So Where Does that Put Us (boy x boy)

Chapter Five - Ben

 One month. One month since that stupid party and now I see Griffin everywhere. He's like a gnat that keeps hovering around my head, not letting me forget about his annoying existence. And to make things worse he keeps stealing Justin away from me! They act like I don't even exist.

Sure, Justin gives me a wave sometimes but Griffin always pulls him away. The worst part is that Justin doesn't do anything to stop him. He's replaced me so easily, as if I never really mattered. Yeah, he still walks to school with me, but after that, he spends every free second with Fiergang. Little, contemptible, vexatious, Fiergang. 

I try to focus on my glowing laptop screen, but my thoughts keep fleeing me no matter how hard I try to hold onto them and force them into place. In front of me sits a word document even more vexatious than Griffin. A list of schools lights up the screen, colleges my mom hand-picked for me to look into. All of them offer robotics and science programs. Everything my parents could want in a college.

But there's no room for what I might want to study, not in the image of the world my parents have. "It's all part of the bigger plan," my mom would always say, "so you can have a better life than my mother had after immigrating from Japan. So you can be successful and have a good life like your father and I built. So you can provide for your future wife and children."

What she's really saying is that I have to be better than them. I have to be what they never were. The thought of having a wife and kids makes my stomach sink as I type in yet another college into my document file, for a grand total of three schools, each one more nauseating than the last.

I bite my lip, glancing at the time, then look at the high ceilings of the library. I could spend every second of every day in here, when everyone else leaves, surrounded by books. Forgetting about my problems with schools and Griffin.

Four stories up, the glass roof makes everything feel small. Gold railings protect bookshelf after bookshelf after bookshelf. The pure vastness of the school founder's collection is enough for me just to marvel at.

Books are simple, unlike people. These books don't judge me or tell me how to think or what to do. They just give me something so pure and valid: information.

I look at the time again, sighing. Now I have to go to that pointless music appreciation class, spend an hour and a half mentally killing myself and then go in for round two in English. Those are examples of useless information.

I get up and press print for my list of colleges, watching the ancient printer in the corner whir to motion, groaning as if the few words on the page required herculean effort. I close my computer and slip it into my backpack, grabbing the paper before heading to that stupid class.

It's not that I don't like classical music...I just prefer to appreciate it from a distance. Yet the whole philosophy of this school is that art and science go hand in hand and you can't have one without the other.

Let's say I want neither.

I just want information.

But I head to class anyways, ending up staring at the wall half of the time, watching the windows as cars drive by, whizzing down the street. I look over at Justin who sits at the end of the line, jiggling his leg up and down. He's probably nervous. My eyes drift to the girl singing, her brown hair swaying as she rocks from side to side with the beat.

I glance back at Justin again who now has his head in his hands, nodding to himself. The teacher calls his name. He gets up slowly, pale and shaking, but when he finally gets up there and sings, it seems like all his worries float away. I have no idea what he sings about or anything, but the sound wafts through the air with a beautiful sadness that carries all my troubles way.