Damien Carmichael leads a double life. By day he's a high school senior at an elite prep school, just trying to get through his last year without any trouble. He has a girlfriend and up until this year, he was the star player of the lacrosse team.
...
Damien awoke in a cold sweat the next morning with the distinct feeling that he'd done something he shouldn't have; though, for the life of him, he couldn't remember what it was yet.
His head throbbed, and the world spun beneath him in bed; his stomach gave a particularly violent lurch, and Damien sprang out of bed and ran down the hall into the adjoining bathrooms and vomited. Groaning, he curled up in a ball on the cold tile floor and prayed for death.
His vision swam, he had vague recollections of the night before, drinking the better part of a bottle of vodka. Smoking with Carrie.
Carrie.
Oh god, he had told her everything. About his writing, his sexuality, and the guy he'd been talking to on Tumblr. Damien groaned, longing for a hole to open up in the earth and devour him.
The secret he had gone to such great pains to keep for the last two years and he'd spilled his guts in one night. Damien's stomach lurched again, and he vomited hard in the toilet.
This was not good, he thought, feeling rather like he'd been punched in the gut. He needed to do something about this. Later, when his whole body stopped feeling so awful. Closing his eyes, Damien rested his head on the floor and allowed his eyes to drop closed.
The door swung open several seconds later, and Damien squinted against the harsh fluorescent lights up at the person standing before him, he could barely make him out, Oliver?
He was dreaming, he had to be. The mysterious stranger grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him out of the stall and into the shower. Damien groaned, half-conscious, half certain he was asleep, when ice cold water crashed down into him from above, making him splutter. He whined staring up at his savior only to find they were already gone. Damien squinted around the bathroom, but it was completely empty. He swallowed hard, reaching up behind him to turn the water off, and got to his feet, sopping wet in his pajamas and made his way back towards his dorm, grateful that it was Saturday and he could spend the next two days sleeping it off.
Or at least, this had been the plan. No sooner had he crawled back into bed, trying not to think too hard on his very vivid hallucination, than Carrie had plopped onto his bed with a smirk.
"You look like shit," she said rather too cheerfully for his liking.
"Drinking the better part of a bottle of cheap vodka will do that to you," Damien said, closing his eyes in an effort to stop the spinning of the room and his throbbing headache.
Carrie snorted, "Aren't those bottles like fifty bucks?"
"Cheap when you're used to champagne worth hundreds and whine worth thousands," he replied.
"Well not everyone can have such sophisticated tastes," Carrie said with what Damien imagined was a smirk. He could hear it in her voice.
Damien groaned burying his head beneath his pillow. He needed to talk to her but the thought of actually having the conversation exhausted him to his core, he really was in no mood, and besides, there were still enough stragglers around the dorm that he might be overheard. The last thing he needed was anyone else getting wind of this. Especially, not Tyler. Oh god, Tyler, Damien's head swam and he wanted to cry, though he managed, miraculously to bite back this emotion. "You should get some breakfast," she said.
"The thought of trying to choke down any of the swill currently being served in the Dining Hall makes me want to wretch more than I already do," Damien replied.
Carrie snickered, "You poor baby. But actually eating can be good for getting rid of a hangover."
Damien snorted, "I have had enough hangovers to know perfectly well that the only cure for a hangover is sleep or death, and in lieu of the latter, I chose the former so if you please, bugger off."
"You get so English when you're hungover."
Damien groaned, "Just bugger off, please."
Carrie heaved an overly dramatic sigh and got to her feet. "Yeah, yeah, so tetchy." Damien had half a mind to throw his pillow at her, but fearing she might retaliate and only make things worse, he simply pulled the pillow down harder over his head and tried to sleep.
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