IT WAS a scene out of a nightmare. No monsters, but Connor would have preferred that to what he walked into Monday morning. Instead it resembled those dreams where he wandered through the halls in his underwear. Except this wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t naked, but that wasn’t nearly as reassuring as it should have been. If Connor thought people stared at him when the picture of him and Graham kissing showed up online, it paled in comparison to the looks he got this morning.
No wonder either.
At first he’d thought the pieces of paper taped to lockers were identifying students who’d be honored at the evening’s sports awards banquet. But instead, the hallway was decorated with pictures of Connor and Graham dancing and kissing. The image quality wasn’t that great, but there was no denying who it was. On some of the images, a big, sloppy heart framed the picture with the words Golden Boy + Guyliner written in thick black.
“Who?” He spun around, taking in the staring students. The hallway wasn’t full since it was still half an hour before the first bell would ring. No one said anything. All giggling and murmuring stopped when he walked in.
He ground his teeth, understanding the phrase “gnashing his teeth” for the first time. A feral anger built up in him, and he wanted to attack the people responsible for this, tear them to pieces. Had to be Roy and Clint, those bigoted asshats. Ignoring his healing knee, he dropped his crutches and snatched the posters off the lockers, one after another, crumbling the white copier paper into balls and hurling them toward the nearest trashcan. He wished he was crushing Roy and Clint instead of the paper.
“Move it,” he snarled, shoving a gawking freshman out of the way.
A low growl echoed through the silent hallway. Connor had worked his way down three banks of lockers before he realized that he was the one making the sound. “Get the fuck out of my way.” Everything was a blur. A haze settled over his vision, and his heartbeat echoed in his ears. Kids jumped back when he approached, and no one stopped him from tearing away the pictures. Good thing too. He was going to rip down every picture from every wall, and then he was going to track down Roy and Clint and….
He jerked to a halt, eyes glued to a locker decorated differently than the others. A crowd had gathered, but they parted like a zipper being yanked open. Connor swallowed back the nausea in his throat. Not a poster. Instead green spray paint spelled out “GO HOME FAG” in tall letters near the bottom of the locker. At eye level was a blown-up newspaper article with Graham’s picture and a headline that read “Gay Teen Hospitalized After Gay Bashing.” In black permanent marker, someone had written “This is what happens to cocksuckers.”
“Oh God, Graham.” Connor stumbled forward and ripped the article off the locker. “Cruel bastards. Who did this? Who the hell did this?”
Rage burned in him, hotter and wilder than anything he’d ever felt before. How someone—anyone—could do something this horrible was beyond him. Graham had already lived through the nightmare once. And now some sadistic prick had to go and do something so spiteful.
Connor whirled to face the silent, unmoving crowd. “I’m going to find out who’s responsible for this, and when I do, I’m going to kick some ass. I’m dead serious.”
No one met his eyes. Some people shifted from foot to foot, and some looked away, but no one moved. A ripple in the gathered crowd drew his attention to the nearest exit. Roy and Clint stood, leaning casually against a window. Roy smirked and blew a kiss in Connor’s direction.
“You stupid son of a bitch!” Connor surged forward but stopped when his knee objected to the movement. He hissed in a breath and took the pressure off his left leg. The knee throbbed. The satisfaction on Roy’s sneering face was enough to ignore the pain, though. Before he could do more than take another step forward, Coach Baxter strode down the hall.
“What’s going on here?”
Students scattered, leaving Connor standing in the nearly deserted hallway with Baxter.
Baxter looked around, his eyes lingering on the balls of crumbled paper. Then they focused on Graham’s locker. “Who’s responsible for this?” His voice was cold. Connor didn’t know if it was due to the nature of the graffiti, or if he just objected to the vandalism. Not that it mattered.
“I wish I knew,” Connor said.
Baxter shook his head. “Stupid punks. I’m getting too old for this. I’ll have the custodian see if he can get that cleaned up. It’ll probably have to be painted, though.” He sighed, propping his fists on his hips, then headed toward the office. “Stupid punks.”
“What’s going on?” Allyson walked up to him.
Connor took a deep breath, trying to clear his head. He bent down to retrieve a flyer and passed it to her. She smoothed out the creases and looked at the page. Then she looked down the hallway at the dozens of balls of paper and the row of lockers that still had their pages. Her green eyes were wide and full of sympathy. Connor pointed to Graham’s locker and found the copied article.
“That’s horrible.” She scanned the headline and the first couple of paragraphs. “How could someone use this to do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, leaning against a locker and closing his eyes. “I don’t understand anything anymore. Why didn’t the teachers stop them? How could they just leave that shit up?”
“You know there aren’t any classrooms down this corridor.” Allyson wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Connor. I’m so sorry.” Connor returned the hug, needing the comfort.
With Baxter gone, students started moving through the corridor again, many stopping to drop off or pick up books at their lockers.
“I can’t let him see that,” he murmured. He buried his face in Allyson’s hair and inhaled the familiar scent of her shampoo.
She stiffened in his arms. “I don’t think you can stop it.” He looked up.
Graham stood there, ten feet away, the look of betrayal and hurt a punch to Connor’s gut. He took in the flyers, his locker, and Connor with his arms wrapped around Allyson in one all-encompassing sweep. His jaw locked, he turned on the ball of his foot and stalked away.
Allyson slapped his chest. “Connor, you idiot. Go after him. He needs you.”
“Do you actually think he’s going to talk to me? After the way I’ve been treating him? After seeing what Roy and Clint did this morning?”
“You have to try,” she said, pushing at him. “Isn’t he worth it?”
Was he worth it? Was she kidding? Graham was worth… everything. “You’re right.”
He hadn’t gotten two steps before she ran forward and grabbed his crutches. “Use your crutches, for crying out loud. You’re going to hurt your knee.”
He tucked the crutches under his shoulders and sped after Graham. “Graham,” he called when he’d cut the distance between them in half. “For Christ’s sake, Graham, will you wait? Chasing after you isn’t so easy for me right now.”
He ignored the kids who stopped to stare, his entire focus on Graham. Though he stopped in front of an empty classroom, Graham didn’t turn around. His back was stiff, and his hands clenched at his sides. His body practically vibrated with contained rage.
When Connor finally caught up, though, it wasn’t rage that shadowed his features. It was pain. “What do you want?” Graham demanded.
Now that he had caught up with Graham, he didn’t know what to say. “Look, I….” What did a person say to that? I’m sorry my classmates are pricks? I’m sorry I was a prick?
“You know, I actually thought things would be okay here,” Graham said when it became clear that Connor wasn’t going to say anything. “Yeah, there were a couple of narrow-minded jerks, but that’s normal, right? I convinced myself that Green Valley was a nice town, kind of rural and uncomplicated, but nice on the whole. The players on the soccer team seemed to accept me, and I made a couple of friends. I told myself that I wouldn’t let anything anyone did or said get to me. After all, I’d already survived the worst, so nothing else could touch me. I wasn’t going to hide or pretend.”
They had an audience. Students stood there, watching Graham with the rapt attention they’d give to a movie. All that was missing was the popcorn.
“I should have listened to you,” Graham continued, oblivious to the crowd. “I should have wondered why a guy like you, someone liked and respected by everyone, would be so eager to get out of Green Valley. I thought you were overreacting to the tension between you and your father.”
“Graham—”
“I did everything wrong. I decided to be open about who I was. I told myself being gay didn’t affect anyone but me. Who was I kidding? Being gay has ruined my life.”
Graham spun on his heel and dragged Connor into the classroom, his movement jerky. His eyes were red, but tearless. He stopped inside the room with a suddenness that surprised Connor.
“Did you know I was on track to be on the US Olympic soccer team? Yeah, me. I was young for it too, but I was good. Being gay ruined that for me. I’ll never be an Olympic soccer player. I probably won’t even make it to the Major League Soccer teams. Right now, I’ll be lucky to make it onto a good college team. I’ll never be as good as I once was. Never. All because some prejudiced assholes were so afraid that I’d corrupt their baby brother that they beat me up and set me on fire.”
Someone gasped. The crowd had migrated to the door to watch the scene. Graham stormed over and slammed the door in their gaping faces.
“My parents were forced to move away from a city they loved to the middle of bumfuck nowhere, my mom quit her job, all because I’m gay. My old friends don’t talk to me. The boy I like won’t acknowledge me. Being queer has brought me nothing but misery. So you know what, let people write shit on my locker and call me names. I don’t give a fuck anymore.”
Connor stood there, speechless, and watched Graham open the door and force his way through the crowd and then walk out of the school.