Boy

TWO

The classes pass by, and soon enough it's lunch. Daniel is sitting by himself at the end of a table of weird kids. Even they are anything but welcoming to him, staring him down as he spaces himself from them by a few seats. He makes a mental note not to sit at this table tomorrow.

As Daniel picks at his plate of poutine, curling cheese around a fry and dipping it in more than enough gravy carefully, as if it's a medical procedure, he stops dead when he sees movement in front of him. Too nervous to look up, afraid it's one of his many bullies, he stares at his poutine more intently. "Hey."

Somewhere inside of him, he was wishing his life was a movie and instead of Cody, Alex would instead be sitting there and trying to cheer him up. But instead, Cody is there, and he's still stuck in reality. "You look lonely," he pouts, rolling his bottom lip outwards.

Cody has slicked back hair. He isn't very popular himself - but that never stopped him from making Daniel's life a living hell. Cody is a gay slut, known for getting in any guy's pants and sleeping around. Basically, he's popular with the gays, and hated by the homophobic kids. He's also known for his vile tongue, addiction to drugs and being in jail for a few weeks one time. But he still has a better reputation than Daniel, and maybe that's why he picks on him.

"Go away, Cody," whispers Daniel, gaze not breaking away from his food. Cody just laughs.

"Danielle, Danielle, Danielle. Don't say my name like that. I'd rather have you scream it, but on top of that I'm not straight so that wouldn't work out."

Daniel doesn't know why he bothers to fight his case; not that he wants to sleep with Cody or anything. Gross.

"Well, I'm not a girl-"

"Sorry, hon, but you have a vagina and what I'm looking for is a penis." He flashes him a raw smile. He then pauses,

"But hey, I saw you with a boy earlier today. He looked hot. Are you two friends?" Daniel glares at him defensively, "I'll take that as a yes. Tell you what, if you get him to fuck with me, I can get you a hook up."

"I don't want sex."

"Oh, right, you're a virgin. My bad. I'll get you a date."

Daniel scowls at him, "No! Fuck off."

Cody shakes his head and raises his eyebrows. Before he can talk, though, there're footsteps. Daniel sees Alexander walking towards them, and apparently Cody does too because he whistles. Alex stands there and frowns. "Hi, Dan. who's this?"

"Nobody important," says Cody as he stands up out of the chair. He looks to Daniel, "Just think about it." As he goes to walk away, he winks at Alex, and then he's gone.

Alex looks confused as he sits down. Daniel speaks before him. "That was Cody. He's a dick, you don't want to get to know him."

"Oh. Okay."

After school, Alex and Daniel exchange phone numbers. It's raining, and Alex is nice enough to wait for Daniel's bus with him. "I don't want to go home just yet," is his excuse. Alex doesn't argue.

When his bus finally does arrive, he gives Alex a last look.

"See you tomorrow, Daniel," Alex says and waves; Daniel feels a nice feeling in his stomach because it's the first time anybody has meaningfully called him by his preferred name, and he especially likes the way it sounds when Alex says it.

"Yeah, bye," he replies, feeling all giddy now as he steps into his bus. He doesn't even notice the looks he gets when he sits down, because Daniel feels on top of the world.

"So, how was your day at school today, Danielle?" Daniel watches all three of his other siblings stiffen when his mother calls him by that name, and Daniel tucks his bottom lip into his mouth.

"Good, Mary," he replies. Her eyes harden, but Daniel feels all smug because he used the name she doesn't like being called by from him. His sister, Kirsten, stands up and excuses herself from the table. So do Adam and Owen, his brothers - they know something is about to happen.

However, strangely enough, she lets it slide. "So what happened today, Danielle?"

"Not much, Mary. I met somebody." The woman frowns.

"A boy?" His father asks.

"Yes, but not in the way that you think. We're just friends now." There's a silence so intense, you can hear a pin drop. His parents are thinking, he can tell. Mary clears her throat.

"Maybe it's a good thing if you date a boy, though, Danielle." Daniel isn't going to like what she's about to say, he knows it. He isn't wrong. "It'll, um, help you get out of this phase you're in."

"You seriously think it's a phase?" Daniel is immediately disgusted.

"Of course it is. You'll grow out of it." His father shrugs.

"No, I won't. The second I get out of this damned house I'm seeing a doctor and getting pills, surgery, whatever I need."

"Danielle," his mother warns sharply, "That is a sin."

"Whatever," Daniel says before he can think, and both of his parents gasp. He immediately regrets it.

"Go to your room!" Orders Mary.

Daniel stands up abruptly, turns and stomps away, down the stairs and into his basement.

Daniel is crying. The worst part of it is, he doesn't even know why he's crying, he just is. Tears are raining down his cheeks as if his eyelids are opened floodgates, and it seems there's nobody around to close them.

He is standing in front of his mirror, eyes dark blue, quiet, choked cries escaping his trembling lips. Sinner, the word keeps repeating itself inside of his head, almost mockingly. Sinner, sinner, sinner.

The word is bottled up inside of him. He wants - no, needs to get it out somehow. Daniel takes a pen, holds out his bare arm and writes it across his forearm in large black letters: sinner.

He stares at it. He cries, standing there miserably, trapped in a body he hates.

Daniel hates his body. He hates it, he hates it, he hates it - he grabs a pin off his wall. He isn't thinking when he does it - he carves the word into his skin, the skin he hates, using the pen as an outline. it hurts, but it's a good kind of hurt. He feels in control. The cutting makes his skin tingle, the blood gives him butterflies and he's both scared and greatly amused.  He likes it, and he's about to do more when something snaps inside of him.

He drops the pin as the realization of what he's just done dawns on him. He's a sinner, he truly is, and so he cries more as he stands there with a bleeding arm and bleeding eyes and a bleeding heart. Bleeding, bleeding, Daniel Johnson is always bleeding.

Later that night, Daniel prays. He doesn't say a thing, however, because he doesn't quite know what to say at all. Eventually he manages to whisper, "I'm sorry," but he isn't quite convinced himself that he means it.