Chapter 1

Story of my goddamned life. I wake up all nice and refreshed and go to get a cup of fucking coffee and I spill boiling water my crotch. That’s a helluva nice good morning, really. I wish I could wake up to that every fucking day.

I’m still in high school, and I’m probably the only kid in Main High School that doesn’t give a damn what people think. I mean, if it weren’t against the law I’d probably go naked, just to prove a point. I’m not afraid of doing illegal things, but nudity really isn’t something you can hide. You can hide drugs and even drunkenness if you tried. But stupidity and nudity are two things you can’t keep from people. Even if you’re going to take a shower, your little brother has to come in and stare at your dick before you can slam the door on his nose.

Siblings, for chrissake.

Around X-town, you get a lot of crazy characters. Like the man across from my house sits in his front yard and plays tea party like a little girl. He tells you to call him Hatty. What the hell? The man is probably eighty years old and is half naked all the time. His signature though, is sitting out there in a thong and his big-ass hat. Senile old man has no idea how gross that is. He thinks he’s a 23 year old lingerie model or something.

The bus! Oh, shit. Drop. Everything. And. Run. That’s my routine right there. Whatever I’m in the middle of doing has to stop, and wait till later so I can catch up to the bus. It knows my routine, and generally will wait longer for me than anyone else. I mean, I only ride the bus because I’m poor. Well, my family is. I shopped at Goodwill when Abercrombie & Fitch was the shit. What kind of odd-end luck was that? But, as I said, I generally don’t care what people think. To me, Abercrombie is just another corporate American scheme to con people out of their hard-earned money for overpriced polos and Henleys. Starbucks is the same way. It’s just coffee. Yeah, woo a trendy white cup. That’s what would make me want a cup of 4 dollar coffee. I could buy a 1/3 of a pound of coffee for that, thanks.

So I climbed on the bus, sat in the first empty-ish seat I could find. This meant—for once—I could sit next to Aaron. Fuck yeah.

“Hey man…” I said, sliding onto the seat. The boy wasn’t very loud, and cared about what everyone thought of him, unlike me. But I actually thought he was the best thing ever. Something was just overly adorable about him, and it made me want to squeeze him until he couldn’t breathe or something.

But today, something was different about him. Instead of his usual meek “hey”, I got a full blown. “Daemon!” and a bear hug, plus a short kiss on the cheek. Was he on meth?

Though it was oddly odd, I turned to hug him back, at which point he leaned into me and was positively being a snuggle-bear.

“Damn, Aaron, you’re happy!” I grinned, not wanting to let go of him, and visa versa.

He sat up for a moment, whispering in my ear, “I told my parents I’m gay!”

If I was completely insane I would have jumped away to another seat. Or was that sane? “I didn’t know that about you!” I said as softly as I could. That might explain why he was so…shy all the time; like he was embarrassed for anyone to know about it. If you knew his true personality, he was quite the flamboyant little kitten. I just kept holding him. That was the funny part.

I never really thought about my sexuality until I found out about Aaron. Then I started questioning if I were straight, bi, gay even. Aaron had always been in my life, and I’d always—to be blunt—wanted to fuck him so hard his nose bled. But I didn’t think of it as being gay. No girls were ever attractive, though. And it wasn’t just any boy. Just Aaron.