there, I saw the first steps of what they are doing, and I can't believe it! Right now Jordan has been camping out in Brian's room. But they are converting the basement into a bedroom for Nathan, and they want me and Jordan to take his bedroom upstairs.
But I nearly came out of my chair at Ms. Stacy yesterday though. We were talking about Simon. Ugh, I know. Even more embarrassment. But we were talking about transactional relationships, and how I had developed a pattern of treating sex as something either owed, or used to pay for things. Then she asked me if I ever felt like I owed Jordan anything, and if I had ever done anything similar with HIM! What the fuck hell? She actually asked if I had ever had sex with Jordan? She said she had to know, before she could sign off on me going to live with the Sendic's.
They found him. Duncan, I mean. Greg tried to tell everyone that "Duncan" had been a fake name and that he was long gone. I may be an idiot but I'm not a moron. I've had a photocopy of Duncan Ryan Morrow's drivers license since the second time we ever met. And yes, I had also verified that I had his real address. Anyway, Ms. Kathy told me some stuff about him. Back around the first of October Duncan had gotten a new position at work. He hadn't been lying about that. He just failed to mention that the new position also came with him needing to relocate to Chicago after New Years. It took them a while, but sure enough, he was living up in Chicago, same name, same company.
Maybe in some screwed up way he thought he was taking care of us by putting Greg in charge of us? How messed up is that? Or maybe not, because we also found out that there was another part of my mom's will. She had left the house in my name, and I knew that she had mortgage insurance that had paid it off. I knew there was something called a trust that was holding the house until I turned 18. What nobody had told me was that that same trust was holding a couple of thousand dollars as well, and had been paying the property taxes every year. When the courts looked into everything with all this and contacted the insurance company that had set up the trust, they found out that Duncan had tried five different times to get them to release the trust to him. He could just never produce enough legal documentation that he was our legal guardian. So no, I don't believe he was looking out for us when he sent Greg over. I think he really did beg $1000 out of him, and tried to skip town. How is it that he thought nobody would come looking for him though?
So I've been here a week now. At the Sendic's, I mean. Ms. Stacy talked to me about this, and what to expect. But seriously, I'm on pins and needles. Everybody here knows what I did, and what happened to me. I'm pretty sure even Brian knows, at least most of it. Jordan is just as happy with me as he ever is. He's thrilled that I am going to be living here now. But still, I am on edge around Mr. Sendic, and I still can't look Mrs. Sendic in the eye. I mean, she knows I let guys fuck have sex with me, to keep a place to stay. How do I come back from that?
Jordan's kind of weirding me out, too. I'll need to talk to Ms. Stacy about this next week, because we didn't talk about this. But Jordan is completely settled here. He even calls Mrs. Sendic "mom" a lot of the time. I don't know, but it feels weird. He says he's excited for next weekend though. Nathan and I have been crashing in the basement since I moved in, but they've done enough that next weekend Nathan is officially moving downstairs, and Jordan and I are moving upstairs.
I'm having trouble being around Nathan sometimes, too. He's always super nice to me, but sometimes it's a little TOO nice, you know? I get it, he's always been nice to me, and I never really thought about it, other than to be grateful. But lately I've been feeling like there is something else there. He swears that he isn't trying to tell me "I told you so", but it still feels like it sometimes. Now that IS something I talked to Ms. Stacy about, and she just says it is understandable. Especially since she said I tend to think of relationships transactionally.
In fact, we had to have a whole conversation about that for the Sendics. She even offered to talk to them for me, and I may let her. I always feel like I'm in the way. Like I'm taking food off their table, and inconveniencing them. They assure me that I am not an inconvenience, and that Mr. Sendic makes plenty of money. Still, I can never get it out of the back of my mind. It really doesn't help that my ED (eating disorder) was explained to the Sendics. So now they know about that as well, and they are making me eat more than I really want.
Please just kill me now. After our session today, Ms. Stacy made me leave my journal with her, so that she can read it over tonight. Then when I see her on Thursday, we are going to talk about what she thinks. In the meantime, she wants me to talk about my other friends.
Simon's a hot mess. I can't tell if he is gay or straight. He says straight, but he still does weird stuff that makes me think he is into me in some way. His mom and step-dad are getting divorced. So will Phil be his ex-step-dad? Or suddenly no relation anymore? I think he is glad to be rid of Phil, to be honest. There always seemed to be an issue between them. Anyway, I'm glad Ms. Stacy's "no sex" rule for me is in place, just in case he tries to say anything else.
Rusty is just weird. LOL. He's loud and has no filter, but that's what makes him fun. He's not really the kind of guy I would normally be friends with, but I get why Nathan likes him. Plus, he and Simon get along famously.
Brian is, well, Brian. He's Nathan's little brother. He's a little chubby, and his glasses make him a bit nerdy looking, but he fits into our group really well for being so much younger. He and Jordan get along like two peas in a pod, so I wouldn't give him up for anything.
I haven't made a lot of friends at school. There are a couple in some of my classes that I get on well with. I'm still going strong on my schoolwork, even with everything going on. I was only in the hospital for a week, but since it was right there as school was starting back, plus transferring to a new school, I was given a lot of leeway in getting back into things.
So there is this new kid in my AP Lit class that is really cute! Oh my God!
-- The end of Cadence.
Thank you to everyone who has been along for the journey. Please email me at hokkaidohotel86it@gmail.com and tell me what you think. I hope you enjoyed the story.
Thank you to Saudade, Dr. Bad, Weston Leigh, Earth-boy, Ronyx, Intpwarrior, Greyjedi666, and Johnny Kape for all the support and cheerleading. Thank you to everyone who has written to me through the course of this story.
Special thanks to Johnny Kape for all the editing assistance.
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Let's keep the party going over on my other story, Welcome to Avernus! Be sure to check it out and tell me what you think.
https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/sf-fantasy/welcome-to-avernus/
Greyson B.