Straight Boys

Straighter than the Straightest

It was a Saturday night, nearly Sunday morning, when I had heard the distinct tapping noise of a pebble hitting my window. Curious, I hopped up from my position on the floor - where I laid bored and throwing an unfinished, painted planet I was using to make a model for our beginning-of-the-year project in Mr. Jacobs' cosmology class - to stand by my bedroom's window just in time to see another pebble teeter against the thick glass. It was too dark for my eyes to see properly who was standing outside in the breezy night, but as I twisted my lamp on, the little light gave way to the familiar figure.

My eyebrows rose to touch the stars as my stomach slightly jumped on my pancreas in either excitemt or uncomfortable frustration, I didn't know which to choose.

I opened my window with a slight frown drawn on my face. "What are you doing in my backyard, Rogers?" I had whisper yelled. "And at this ungodly time?!" I mean, sure I wasn't tired nor ready to go to bed, but who shows up at someone's house at almost midnight?

Well boys that are forbidden from seeing their girlfriends, but I'm not a girl, nor is Zachary my boyfriend.

Zachary smirked shortly, but then a serious tone appeared on his face. "I need to talk to you." I pursed my lips, not really wanting to talk to him, but the idea didn't seem to want to leave me alone.

You see, having been stuck in my house for so long without a damn thing to occupy my time, but a stupid project and books about death that were only good for bringing pessimistic thoughts into my head, I wasn't exactly against going down to talk to the numskull. He seemed like he was the type of person to keep me up all night until I did talk to him, anyway.

Sighing, I slipped into a sweater - a cold front was blowing in - and silently made my way down the stairs. My dad was probably asleep, so I didn't want to wake him. God knows what he'd do to me if he found out I was going to talk to an actual normal human being.

Zachary Rogers wasn't what you'd exactly call normal, however. He was a puzzle. One moment he's all smiley and joking with me, then he's giving me this look that says I'm Serious, and he's glaring at me like I've done something I shouldn't have, which, I guess getting into a fight with the hulk on the team would count as doing just that. I don't know. He was just Zachary Rogers, a boy I thought I knew how exactly he worked, but found that no, I did not know how he worked. Far from it, actually.

When I made it to my backyard, Zachary was sitting on the steps leading down to the grassy patch where Lola and I used to lay. He didn't pop up to his feet when he heard me like someone in a movie would do, but he did turn his head around to see if it was actually me and not my father. How funny that would be.

Shutting the backdoor as quietly as possible, I cleared my throat and asked, "What did you want to talk about?" My eyes were hooded, because really, I wasn't all that ready to talk to some guy I found I barely knew. We also didn't leave on the best of terms, which I guess is a factor, but he didn't seem to think so, as he lazily grinned. "Well, after I thought I had left you alone for plenty of time, I decided to come visit you, see how my favorite guy was doin'." I knew what he was doing. He was trying to diffuse the tension building walls around us with each passing second. It was slightly working, I had to admit; enough so that I was able to sit next to him with only a little bit of awkwardness.

"Seriously, Rogers." Still, though, I wanted him to get seriously serious. I wanted him to tell me the reason - the real reason - as to why he was bothering me so early in the morning.

Zachary paused for a moment, his eyes laid out over the yard, before deflating with a long breath, letting his head drop. "You," he brought his eyes around to study my face, lifting his head back up with the action, "look like you were playing catch with a brick and missed actually catching it." I shook my head, but surpringly, cracked a smile in the process. Yes, it hurt because of the split in my lip, but who cares. Honestly? I had gotten the shit beat out of me, but who cares? Zachary sure didn't seem to, or well, all that much. His brown eyes, like looking down at wet soil, roamed over my face, going over my black eye, which, I must say, I couldn't see out of at the moment, and backing up to look at the giant bruise on my jaw the color of a gaseous star that had exploded into dust and colors and debris.