He Likes Boys//It (2017)

e i g h t

Chapter Eight:

Hom arrived at home later than his mother would have liked him to. But she was mostly just grateful that he was in tact and hadn't yet been touched by whatever pedophile was terrorizing the children of Derry.

She sighed, gratefully, when she saw her son had made it home well and alive. He also seemed to be smiling.

"So, how was your day?" She asked Hom.

Hom smiled up at her. She was always working so hard to make life easier for him, sometimes it was hard not to appreciate the things his mother did for him.

"It was actually pretty good today. I made a few new friends, but I also have a ton of homework." He stated. His mother, satisfied with that response, allowed Hom to go up to his room on the account that he promised to do his homework and not drop out of school like his father had done.

Sometimes Hom didn't really appreciate her talking garbage about his father. Despite the fact that he'd left them long ago, Hom still loved him. Hom still remembered the good moments, when he wasn't passed out drunk on the couch. He remembered when they would play ball and when he taught Hom how to swing a baseball bat. Those were the days back when they were just your stereotypical American family.

Although at first, he'd accused his mom of being the one to drive his father away, he now realized that it's not her fault, and that he couldn't force the two to love each other, nor could he force his dad to stop drinking. Hom would simply have to deal with the cards life had dealt him.

And after all, Hom thought to himself, there are people who have it way worse than me.

Beverly glared at her father. She dreaded moments like these. Moments when she and him were alone. She felt as though she were in the room with a monster, about to attack her any minute now.

She could already feel the tears start to build up in her eyes and he got up off the couch, a beer in one and swaying slightly on his feet.

"Are you still my little girl Bevvie?" Her father demanded, his vocal chords reaching unnaturally high volumes. "Or did you let those boys you hang out with touch you?" He screamed some more.

Beverly shook her head. She hadn't done anything. "I-I'm still you're little girl." Her voice broke as she said the words, struggling to get as far back as possible, she gasped as her back hit the wall and her father's hands were in places they shouldn't have been.

Hom stared at the huge mess all over his bedroom floor. He supposed that he should really get to cleaning it, after having to constantly step through stuff just to get to his dirty laundry pile, his mother was starting to get quite annoyed with the state of his room.

Slowly he started to dig through high piles of his things. He stared at the photo album in the corner, knowing it was baby photos of him and his father, and then he looked at the rest of his junk and sighed. Hom knew he would have to find way to sort through all his junk.

Slowly he started to separate his things  into the things he would throw away and the things he would keep. He threw the photo album in the pile of things he would keep.

Hom threw most of his objects of sentimental value into the pile of things he would keep. They all held such fond memories within his mind that he couldn't help but look at them and remember the way things had once been.

He remembered the red train truck his mother had gotten him on his fifth birthday. He remembered the way he would push it down the hallways, accidentally causing them to crash into walls and occasionally causing them so slide beneath couches, to which his mother would always grab the broom and help him find them again.

He held up a jar, filled with sticky notes of positive messages. He lifted the lid and pulled one out, unraveling it slowly, as though it was an ancient scroll of holy text. In a way it was, it was a fragment of the past. His past.

'U rock!' Was written on the note in his usual chicken scratch. He had completely forgotten about them. He he meant for this to cheer him up when he was sad. He'd made this so that whenever he was upset he could simply open the jar and receive the brilliant amount of encouragement he needed to make it through the day.

Hom's mother knocked on the door. "Hey." She greeted. "What are you doing in here?" She was confused by the piles.

"Just cleaning up my old junk." Hom replied. His mother smiled at him. "There's one pile of stuff I'm keeping and another of stuff I'm getting rid of."

He pointed at the pile of junk. "I think it's about time for me to throw this stuff away."

She nodded. "Do you need any hell putting all these things into garbage bags?" She offered.

"Could you help? That'd be great." Hom staked a couple more empty chip bags and various other trash onto the pile he was getting rid of, then hurried off to the kitchen, followed by his mom.

"These should do." She said as she passed him three large black garbage bags.

Hom was surprised by how clean his room was once they'd gotten all the stuff out of it and into those garbage bags.

He placed them at the end of the driveway.