Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
CHAPTER THREE
Gage
“Goddamn it!” Dad made a fist, raised his hand as if he was about to punch the wall, but managed to control himself. He’d just gotten home. I didn’t know where he’d been. He worked at one of the local mills, but it was late enough that he had to have gone somewhere between work and home.
Luckily, I’d put away the book I’d been trying to read. I was a senior in high school and it was a book with photos for a fifth grader, but I’d been trying to slowly work my way through it. I wanted to be better, knew I needed to if I ever planned to get out of here with Joey.
I didn’t ask Dad what happened. He would tell me or he wouldn’t. He went to the kitchen and, predictably, came back with a beer, opened it, and flopped down on his favorite chair, which probably should have been thrown away years ago. “That fucking bastard, piece of shit of a chief!”
Okay, so he was in a chatty mood. “What happened?”
“Pulled me over for no fucking reason is what happened! Said I was swerving, but I wasn’t. Made me take a breathalyzer, and I hadn’t had shit to drink. He’s always harassing me! Motherfucker always pulls me over. He’s arrested me more times than I can count, and I didn’t do shit! None of the times!”
Dad wasn’t totally wrong, but he wasn’t totally right either. Joey’s father did pull him over and arrested him often. Sometimes legitimately—Dad had just gotten his license back after losing it for DWI—but sometimes he liked to fuck with Dad. He was like that—liked to pick on people and show his power to those he saw as weaker than him. He did it to Jojo all the time, and I swore to Christ, it about killed me.
“If you didn’t do anything wrong, file a complaint.”
He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot on the planet. “You listen to me, Gage, and you listen good: people like you and me, we’ll never get a fair shot with someone like Jim. They’ll always look down on us, look for a reason to blame us, especially the law. They protect their own, kid, and we ain’t their own. Got it? Don’t trust them. Don’t trust them to ever be fair to people like us.”
My stomach tightened, nausea bubbling in me, trying to climb up my throat. He was right. I wasn’t that stupid, I knew that, but…I hated it. I hated it because even though Joey wasn’t like his dad, he would always be one of them and I would always be one of us. We said we were the same, but we weren’t, not really.
“I know you like that boy of his, been friends with him all your life, but mark my words, one of these days it’s gonna get you in trouble. He’ll always be safer than you, better than you. We’re trash around here, and you know it.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, my body tense and pained. “Leave him out of it. He’s not like that.”
“You a fag with that boy?” Dad took a drink of his beer.
Flashes of the two of us dancing together last weekend played in my head…the way he felt…the way he smelled. “Fuck you,” flew out of my mouth, and Dad laughed.
“Simmer down, kid. I don’t give a shit who you’re into. Was just curious. Guess you answered my question.”
I hadn’t. Not really. I wasn’t gay…well, at least I didn’t think I was. I liked girls. I liked them a lot. I liked looking at them and touching them. It was different with Joey, though. He was…home, like an extension of myself. This place I knew I was always welcome and that made me feel at ease.
Which sounded pretty fucking gay, or, well, bisexual, but either way, no other guy or girl had ever made me feel like Jojo did. I wasn’t sure what it was, like maybe there wasn’t a name for us. We were just…us, and that was all that mattered.
But I didn’t think about touching Joey the way I did girls…even if it had felt good to touch him when we danced. And it had scared me. I’d wanted to do it again, to dance with him all night. Maybe it was simply because I liked making him happy? Who the hell knew. My thoughts were all jumbled. I didn’t know what anything meant, so it was easier not to think about it.
Dad drank one beer after another, cursing at the TV. Every once in a while, he’d bring up Joey’s father and rant about him some more. The sad thing was, in a lot of ways, Dad was right. Chief Robinson would always be better than us. He would always come out on top, and we’d always be the losers.