Role Models

30// week one

Parker

On Monday I saw a side of Grant I didn't even know existed. It's ironic actually because he's got a shitload of sides to him, it gets real complicated trying to understand how his brain works, and I made the mistake of thinking I had seen them all. He threw me a curve ball with the whole nice guy thing, I'll be honest.

It came with some conditions, but that's typical of him. One of them did state that I have to tell Andy about Clay if I don't clear up our issues within the next week, which poses a significant interruption to my personal plans, but so long as none of them are to clean his room or let him beat me up I'm fine figuring it out.

It's such a dysfunctional thing to say, but I seriously did not think he had the capacity to be genuinely nice to me. It hasn't happened since we were little though, so what was I supposed to think?

Over the years I've had my bonding moments with Landon, obviously, and even Andy sometimes when he feels bad for me, but Grant and I don't interact enough I guess. Sometimes it feels like he forgets I'm even here cause he's so busy going after Lan. Shit, that's even more dysfunctional to say I wish he cared enough to beat me up too. Either way, it was cool to just sit around and talk with him, y'know? Plus, after I covered the bruises forming around my face and went downstairs all four of us spent the rest of the day at the park playing pickup at the basketball courts. Dad brought home food from this really good Mexican joint around the block and I just had an overall good night after a miserable day at school.

One problem though was the lurking shadow of having to go to the hell hole again the next day. And the day after that, and the one after that, etc (you get the point by now I'm sure). Which leads me to the wonderful, exciting, astounding, and whatever other entirely wrong adjective you could think of, recap of my first week of high school.

Obviously we've been over the length of Monday's events, which played a significant part in the excruciating pain I felt for the remainder of the week, and probably will keep feeling for a while. Clay and his friends came to call that my "introduction beating", which is fair cause it definitely brought to light what will undoubtedly continue for the rest of the year. Then, on Tuesday when I woke up, I had to do it like thirty minutes earlier than normal in order to hide my injuries through Grant's makeup methods before I left for school. Even though it went unnoticed to Andy, dad, and I think even Landon, Clay immediately knew it was impossible for me not to have some kind of markings from the prior day's interaction. He wasted no time busting my balls over it and thought it was fucking hilarious to leave a bunch of lipstick and perfume advertisements taped to my locker at the end of the day. This also led to a number of comments from everybody in his little death squad about how I "probably like guys" and "have to do my makeup to get a hard-on" which made me understand why Grant didn't want anyone finding out he knows how to do it too. Other than the teasing, though, Tuesday wasn't that unbearable.

Wednesday was another story.

By that point in the week I had figured out when and where I was more vulnerable throughout my typical day of classes, and the most likely time for me to get ambushed was before and after lunch. What I had neglected to remember was that Payton was in my first and second period classes back to back, first being gym and second advanced english. This basically ended up being a death sentence on Wednesday because he cornered me after PE when everyone was getting changed and dragged me to the pool room where, predictably, Clay was waiting.

Flashback

"Shooter, Payton, fancy seeing you guys here." Clay greeted smugly as Payton strutted into the pool room at my side, shoving me forward each time he decided I was moving too slow.