This story is about male/male relationships and contains graphic descriptions of sex. You should not read this story if it is in any way illegal due to your age or residence.
This is a work of pure fiction. This story is the sole property of its author and may not be copied in whole or in part or posted on any website without the permission of the author.
Questions and commentary can be sent to djakeeba@aol.com
TRAGEDY IN THE BLOOD by Steven H. Davis
Chapter 1
I guess that before I tell you about Taine Maxwell, and that tragic freshman year at Polk High which ripped my heart to shreds, I should tell you something about myself. My name is Rick Spivey, and I just turned fifteen years old. Ever since I was five, I've always known I was different from most guys. Sure, I had blushy, inchoate feelings for Daphne on the "Scooby-Doo" cartoon show like the rest of the boys my age, but I was always a fan of the "Batman" show as well. But not because of Batman himself, who was played by a guy who -- to me -- was more dumpy and silly than barrel-chested and stoic.
No, my attention was caught by the actor playing Batman's trusty ward and crime-fighting sidekick, Robin. During each of the many scenes in which Robin followed Batman up the side of a building on a rope (an effect clearly achieved by the cost-cutting method of turning the camera on its side), I felt the beginnings of some strange, indescribable feelings. These feelings centered on the actor's long, bare legs, and the tight green hot-pants with their intriguing bulge. I didn't even connect what might be under those hot-pants with sexual feelings at the time, but I was definitely interested in finding out.
As I got older, I found myself looking at both girls and boys my age with equal curiosity and interest, but by the time I was about nine or ten, I figured out for myself that my egalitarian tastes were not shared by most boys my age. There was one, however, a slim, blonde-haired boy named Jay, with whom I used to play to get away from the grim atmosphere in my house.
My father had left us when I was three years old, and my mother had dropped out of college to marry him, leaving her with almost no marketable skills and a small child to raise... me. She was heartbroken, frustrated, miserable and desperate, taking a series of low-paying jobs to support us in threadbare fashion.
When I was seven, we moved from New York to South Carolina to live with her mother (my grandmother) and her mother's second husband, Rex, an irascible veteran of three wars whose own past and misery drove him to excessive drink and unpredictable anger. Rex didn't care for my mother or me invading his home, and profanely made his feelings known whenever he got drunk, which was fairly often. Once, we were even in fear for our lives when Rex fell drunkenly asleep after one of his tirades against us, cradling his shotgun as he snored away on the living-room carpet.
Eventually, Rex built us a small, one-bedroom house way in the back of his property, near the woods. His wife -- my grandmother -- made it seem like a wonderfully altruistic gesture, but I knew it was just to get my mother and me out from under his roof. That was when my troubles really began.
The claustrophobia of the tiny house, my unwanted existence, Rex's anger, and her own feelings of desperation, abandonment and rage focused themselves on me.
The fact that I clearly resembled my long-gone sperm donor led to tirades, beatings, and worse.
Yes, I was that "clumsy" kid who "fell down the stairs" a lot. I was also too smart for my own good, especially for elementary school in Bumfuck, SC, so I spent most of my youth bruised and bleeding, rail-thin from lack of proper nutrition, and outcast by my peers. I got no sympathy from most of them, as drunkenness and corporal punishment were pretty standard in that little hick town, and my refusal to put on a brave front or grow a thick skin made me seen as a wimp who couldn't "man up" and take my licks.
By the time fifth grade started, I was pretty much a basketcase, and my emotional responses (and probably an undiagnosed concussion or two) led me to frequently zone out and lose large chunks of time, lost in fantasy-land as I discovered that the best place to hide from my constant physical and emotional pain was between my own ears.
During one such zoning-out episode, I bumped into Jay in the school playground. I apologized profusely to the lithe, athletic blonde, hoping he wasn't going to kick my ass then and there, but he didn't seem to be angry at me. In fact, he grinned and started asking me questions about myself. I told him where I lived and that my mom worked as a secretary at the local Air Force base. I dodged a lot of other questions, but admitted that I liked scary movies and that my favorite band was KISS, a quartet of face-painted glam-rockers who were all over the radio that year.
"That's great!" exclaimed Jay. "I love them! You should come over to my house sometime and listen to records with me."
Thus began a year-long friendship which started with us jamming wildly to Kiss's "Destroyer" album on air-instruments in Jay's bedroom. Jay was always drummer Peter Criss, who was made up like a cat, and I favored bassist Gene Simmons, whose demonic makeup and long, pointy tongue earned him the nickname "The Bat-Lizard".
The relationship progressed during the summer, as we spent nearly every day together. We began talking about our unhappy home lives, smoking Jay's dad's cigarettes in the woods, and gawping at a copy of "High Society," a porn magazine we found on one of our frequent hikes through the forest. Neither of us had ever seen a woman naked before we found that magazine, and while Jay reacted with curiosity and enthusiasm, I stared at the spread beavers and slimy openings depicted on the periodical's glossy pages with something akin to horror. We sat cross-legged on the forest floor,
"What would you do with something like that if you ever saw one," I asked Jay.
He grinned at me while his hand tugged at the crotch of his green swimtrunks.
"You don't know what to do?" he asked.
His hand was pulling at his young root, and I could tell that it had grown hard beneath his trunks. I knew what a boner was, having experienced them myself for roughly three years at that point. I also had a general idea that boys' boners and girls' slimy parts were supposed to fit together, and that this activity had a name, which was "sex."
"I'd sex her!" I said proudly, although what I was thinking was that if a woman ever showed me one of those wet, hairy, horrible things I would run as fast as my legs could carry me.
Jay, still tugging at his groin, grinned his superior grin, flashing the perfect white teeth which were a result of his father being the best (and only) dentist in town. His green eyes twinkled beneath his whitish, gossamer blonde hair.
"It's called fucking," he corrected me, jumping to his feet and tossing the magazine aside. "You'd fuck her is what you'd do. That's what I'd do. Let's go swimming!"
I smiled back without much enthusiasm and got to my feet, happy that we were done with "High Society" and its intimidating, troublesome photos for the time being. I began to walk back in the direction of Jay's house, where we could get our bikes and ride to the public swimming pool about a half-mile away. Jay grabbed my shoulder, bringing me to a halt. I turned around to be greeted by the same mischievous grin and twinkling eyes.
"No," he said. "I have a better idea. Follow me."
With that, he scampered off down the wooded path in the opposite direction, his flip-flops slapping time against his smooth heels. Confused, I took the only course of action which made sense to my addled, 10-year old mind. I followed him.
Before too long, we found ourselves in a clearing, overlooking what appeared to be a large, deep pit made of smooth, natural clay. The claypit was over forty feet across, and filled almost to the top with muddy water the color of milk chocolate, which I guessed was from the three days of rain we had endured the previous week.
Jay grinned at me, shucked his shirt, flip-flops and -- to my surprise -- swimtrunks, then sprinted to the edge of the claypit and dove into the water. I was too stunned to react, although my eyes did notice his gleaming white butt, the tan lines perfectly clean, as he sailed into the natural pool. He surfaced a second later, hair plastered to his wet, smiling face, and spit out some water before waving for me to join him.
"Come on, Rick! It's warm!" Jay called.
I didn't know quite what to do. I had never been naked in front of anyone my age before, with the group showers of 6th grade P.E. still a few months away. I knew that I was skinnier than almost everyone in my grade, because my mom's meager salary rarely made room for anything other than oatmeal and beans.
I also knew from the magazine we had just perused that my privates didn't look like I guessed they were supposed to. As opposed to the huge, hairy dicks in "High Society," I had a small, hairless nub. I hadn't gotten a look at Jay's front when he dove in the water, but I was betting that he had something a lot bigger and hairier in there than I did. I shifted back and forth, indecisive about what to do next.
Jay swam back toward the side of the claypit, his smooth white ass occasionally breaking the milky brown surface of the water. He surfaced and looked at me with annoyance, the white shark's tooth necklace and its thin silver chain standing out against his smooth, tanned chest.
"What are you waiting for, slow-poke?" he yelled. "I thought you wanted to go swimming!"
"I... I did," I stammered. "But aren't there moccasins in there?"
I thought it was a clever excuse. We were always warned not to go swimming in any of the various swamps and swimming-holes near our small South Carolina town because of water moccasins, the black, venomous aquatic snakes also known as "cottonmouths" due to their pinkish-white maws which housed deadly fangs. We were told that if they bit you, you became paralyzed from their potent venom and would drown, unable to move enough to stay afloat.
"No, dummy," said Jay derisively. "There's nothing for them to eat in here. Just clay and water. Come on!"
Well, there went that excuse. With my cheeks burning red in embarrassment, I shucked my shirt, revealing my thin, hairless chest. At least I had a suntan from going to the public pool a lot, which minimized what I viewed as way too many visible ribs. Then, steeling myself for mockery, I kicked off my flip-flops and got into the water, still wearing my trunks. As he said, the water was warm and inviting.
It was also surprisingly deep. Before I knew it, I was totally submerged in muddy darkness. Fighting a slight panic, I tried to surface, only to find my progress impeded by thin, sinewy arms wrapping my waist. Now I was really panicked, having not had time to gulp in a breath before sinking!
I kicked and struggled my way free, feeling hands pulling at my swimtrunks. I wanted to fight them off, but the need for oxygen overwhelmed my modesty, and I launched myself to air, leaving my trunks behind. I gulped and sputtered as I broke the surface, then turned angrily to face Jay, who came up a couple of feet behind me.
There was that winning grin again, as he twirled my wet trunks on one upraised finger, his eyes impish and sparkling.
"No trunks," he giggled. "That's the house rules!"
Suddenly, I felt extremely exposed, and -- once I'd found my footing on the slimy clay bottom -- my hands went to my groin to cover my tiny tadger. Jay laughed, chucking my trunks to shore, then dove again, his shiny white butt breaking the surface of the water.
I felt his strong grip on my wrists, pulling my hands away from my junk, and then one of his hands cupped my smooth boy parts, causing me to jump.
Jay surfaced again, laughing, then wrapped his arms around me and dunked me underwater. My eyes were open, but I couldn't see anything in the muddy murkiness of the claypit. I did, however, feel Jay's sleek, slippery legs wrap around my waist and pull me down in a wrestling move I guessed he had learned from watching Wahoo McDaniel on TV. Was it my imagination, or did I feel a slick, warm hardness against my side as he did so? As his legs released me, allowing me to come up for air, I casually brushed the side of my arm between his legs, feeling his young hardness graze my hairless flesh.
Startled again, my smooth feet slipped on the clay, and I began to tumble back into the depths, but I felt strong arms encircle my waist and pull me to the surface. I shook my hair out of my eyes, blinking rapidly to clear the stinging, silty water, and found myself looking directly at the grinning Jay. His arms held me close to his slippery body, our slim, flat bellies touching, as he regarded me with serious eyes.
Before I could react, he leaned in and kissed me, his wet, soft lips brushing mine and lingering briefly, then pulling back. I gazed at him with wide, shocked eyes, and then he leaned in and did it again! This time it lasted longer, his small, pink tongue flicking between my slightly-open lips. He pulled me closer, and I could feel his tumescent dick pressing against mine. I dimly registered that it wasn't any bigger than my own, and didn't feel any of the pubes which would mark him as my superior. He kissed me more deeply and ground his organ against mine, which was starting to respond in kind.
That's when panic really set in! I pushed Jay roughly away from me, blindly splashing my way to the side of the claypit, struggling to the grassy land beyond. I somehow managed to ford the slippery slope, ran directly to my swimtrunks and pulled them on, shaking in shame, arousal and fear.
"I... I gotta go!" I managed. Pulling on my shirt, I risked one look back at Jay, who stood in the water confused and concerned with a furrowed brow. He didn't say a word, just looked at me with those sad, serious green eyes.
Then I bolted for home, barefoot, running as fast as I could through the woods as the branches pulled and tore at my shirt. I jumped on my bike when I reached Jay's house, then pedaled to my little den of horrors like demons were chasing me.
Needless to say, the real demons were waiting for my arrival, and I was beaten pretty soundly for 1) having torn my shirt, and 2) having lost my flip-flops.
Anyway, I didn't see Jay again after that day. Not because I didn't want to, or because of any overwhelming guilt or shame. In fact, that was pretty much gone by the time I pulled my bruised body into bed that night and cried myself to sleep. When I awoke in the morning, Little Ricky was awake before I was, and although the previous day's encounter had terrified me, I just knew that I would have to repeat that situation with renewed confidence and curiosity.
But it was not to be.
As I ate my usual breakfast of tepid oatmeal, trying to be quiet so as not to anger my mother again, I was informed that we were moving to Texas. I nodded sadly, as my mother told me that she was going to change our last names to Sanchez in order to get a job in what she presumed was a city -- San Antonio -- which favored Mexicans over whites.
That was not to be either.
There followed some rather unpleasant, poverty-stricken and miserable years in two different San Antonio middle schools. The highlights of these years were primarily a few daily minutes of shower-time in P.E. and my increasing awareness that other boys' bodies held some wonderful treasures, which I was quite shy and frightened of attempting to explore, as much as I yearned for their touch.
I had two close friends, and although we would often jerk our hairless dicks together at one of their apartments while their moms -- both divorced and working cruddy jobs like my own -- were away, it never progressed beyond being in the same room. I was frustrated and nervous during these sessions, stealing furtive glances at their smooth young bodies while I pretended to be thinking of girls, as they surely were, but enjoyed the moments nonetheless.
This too did pass, because in May of my eighth grade year, my mother announced that she was joining the Army. Not only was I again being uprooted from my few friends, but I was to go live with her mother and Rex, who had followed us down to San Antonio a year after we moved, and currently owned a house in a much nicer, more upscale area of town. And they were going to adopt me, which meant that my name would change again!
I was emotionally wrecked. Things had begun to progress for me in 8th grade. I was no longer bullied, I had made some friends, and -- because I had grown to stand half a foot taller than my mother -- the beatings had stopped. Not that she treated me much better emotionally, but I think she may have been afraid to take out her frustrations through physical violence when I began to tower over her.
Now, I'd have to start all over, and it was going to be in the home of a scary drunken man who didn't like me at all, and a fancy-pants rich high school, with its towering jocks and nasty prom queens all-too ready to shred the freshman hick with 3-year old highwater pants and holes in his shoes. For the third time in my life, I would have to give up the few friends that I'd made and move to a new and frightening place.
We left our apartment to stay at a motel for the four days before my mother would leave for boot camp, and we threw away all of our furniture and most of my few games and books. There was a torrential rain that week, which flooded our old apartment complex, and I vividly remember helping my mother float my nightstand toward the dumpster through waist-deep, muddy water. Unlike the far-away claypit, this water was filthy and dirty, with styrofoam cups, tin cans and various assorted trash I didn't even want to imagine bobbing along its oily surface. Also, there was no Jay, and my heart missed him, my Texas friends, my New York friends, and everything else as I gritted my teeth, wiped my tear-streaked face, and helped my mother throw my life away.
The last thing she said to me, as she kissed my forehead in my new parents' home as she left for boot camp at 4 a.m. on a rainy morning, was "You ruined my life." I cried, feeling guilt for any harm I may have caused my mother. I cried even though she had beaten me, terrified me, starved me and cursed me. I cried because she was the only parent I had ever known, and I cried because I had ruined her life, even as she had erased mine.
And then she was gone.
Chapter 2 -- Three Months Later.
"Some people have tragedy in their blood."
I looked up from my notes in Mrs. Colby's freshman English class to see who had said it, and my eyes lighted on the new kid, Taine Maxwell. Taine and his father, the Formula 1 racer Sylvester Maxwell, had moved to San Antonio from New York a couple of weeks before, following the death of Taine's mother in a tragic accident. I had a couple of classes with him, but in the three days since school had started, I hadn't really paid him much attention.
This was partly by his own design. Taine was a loner, and seemed to be desperately trying to make himself invisible. He was tall and slim, but other than that, it was hard to say. He always wore his father's over-sized army jacket and a large-brimmed No Fear baseball cap, with the brim usually obscuring the parts of his face which weren't already hidden by his shag haircut, worn over his eyes in a loose and scruffy pile.
His attempts at self-concealment seemed to be working. No matter what you (or I, in my fear-stricken months leading up to back-to-school day) have probably heard about the high school experience in Texas, San Antonio-Polk tended to be a fairly easygoing place. The various groups and cliques mostly kept to themselves, and there was rarely any friction between jocks, rednecks, stoners, socials, or geeks. It was "live and let live."
In another school -- say in notoriously roughneck West Texas -- there may have been some harrassment of the 'new kid', but at Polk, Taine just blended into the background, which was presumably where he wanted to be.
I hadn't even thought about why that might be the case, nor given him any real thought at all, until he spoke those words in Mrs. Colby's class that Wednesday in September. They were the first words he'd said in the three days of our freshman year, and I found them deep and intriguing.
"Some people have tragedy in the blood."
I felt like I did, and I felt like he had put my life into words as no one had before him. I felt tears begin to well up and blinked my eyes to dispel them before anyone noticed. Mrs. Colby, who had a reputation for cutting sarcasm, simply lowered her horn-rimmed glasses and looked at him with something like pity in her eyes.
"Tragedy can strike any one of us, Mr. Maxwell," she said, and continued on with her lecture about "Romeo and Juliet."
It was obvious that -- quiet as he was -- he had read the play, which I had only skimmed, and took it very seriously. It was also pretty obvious that he was still grieving his mother. I was grieving mine as well, although she wasn't dead. She was just my older sister now, and she was in the Army a thousand miles away.
Even though I couldn't really see what he looked like, or gauge the tone of his words, I decided I had to get to know this kid. I focused my attention on his slim legs, clad in baggy cargo pants, and the new shoes tapping to a silent rhythm. The shoes bore a Jegs logo, which I took to be some obscure East Coast shoe company. I would later learn that Jegs was a manufacturer of high-performance auto parts, and one of the sponsors of Taine's racecar-driving father.
Other than the pale artistic hands with long, tapered fingers -- perfect, perfect hands -- Taine was covered up from hat to Jegs, and his actual appearance remained a mystery.
The bell rang and Mrs. Colby gave us our assignment: we had to write 1000 words on "Romeo and Juliet." Damn. Now I'd have to read the thing more carefully and try to extract some meaning from it, when all I saw were strange verses and indecipherable old-school expressions.
Unless...
I got up from my desk and followed Taine as he shuffled out into the hallway, his head down, almost shrinking into himself to avoid being noticed. The seven words he'd spoken in class sure seemed to have taken a lot out of him!
I followed him for a few steps, trying to get up the courage to talk to him. I had just turned 15, and wasn't exactly the shy type, but I found myself strangely intimidated and nervous about this mysterious stranger and the shell he had put up around himself.
I was slim like Taine, and we were both tall for our ages. I considered myself fairly good-looking, with a healthy tan, chestnut-brown hair, and large eyes which were a rich, deep brown that was almost black in the dim fluorescent lights of the school hallway.
I thought my best feature was my full, soft lips, which the few girls I'd dated always seemed to enjoy kissing, but had earned me a rather unflattering nickname -- "n____-lips" -- among the two or three jealous bullies of the school. Not only was it racist, it was also dumb, because despite my tan, I was as white as white could be. Then I caught a glimpse of Taine's slim, graceful neck, which was as pale and smooth as alabaster, and decided that I wasn't quite as white as him.
Anyway, I screwed up my courage and quickened my pace to catch up to him as he slouched slowly toward his locker.
"Taine?" I ventured.
He kept walking as if he hadn't heard me, so I said his name again. He jumped as if electrocuted, spinning his head to see where the sound had come from. As he did so, some of the silken, golden-brown hair blew from his eyes, revealing wide- eyed fear, hurt, and a haunted look which spoke of his recent tragedy. He looked like a frightened rabbit, and my heart instantly broke into a million pieces in sympathy, pain and... something else.
I know what you're thinking, and it wasn't that. At least, not at that moment. What that "something else" was... it was like I finally found a soul that was like my own. Different, sure, but like a raven and an eagle are both birds at base, I felt like our souls were the same once you got through the surface. I couldn't possibly know that from one look at Taine's frightened eyes, you're probably smirking. But I did.
There was something there, and I don't think it was just shared pain. I think it was a way of looking at the world. Compassionate, wise beyond our years, afraid and bearing the scars of the past, but willing to explore the future with an open and loving heart. Or maybe I was just hoping that was true and was reading too much into one startled look.
"Hey," Taine said softly.
His voice was tremulous but gentle, like that of a child. My nervousness began to fade as I smiled shyly at him.
"Hey," I replied. "I really like what you said in class."
Taine lowered his head, and I saw his pale ear turn pink.
"Thanks," he mumbled quietly. "I didn't think anyone would notice."
I found that hard to believe, because he acted as if the world was casting a bright spotlight on his every move, when all he wanted to do was hide in a dark corner somewhere. I may have played it off better than him by that year, because I had pretty much decided that nothing anyone ever said or did to me again could match what I had already endured, but it was a feeling that I could recognize, and it made me feel warmly protective of him.
"My name's Rick," I said, extending my hand. Taine was still looking at the ground, making hesitant beginnings of a turn which I surmised would allow him to bolt away at any second. I dropped my hand and peered under the brim of his hat, which was pointing straight down at the ground in his shyness and embarrassment.
"Your name's Taine," I continued. I wanted to crack a joke like "Is that short for plantain?" but I knew that it wasn't the time. I had always used humor to get myself through the hard times in my life, but there was something very serious and still about Taine Maxwell, and I surmised that my joke would not be appreciated.
"I'm new here too," I said instead, balancing the awkwardness between us and the fact that Taine still stood in front of me rather than fleeing. "My mom joined the Army and had her parents adopt m..." I stopped, wishing I hadn't mentioned my mom.
Taine looked up at me then, one pale blue-grey eye visible between the strands of hair.
It was welling with tears.
"My mom died," he said in a hoarse, flat whisper. Then he turned and walked quickly away, cutting a tragic and heartbreaking figure in the oversized army jacket and baggy brown cargo pants.
I thought, "He looks like a sad, melting candle," and my own eyes began to fill with tears, which I wiped away on the sleeve of my new blue sweater. It was a nice sweater. As grumpy as Rex, my new dad, was toward me, he and my new mom were not about to let me start a new school in their neighborhood looking like a dissolute ragamuffin.
My new mom -- whom we called Tynah for no apparent reason -- had taken me shopping at the local mall on the Saturday before school started, and I felt like I was in style for the first time in my young life.
I went to Algebra class, which completely left me mystified. My dumb-ass school a few miles away hadn't prepared me for multiple variables and quadratic equations, let alone parabolas and hyperbolas, and although I was an honor-roll student every grading period in middle school and found the rest of my freshman classes at Polk to be a breeze, Algebra would be the bane of my scholastic existence that year.
I couldn't wait for Mr. Andrews to finish his alternately boring and confusing lecture, and practically tripped over myself to get to the lunchroom when the bell rang. I stood in line patiently to get my tray, still amazed that I had money in my pocket on the third day of school.
When I had lived with my biological mother, our poverty had necessitated my working with the cafeteria lady at lunchtime to pay for my food, but now there was a crisp five-dollar bill on the kitchen table every morning when I woke up. I felt like a Rockefeller as I paid for my tray of food, and even though the rest of the kids grumbled at the shapeless, greyish Salisbury steak drowned in brown gravy, it looked like fine dining to me.
I took my tray and scanned the cafeteria for some other freshmen to sit with. It was only the third day, I told myself, and I would hopefully make some friends soon, but -- with my newfound lack of giving a shit about rejection -- I figured I would force my way into some lunch group or another. Just as I had settled on a group of three kids I recognized from my afternoon drama class, I saw Taine Maxwell sitting alone at the end of a long table.
So, you know how I just said I didn't give a shit about rejection? Well, as I watched Taine gazing dejectedly at his food, long fingers drumming on the table, head down, and only the cap indicating that he had a head under there, I suddenly worried about rejection again.
Steeling myself, I walked over to his table, my hands shaking a little as I held the lime-green plastic tray in front of me. I stopped about five feet away and stood there, hoping he would look up, notice me, and invite me to sit with him. The cap stayed down, and I thought to myself, "this isn't going to be that easy."
That was when one of those perfect hands stopped its languorous drumming next to his food tray, and the cap tilted slightly as he became aware of my presence. Maybe he could see my shoes from under the cap, but I doubted it because of the angles involved. It was more like he sensed me there, sensed my eyes staring at the cap, trying to signal to the eyes which, presumably, still lived underneath it.
"Sit down," the cap said, so softly that at first I wasn't sure I heard anything over the din of the lunchroom. The cap tilted up slightly when I didn't move, and I saw a perfect chin, complete with the sexiest dimple I'd ever seen. Then I saw the lips, full like mine but hanging slightly open. Not in a dumb, slackjawed way, but just slightly parted, as if too shocked and horrified by the world around them to close.
The cap lifted slowly, and that one eye peeked out from his hair again, neutral but guarded.
"What do you want?" he asked.
I moved forward a little, gripping my tray tightly.
"Can... can I shit with you?" I stammered, my eyes widening in horror when I realized which words had just tumbled from my lips.
That was when it happened. The lips closed, the teeth gritted, and then the lips turned up at the corners, revealing the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. Yes, more beautiful than Jay's. The cap lowered, and I could just see the lips move into an amused smirk, holding back laughter.
"No," said Taine, a little louder than he'd spoken before. "That would be too messy. But you can sit with me, like I just said."
I gave a nervous grin. Looks like there's a little bit of a wise-ass under that serious exterior, I thought, and quickly moved to join him at the table. I scooted my chair in and began struggling with my chocolate milk carton, which appeared to be welded shut. When it ripped open, spattering a few wild drops onto the table, Taine lost it and began giggling. The sound was so sweet and innocent that I forgot to be embarrassed and joined in with him myself. It felt good to laugh. As you might imagine, it had been a while since I had even smiled, let alone laughed.
We stopped laughing suddenly, as our eyes met, and it seemed as if our inner pains were reaching out to each other across the two feet or so which separated us. Then the cap abruptly lowered again, shutting off the moment. I looked at his tray, with the food barely touched.
"You're not hungry?" I asked stupidly.
The cap shook "no" with an almost imperceptible side to side motion, and then offered, "I don't eat much."
I figured that Taine's lack of appetite probably had to do with his mother's recent death, so I didn't push the matter further. As for myself, however, the absence of my own ex-mother hadn't done anything to staunch my voracious teenaged boy's appetite, and I tore into my food like a starving wolf.
As I inhaled the Salisbury steak, the watery mashed potatoes, the limp string beans and the impossibly lame lump of dark dough which the school menu had hopefully labeled "Rich chocolate brownie," I felt eyes on me. I looked up from my ravaged lunch tray, dipping the cold breadroll into what remained of the gravy as if savoring the remnants of a kingly feast.
Taine's head was tilted back, allowing me to see most of his face all at once for the first time. He was smirking again, and his eyes were no longer steely, but were actually twinkling! I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and a strange fluttery feeling in my stomach. It wasn't fear exactly, and it wasn't embarrassment or guilt or anything negative, really. It was a feeling I had never experienced before, and it was being caused by that amused, perfect, slightly mocking face in front of me. When this sad, sullen boy opened up and smiled, and beamed and freakin' twinkled, as he was doing now, he looked like an angel. Or, at least, what I imagined an angel might look like.
I bit my lower lip, looked down at my empty tray, and muttered, "What are you smirking at?"
The cap lowered again.
"You can go get seconds if you want," Taine said quietly from beneath its shielding brim. "They don't care if the line's gone."
"No time," I replied, pointing at the wall clock. We only got 30 minutes for lunch at Polk, and I had spent most of it waiting in the cafeteria line.
Without a word, Taine slid his untouched tray over to me, then got up and slouched away.
"Thanks," I called after him, but he had already blended into the throng of kids making their way from the lunchroom.
Debating my options with 3 minutes left, I wolfed down what I could of my bonus meal, then placed both trays onto the nearly-full cart, remembering my awful days on lunch duty. With my good deed done for the day, I hurried to my next class.
Thank you for reading the first two chapters of "Tragedy in the Blood." To be continued...