Authors note:
This story is based on real events. However, some details will be stretched and embellished for the stories sake. I will be changing names of persons and places, except my own. Any similarity to actual persons, besides the people whom these characters are modeled after, is completely coincidental. If it is not legal to read this material, you probably shouldn't. Legal fees are expensive and a pain in the ass. I hope you enjoy it. I am 20 years old. I tell you this because Nifty says I have to. This is about my high school career and goes into college.
Reviews are awesome. Good ones, preferably. Please send all questions, comments, concerns and nude pics (just kidding) to Tylersaysgo@yahoo.com I will try to respond to all emails as quickly as possible - J
James. That was the name my parents decided to give me when I arrived in this world. Possibly, in my opinion, the most painfully boring name in history. Growing up, I was an only child. I was the son of Dr. James Collins and Dr. Laura Smith -- Collins. I had only one childhood friend, Mitchell Reign Spake. We were inseparable all throughout grade school and middle school. We started high school, and that's when my world, as I knew it, would be turned upside down. However Junior and senior year is where the majority of the story will take place. But first, we must start at the beginning.
Waking up at 6:30 should be illegal. What normal person functions that early? I drug myself out of the comfort of my warm bed to shut of my incredibly shrill and annoying alarm clock. I don't even know why I set the damn thing, all it does it make me angry and remind me that the next eight hours of my life will be dedicated to school. After getting better adjusted, I walk into my bathroom to start my morning routine for my first day of freshman year at Northwood High School. After brushing my teeth I grab my grey cargo shorts and a plain black tee and put them on. After tying my puma's I grabbed my backpack and walked downstairs to the kitchen. Like clockwork, my mother was sitting at the bar drinking her coffee. Every morning at 6 a.m. She gets up and makes her coffee and reads the paper.
"Good morning, grasshopper," she says in her mock Asian voice.
The thing I love about my mom is the fact she is incredibly peculiar and quirky. She is a beautiful woman. She stands 5'10 and weighs around, if I had to guess, 130 pounds. Although, I've asked her for years her true weight, but always get the same answer. She storms off screaming something about how she should have sold me to that Columbian drug lord when she had the chance. She has mid-back length golden brown hair that she wears mostly over one shoulder, and beautiful olive skin. Which I mostly think is because she is a dermatologist. That's why it looks so good.
"Good morning, Bruce Lee," I respond getting the orange juice out of the refrigerator.
She chuckled and returned to her newspaper. As I was making my toast, my father sluggishly drags himself into the kitchen. He kisses my mom on cheek and sits down beside her.
"Morning buddy," he says in a groggy tone.
My father, like myself, is not a morning person. If it wasn't for his practice opening at 8 a.m. he probably would sleep until about noon. My father is a stern looking man. He stands at 6'2 and weighs 175 pounds. He has jet black hair, and pale skin. He stays in good shape, visits the gym 5 times a week. I take more after my dad in the looks department. I have black hair that I keep pretty short in an Ivy League style. Currently, I am 5'9 and weigh about 120 pounds. I'm only in ninth grade. Every year for my birthday I always wish to gain weight so I can put on muscle.
"Morning Dad," I respond. After chatting with my parents for a bit and finishing breakfast, the time to go to school approached. I grudgingly got up and put my dishes in the sink and got ready to leave.
"Leaving already bud?" My dad asked.
"Yeah, I am meeting Mitch at his house to walk to school. Love you guys, bye" I say in a rushed tone heading out the door to start my walk over to Mitch's house.
It took about 25 minutes to walk to Mitch's house. Upon arriving, I walk in the front door, say my good morning to Mr. and Mrs. Spake and head up to Mitch's room. As usual, he is still asleep. I walk over to his bed and turn on his stereo. Knowing my best friend has a, let's say, loud taste in music, I turned it on and some scary screaming band came on immediately and at an ungodly decibel. Mitch groaned and put his pillow over his head and mumbled something about murdering me. I turn the, what I'm sure is a Grammy nominated song off, and start to pry the pillow out of Mitch's hands. As I am pulling the pillow he grabs my waist and pulls me down onto the bed.
"Mitchell, we are going to be la-," I try to say but was cut short when a pillow covered my face.
I tried to get free from his grasp, but it was no use. He was much bigger than I was. I waited patiently until he removed the pillow from my face, and finally he started getting up. I sat up on the edge of the bed and watched him. Mitch and I grew up together. I was always at his house or he was always at mine. We had a very unique friendship. He was a jock and I was in orchestra. He played football and I played the piano. He was muscular and I was skinny. We were pretty much opposites in every way. He had a very goofy playful sense about him and I was much more serious. He was outgoing and I was shy. We were polar opposites, but we fit. Mitch was taller than me, standing at about 6'0 and weighing about 180 pounds of solid muscle. Mostly thanks to his dad, his dad was incredibly muscular. Almost to the point of those disturbing images in men's muscle magazines. Mitch had short dark blonde hair that always looked perfect, even though he does nothing to it. He had amazingly blue eyes that could drive you insane. If you couldn't tell, I was madly in love with Mitchell, but he had no idea. He didn't even know I was gay. No one did.
"We have 13 minutes, plenty of time to get there," he said while getting dressed. I had to avert my gaze from his boxer clad body until he was fully dressed.
"How do I look?" he asked after a few minutes of stumbling around in his closet.
"Great. Now let's go." I respond getting up from the bed and heading downstairs.
After saying goodbye to his mom and dad, we headed over to the school, which was about a two minute walk thankfully. We walked in the door right as the 8 o'clock bell rang signifying that you had five minutes to get your ass to class or you would be getting detention. We received our class schedules over the summer, Mitch and I didn't have any classes together this year, but we did have the same lunch period. I started off in orchestra 1st period.
After introducing ourselves, which we really didn't need to because it's the same students every year as orchestra is separated by years, but we did it anyways. Our teacher, Mrs. Freeman, requested to hear a bit of each of our playing. She wanted to get a grasp on what each of our style was. Some students played better than others, mostly due to private lessons. I was of the group that had taken private lessons. My mom put me in private piano lessons when I was 3, and I have been playing ever since. I am a pretty quiet person, but if a person is receptive enough, they can always tell how I am feeling by the way I am playing.
After orchestra, the day got increasingly more boring. When lunch arrived I was thankful as it saved me from a near comatose state in Earth Science. I headed down the stairs with the other mass of freshmen to the cafeteria. I waited for Mitch, but didn't see him. After a few minutes I felt a strong hand grab my shoulder and I turn around to find him and some of his football buddies behind me.
"Oh, hey guys. Ready to eat?" I asked tilting my head to the direction of the cafeteria.
They all replied at the same time in a mass of words, I'm pretty sure I heard something about eating a wombat, but I can't be sure. We head toward the cafeteria and wait in line to get what they are trying to pass as food. Mitch and his buddies were carrying on about how they were excited about being starters for the J.V team this year and that they were sure if there wasn't a rule banning freshmen from being on the varsity team, they would be on it. I tuned them out and got lost in my thoughts. Mitchell's football buddies were nice enough to me, but we really weren't friends. Their lives were consumed by sports, and mine was not. So we didn't have much in common. Chris Lackey was Mitchell's 2nd longest friend. They had met at football camp back when they were on a peewee team in elementary school. Chris was a pretty decent guy. He was about 5'7 140 pounds. Short brown hair that he wore in an Ivy League cut. He was definitely going to grow up to be a handsome guy. He was never mean to me, but he didn't go out of his way to be nice to me either. Mostly he ignored me when I was around. Then there was Andrew Page. Andrew was one of those guys who looked way older than he actually was. He stood at about 6'1 and weighed about 180 pounds, in the ninth grade. He started shaving when we were in the 6th grade. He spoke to me occasionally, but it wasn't ever anything that had merit. Mostly when Mitch and Chris were wrapped up in their own conversation about football. While Andrew played football, he also was incredibly smart, especially in biology. We talked about our homework a lot. Lucas Cole was another member of the team that Mitch hung out with. Lucas was about 5'6 and about 120 pounds. He was the shortest of the guys, but I'm pretty sure he had a Napoleon complex. Lucas was the kicker for the team, and didn't like anyone outside of his sports or motocross friends. Seeing as I did neither of those, he didn't really like me.
As we sat at the lunch table, the guys got into a heated debate about who was going to win the game between our two rival schools. I pulled out my sheet music and put in my iPod and started marking flats and tempo changes. I was playing the song in my head and completely zoned out when I felt Mitch elbow me in the arm.
"You ok?" he asked in a hushed tone. I just nodded and pointed to my music. He gave me a half smile and returned to his conversation.
The school day finished out, and I had already determined between learning about rocks and invisible numbers that this semester was going to drag by. I walked down the hallway to the music room, consumed in my thoughts. I thought about Mitch. I always did. It killed me that I couldn't tell him that I was gay, even more so that he had been on my mind every day since I found out what a crush was in the 3rd grade when Emily King explained that she had a crush on me because she liked my shoes.
I wanted to tell him, but I could never gather enough courage. I'm always hindered by the fact I'm not sure how he will react. I know it's a cliché plot of boy falls in love with his best friend but it is so much more than that. Mitch was the sweetest guy I knew, despite his jock image, which is probably why I'm in this situation to begin with. He was incredibly thoughtful. He always remembered everything I told him, even things I mentioned in passing. Like on day in May our 8th grade year I said I always wanted a telescope when we were in science class, and that year at Christmas, he gave me a present and told me we had to wait until night to open it. Perplexed, I agreed. I opened it not expecting to find a telescope. He had saved up his allowance all year just to buy me that telescope. It was the most romantic nights of my life, hell the only romantic night of my life, and he doesn't even know it. That was the night I knew I was in love with Mitchell Reign Spake.
There have been other things throughout the years that have made me want to tell him. Mostly due to the fact that I have deluded myself into believing that he will feel the same way. Deep down I know he is straight, but I don't want to believe that. I want to believe that when we wrestle around that it means more to him than just friendly horseplay. I want to believe that we are close as friends because he feels the same way. I know I'm living in my own fantasy, but it helps me get through the day.
I sat down at the piano in the music room waiting on Mitch to finish football practice so we can go to his house and do our homework. I pulled out my sheet music for Consolations No. 3 by Listz. It was an incredibly difficult piece that requires a lot of emotion to play. Seeing that I had a lot of those, I figured it was a good way to channel my thoughts. It expressed my longing and desire that I had built up toward Mitch, and how much it pained me to go through every day knowing that I'll have to go through this because I'll never work up enough courage to tell him. In the middle of the piece and the middle of my thoughts, I hear his voice. Great, I've fantasized about him to the point where I'm hearing his voice. I continue playing, but louder now, and I hear it again. I suddenly realized it was really him and open my eyes and stop playing immediately.
"What's wrong?" he asks concerned.
Damn. I hate that he knows just by listening. Am I that painfully obvious?
"Nothing," I lie.
"I'm just trying to get the emotion right on this piece. My private instructor is riding me pretty hard about it." I say nonchalantly.
He looks at me for a long moment and I avoid his gaze pretending to be distracted by the sheet music. He walked in the room further, still wearing his practice jersey with his number, fourteen. The number fourteen was my favorite number. Back during the summer at football tryouts Mitch had psyched him-self out about the try out and convinced him-self he wasn't going to make it as the quarterback. Remembering that day always brought a smile to my face.
"I can't do this James. I'm going to be sick." He said fear evident in his voice.
"Mitchell, yes you can. You are the best out there on that field. I've seen you play Mitch; I've been to every single one of your games since grade school. You don't just play football because you like it Mitch. Football is your life. You put your heart into it and it shows. You are the best damn quarterback this school has and will ever see." I said in an affirmative tone.
Mitch looked at me and gave me that half smile that makes me weak and gave me a quick hug and said
"Thanks buddy," before he left for the field to try out.
Of course he made it, and as a way of thanking me he chose my favorite as his jersey number. As I thought about the events of that day, I realized Mitch had sat down beside me on the piano bench. He put his arm around my shoulder and said,
"James, How long have we been friends?"
"About twelve years now, why?" I ask.
"You should know that I can tell when you are lying. Something is bothering you, you can talk to me about it buddy." He said in a gentle tone.
"I appreciate it Mitch, but it's nothing. Really." I say half-heartedly.
"The way you were playing that piano doesn't tell me that it's nothing."
Fuck. Why does he have to be so intuitive? I couldn't tell him the truth. I can't risk it, but I don't want to lie to him. He deserves better than that, but I just can't tell him.
"I'm just worried about the next couple of years. College and stuff. I got to thinking about it earlier, and you know how thinking about the future always bothers me. I don't like something that isn't concrete." I say. He believes it and lets the subject drop.
"Ok, well I don't really have any homework from my classes, so you don't have to come over later. I know you do with all of your advanced placement nerd shit." He says jokingly trying to lighten the mood.
"Yeah you're right. I'm swamped and it's only the first day." I said expecting pity.
"Well that's your own fault. Later loser." He said light-heartedly and jogged over to the door and stopped before turning around,
"I'll text you later, okay?"
"Sounds good." I reply.
"Sweet."
I watched him jog off down the hall before turning to walk toward the front of the school to head home. I knew I had to tell him, he had a right to know his best friend was gay, but I just didn't know how to tell him.
That's the end of the first chapter. This is my first time ever writing a story, so be gentle with the reviews. Like I said most of this is based on true events, so bear with me. I'm trying to condense what took months for me to do in real life into a few chapters before getting to junior and senior year.