Straight in a Crooked World (Teen Fiction/Dystopian)

Chapter 1

***Jason

 I close my old, cracking copy of Romeo and Juliet and examine the rough engraving of my name, "Jason," on the cover. Though the romance is banned due to the heterosexual relationship, I've had this small, leather bound copy since I could read. It's the only possession of my mother I have.

Jane, one of my mothers, was against me having the book, but Shelia, my other mother, managed to sneak it into my arms again the night before fourth grade. Nerves got the best of me that night, and I couldn't sleep. I used to think the book was magic because it seemed to cure my nerves instantly. I've protected it ever since.

 Frequent reading has caused the yellowing pages to crack and tear. I've read it hundreds of times, but never all the way through. I always stop at the same quote:"Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight for I ne'er saw true beauty till this night." Behind the fading highlighting, these words appear preserved in history. I have a connection towards those four hundred-year-old words. I imagine her reading and reaching this specific point in the story. Somehow, those words touched her enough to damage the book in the most permanent of ways. Similar to the way they touch me, causing me to read them repeatedly, and leaving the best romance of our past left unfinished in my hands.

 My adoptive mothers tell me she was a heterosexual. Heterosexuality has become the most punishable crime in Courtshore, a region comprised of many other city-states scattered around the globe; including this small-town, Solae, in the States. On the rare occasion that heterosexuals do occur, they are escorted to a small penitentiary in town, until they can be taken to the Center of Heterosexual Prevention and Conversion, Conversion Jail for short, in the United Kingdom. The undersized jail we have here mostly holds petty criminals that spend no more than a night in a cell before going home to their mothers' or fathers'. In our perfect utopia, there is no major crime.

 I pull on the same saggy jeans I've worn all summer and my wrinkled red uniform shirt that represents the Confederacy who fought against the Alliance of Homosexuals so long ago. Thanks to the Homo-Wars, we are where we are now - a happy, homosexual population.

 What they don't tell us, what few have been able to knock through their thick skulls, is how isolated we are. Nobody ever leaves Solae. You are either adopted from a breeder at a young age, or brought here after returning from Courtshore Conversion Service. Daily, I dream of the world outside Solae. I know the grass has to be greener on the other side.

 With my backpack and hoodie on, I walk the fifteen minutes it takes me to reach the small, one story Solae High School. Its rectangular shape gives it the appearance of a jail. For at least the next nine months, I will be here for seven hours a day, five days a week. Pristine white stones form the support to this building. White like every other building in this town. A perfect color for our perfect town. A thick layer of new jet-black asphalt glistens under the burning hot, August sun as I scope the parking lot for Nick, hoping to avoid his mockery. 

 I find him and a woman leaning on a green Jeep, talking. She nervously runs her hand through her red hair that sits at her shoulders in waves of ginger highlights around her circular face. Her skintight, black jeans with a matching black tank top line her curvy build. She looks like danger. As her thin lips softly speak inaudible words to Nick she examines me from afar. I avoid eye contact with a shy smile. She is a woman and I am a man. I am not supposed to be attracted to her, but I am.

Nick stalks off towards his friends waiting for him at the corner of the school. The woman jumps into the Jeep. With a screech, she speeds out of the parking lot. I eye the school entrance and my classmates, most of whom I have known since I was young, waiting for their friends before school starts. They are discussing the crazy events that occurred at the last party of summer, or complimenting each other's new outfits - top of the line clothes for a top of the line population. Then, there is me. My scrawny physique, long shaggy hair, pointy nose. All I see is me, nastiness, reflected at me in the dark tinted windows of the school building. Party less, broke, me. There is no way she was looking at me the way I was looking at her.