Love and War

Chapter Fifteen: Bite-Marks

Sunday March 28th 2010

Ryan Gabriel Tramblay

      For the Invisible Boy, March breaks have always been odd. With no friends I usually spent my March break sleeping, cleaning the house and playing video games. This year was dramatically different.

     Hunter and I hung out nearly every day going all over the place from the local Chapters to Square One. Then Holiday and I went on a bunch of dates, he even gave me a tour of Mississauga from the three-floored library at city hall, to Streetsville – the village inside Mississauga. Holiday, JJ (one of Holiday’s friends), Hunter and I got together to get some volunteer hours which was helpful, because now Hunter and I have 20 hours each – so we only have 20 more to go.

       The last time we were together Holiday confessed that he wasn’t going to graduate this year. He was quite self-conscious about it because he thought that I was going to think he was a loser, but I didn’t think that. Bad things happen to good people right? I was ecstatic because that meant that Holiday and I could spend one last glorious year together.

      That Sunday night I slept as restlessly as the time that Brett was pursuing me. I flung myself from side to side in my bed like a fish trying to flap its way back into the water. I drank a glass of water and then got up to go to the bathroom two hours later.

     “Dude, what’s wrong with you?” TJ finally asked. “I was trying to sleep and all I could hear was the sound of your bedsprings creaking.”

     “I can’t sleep!” I cried and then I regretted it a moment later. TJ jumped out of his own bed and then started to climb into mine. It’s cute and infuriating that TJ thinks that most of my problems can be solved by him sleeping next to me like when we were babies. I wouldn’t mind it so much if I didn’t have to share a cover with TJ and if he didn’t sleep so recklessly. Once we went to bed laying upright side by side and when I woke up he was upside down and his foot was in my face.

      “Tell Taylor Jude all about it,” TJ said.

      “Bring your own cover and I’ll let you stay,” I ordered. TJ obeyed me and within a moment he was back in my bed.

      “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said my voice barely above a whisper. I didn’t want to wake my parents, who would blaze up in anger over me and TJ being awake at 2:00AM. “I just can’t sleep. I mean nothing’s wrong. My life is actually great.”

      “Thanks for bragging,” TJ said. There was an awkward silence until TJ pinched my cheek and chuckled. “I was joking. Things are actually looking pretty good for me too since I stopped seeing Duke. There’s this grade eleven named Erik Milligan and I think he’s interested in me!”

      “I’m glad for you. I never liked Duke and you together. It didn’t even seem like really liked you for you.”

      “Neither of us liked each other. I just liked Duke’s body, but Duke really liked me. When I told him I wanted to stop . . . uh . . . hanging out he got so mad. He actually started crying. He said he thought that hooking up with me was going to make me want to stay with him and that made me feel like a total jerk. I mean, when did I turn into the ass-hole who uses someone for sex?”

      I really had nothing to say. I had always heard about those douche-bag guys who use girls for sex and then just leave them but I had never thought I would befriend one, let alone be a brother to one. Everyone paints them as being horrible, but TJ wasn’t a horrible person.