Chapter 3
3
GAVIN
I hated him.
I hated him.
I fucking hated him so much.
Fuck Beck and his misplaced sense of honor. He could go fuck himself with all that integrity.
Fuck him for making me say those things.
Fuck me for saying them.
I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror and laughed almost maniacally, feeling like I’d honest to god lost my mind.
Panic scraped through me with serrated edges, cutting into soft flesh and leaving behind a torn, jagged mess.
Shame twined itself around my heart, tugging and squeezing, its poisoned barbs ripping at the frail organ.
I hated myself more and more with every word I continued to fling at Beck. It was the first time he’d actually spoken to me or interacted with me on a somewhat normal level in years , and I couldn’t stop the hate-filled words. They burst from me as if they had a will of their own, as if just the very sight of him summoned them, dragged to the surface by the thin, frayed cord that still tethered us together.
“You’re a monster,” I hissed at the stranger in the mirror.
He smiled back at me.
A flash of anger had me fisting my hands. I threw one into the wall behind me as a strangled sound choked from my throat.
What was happening to me? My emotions were all over the place; I’d never felt this unhinged in my entire life. I was completely out of control.
But had I ever been in control?
No. I really hadn’t.
I made sure the door was locked for the fifth time, then unzipped my kit. I stared at the syringe for a few seconds, terror cutting through me.
Pathetic little pussy.
Fucking sissy.
You telling me I raised a pansy little bitch?
I snatched up the syringe, grabbed the small vial of oil, and uncapped it. Pulled out three milliliters, then screwed the cap back on.
I shoved my sweats down to my knees and sat down on the closed toilet, willing my hand to stop shaking. My flaccid dick was resting against my thigh, just another useless part of me that would probably never work again.
The needle was an inch long, and I sank it slowly into my left quadricep, gritting my teeth until all of it was inside me.
I pressed down on the plunger and began pushing the liquid into my muscle.
It took a full minute to get all of it in. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I’d yanked the needle out and gasped in oxygen, my chest heaving as I threw the syringe into the pouch. I leaned back and sucked in air, staring up at the ceiling.
There were spots dotting the peeling white paint, like crude stars that would never shine.
For some reason, that made me laugh, and then my laugh devolved into a sob.
I slapped my face once. Twice. Focused on the sting in my cheek.
Then I stood up, pulled my pants back up, capped the needle, zipped the kit closed, stuffed it into the front pocket of my hoodie, and went back to my room.
I started out doing this three times a week. Now I was doing it three times a day.
This wasn’t sustainable. I knew that. I wondered at what point I’d call it quits. I wasn’t sure I was capable. Sometimes the thought that I would rather die than face the consequences wormed its way into my mind, and sometimes I let it writhe around in there.
I put the kit back in the drawer of my nightstand, then flopped onto my bed facedown.
At least I wasn’t living with my dad anymore. He’d finally let me move into one of the houses owned by the university last fall. I didn’t care about living with other students, but I did care about not having to be around my dad all the time.
But if he knew some of my roommates were queer, he’d take me out of here in a heartbeat.
God, I was so fucking thirsty. My mouth still tasted like absolute shit, despite brushing my teeth three times. Water wasn’t helping. Maybe a soda would get rid of the taste.
I shot up off the bed and made my way downstairs to the kitchen. Everyone was home because of the snowstorm, but I knew that my roommates Jamie, Ash, and Joe were all in their rooms because mine was right down the hall from them. Brody was in the basement.
Brody, who was quiet, kind, and very, very gay.
He was three years older than me, but that never stopped me from being a dick to him in high school. No, nothing really stopped me from being a complete piece of shit to the people that got to be exactly who they were without consequence.
When I walked into the kitchen, I paused.
Isaac Carpenter was standing in front of the sink, looking out the window, his back to me.
He was always here lately, hanging out with Brody. I was pretty sure he was gay, too.
Fuck him.
Everybody was out and proud and so fucking happy.
Just like Beck.
Fuck you, Beck.
Because it all came back to him, didn’t it? Every single fucking thing. Every thought, every feeling, every memory all led me right back to him.
Something malicious began rattling through my bones, an insidious energy that tangled with all that anger living inside me, always there, just waiting for its moment.
I yanked open the fridge and said, “Wow, you’re still alive?”
I saw Isaac turn around to face me out of the corner of my eye.
“What do you mean?”
Even his voice grated on my soul. Soft. Lilting.
I grabbed a Diet Coke and kicked the fridge shut with my foot, popped the can open, and took a long sip. When I was done, I made the douchiest ahhh sound I could muster.
Isaac’s perfect little angel face twisted with disdain.
I raked my eyes over his delicate form, then said, “Just, you know. You’ve been down there with the freak in his cave. Always figured he was like a serial killer or something. I keep my door locked at night.”
I didn’t believe a single word I was saying, and none of that was true. I wanted to get under his skin like the anger had gotten under mine, slinking through my veins and screaming at me to unleash it on whoever was there.
He was there. Right fucking there.
I watched his small hands curl into fists, watched his brows draw together. “What did you just say?”
I glanced at the microwave when it beeped, then cut my eyes back to Isaac and took a step closer. “I said I’m surprised you’re still alive, considering the company you’ve been keeping.”
He didn’t like that. He stepped toward me, and something inside me was screaming to stop this now, to just walk away, that this wasn’t who I was.
But all that rage was so much louder.
“You know,” he said softly. “It’s usually the people with the smallest dicks who talk the loudest. And I’ve never heard anyone louder than you, Gavin.”
I could feel my lip curling up as I closed the distance between us, glaring down at him. He didn’t back away, just stood his ground and glared right back.
He was fucking brave, I’d give him that. Brave but stupid.
Because I was not in control anymore.
But I never had been, had I?
My hand whipped out and grabbed the front of his shirt and I dragged him to his toes. The first flicker of fear flashed through his dark green eyes, and I felt sick to my stomach.
But nothing could stop me now. I said, “I always knew you were a freak, too. Anyone who takes it up the ass like a?—”
“What the fuck is going on here?”
I slowly released Isaac and looked over at Jamie Sutton, resident party boy. He was a nice guy, I guessed. I didn’t really hang out with any of my roommates, and they didn’t want to be around me much either.
Nobody did.
I smiled at him. “Nothing’s going on, bro. Just two dudes having a little chat. That’s all.”
“No,” Isaac gritted out. “Gavin was talking shit about Brody. That’s what’s going on. He should keep his fucking mouth shut and maybe focus on his own shortcomings. Like his tiny dick.”
“You little shit?—”
“Gavin!” Jamie shouted. “Fuck, Isaac, stop it! Gavin, get the fuck out of here before I lose my shit. And if I ever hear you say something even remotely homophobic again, I’ll get your ass kicked out of this goddamn house.”
I wanted to stop myself, to reach deep inside me and pull out the person I used to be, to put him back at the helm, because my entire being was thrumming with a chaotic violence that I knew was about to implode.
But I was too far gone to stop anything, and the threat of being kicked out triggered a fear so visceral that I exploded in an instant. “Fuck you, Jamie!” I snarled, advancing on him as the tendrils of all that hateful rage slid around every limb. “You know what, I bet you fucked him too, huh? Is that it? Isaac’s your little butt boy?—”
Jamie smashed his fist into my face before I had a chance to react. Pain burst across the cheek I’d slapped just ten minutes ago as I flew back into the fridge, my head knocking into the metal on the very same spot that had hit the window of Beck’s car.
Fuck Beck. Fuck all these people. And fuck me especially.
I screamed in fury and leapt at Jamie, reduced to nothing but a black cloud of rage. I had no thoughts in my mind. I had nothing, was nothing, as I threw a punch at my roommate. He ducked it and pushed his shoulder into my chest, knocking me back into the counter. My hands scrabbled at his shoulders, ripping his shirt as he slammed his fist into my ribs over and over again. Something crashed to the floor behind me, and I got enough leverage to shove Jamie back and punch him in the face.
And then Ash and Joe were running into the room. Ash ripped me away from Jamie, his strong arms hauling me back and locking around my chest while Joe grabbed Jamie and pulled him away from me.
“You fucking piece of shit!” I screamed, completely out of my mind. I wasn’t even a person anymore. “I always knew you were a fucking f?—”
“YOU SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!” Jamie yelled, the tendons in his neck popping, his face red with his anger as Joe held him back and tried to talk him down.
Brody ran into the room, eyes wide with surprise. “What the fuck is going on? What happened?”
“Gavin is a fucking bigot , that’s what happened!” Jamie yelled. He wasn’t trying to break out of Joe’s hold anymore, but his eyes promised retribution if I opened my mouth again.
I opened my fucking piece of shit mouth. “And apparently this house is full of h—” I didn’t even get the word out before Ash shoved me into the wall so hard and fast that I didn’t have time to brace myself against the impact. My face and forehead smashed against the plaster, the hit so jarring that everything in my mind went blank. I groaned and tried to blink away the black spots dancing in my vision.
“You’re fucking out, Gavin. Pack your shit and go.” Ash’s voice sounded like it was far away. “Anyone think he should stay?”
Silence.
I blinked, still in a daze, then turned around to find five people staring at me with so much disgust that the weight of it started to crush me. I finally registered what was happening, what I’d done, and Ash’s words wrapped themselves around my throat and squeezed. Panic and terror ripped through me as I realized what this meant. “Fuck you. Fuck all of you. It’s a fucking blizzard out there?—”
“And your dad owns a fucking snowplow. It’s not even that bad out right now, just figure it out, Forster. Christ, I always knew you were an asshole but this is too far,” Joe said.
I watched Jamie walk to the fridge and pull an ice pack out of the freezer.
My heart was racing so fast I thought I might actually have a heart attack. There had to be some way to fix this. Some way to undo what I’d just done. Some way to get them to let me stay. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t. My dad would kill me.
But I knew I’d taken it too far; there was no going back, no fixing this. There had been no stopping me from saying the very things that had been used to degrade me for years. And yet, I still said them. Why? Because I wanted everyone around me to hurt like I was hurting?
Fucking pathetic. I should just take my pain and die with it. Then I couldn’t hurt anyone else.
My eyes darted around the room, my mind whirling. “The school?—”
“Would love to know the captain of the wrestling team takes fucking steroids?” said Joe.
Oh my god. Oh my fucking god, he knew . Did he actually know? Or was he just guessing? Had he seen me? Had he gone through my room? Was this it? Was I already dead?
I looked from Ash to Joe to Jamie, then Brody, who was standing by Isaac with a neutral expression.
Maybe I didn’t have to go home. Maybe I could find somewhere else to stay for a while, pretend I hadn’t been kicked out, pretend that everything was fine.
I walked out of the kitchen without another word and climbed the stairs to my room. There was nothing left to say, and the only words I was able to offer anymore were the ones that had been thrown at me day after day after day.
Guilt, remorse, and shame began a slow, steady climb from where I kept shoving them down deep, until they’d invaded every centimeter of my psyche.
There must have been a moment when I could’ve turned this all around. There must have been a point where I could’ve stopped myself from falling off that ledge, dropping into that burning pit of hell and becoming the very devil I despised.
But if there was, I’d missed it.
I packed as much as I could into two bags and left.
It was cold. Really fucking cold. The wind had picked up even more since this afternoon, and I didn’t have proper snow boots, so my sneakers were soaked through, my feet practically frozen. I couldn’t really feel them anymore.
I couldn’t feel much of anything anymore. A numbness had begun spreading through my body, seeping into my soul and quieting the riot in my mind.
I thought maybe I’d gotten a concussion at some point today, because my thoughts were more scattered than usual. I felt dazed as I trudged through the half foot of snow that had already accumulated, and I kept forgetting where I was going.
It was getting harder and harder to see anything more than a foot in front of me as the storm picked up and the sun went down. I just kept walking, kept moving, stopping a few times to retch and dry heave as absolutely nothing came up.
I could’ve walked to my dad’s house, but I wasn’t ready to face him just yet. I thought I’d find somewhere else to stay for the night, but I had no fucking idea where ‘somewhere else’ might even be. I didn’t have any friends I could call and my dad was the only family I had, the only person I had.
So I was just walking, enjoying the lack of sensation, the absence of anger, the loss of all that fear and shame.
It felt like maybe I was already dead. I wasn’t even afraid of how much I liked that feeling.
Sometimes, when I was lying in bed at night, I pretended the last eight years had never happened. I pretended that I was still fourteen, and I imagined a different life for myself. A life where I had the courage to stand up for what I knew was right, where I hadn’t lied to the police, where I’d told them everything, the whole truth, and let them help me.
That was the closest I could come to anything resembling happiness these days—fantasizing about things I could never, ever change. Dreaming of a reality I’d never get to live in.
I kicked at the snow, pins and needles pricking down my leg with the movement. I was starting to slow down, moving was becoming difficult, and I didn’t know whether that was because I was losing all the feeling in my body or because the snow was so thick it was hard to walk through.
My limbs felt really heavy, too.
Stop being such a goddamn pussy, Gavin .
Nausea spiked, and then I was falling to my knees, dry heaving and making the most pathetic, fearful sounds that made me want to kill myself. My entire body tensed as I retched and gasped for air, tears streaming down my face, and an awful, wretched loneliness swept past the barrier of the numbness I’d been enveloped in. Panic followed on its heels, and I choked out a sob, just trying to breathe through it all.
I let myself fall onto my back, too tired to hold myself up anymore. Too tired to do anything but lie here. I watched my shallow breaths fog around me, watched the flakes of snow being flung by a furious wind, and imagined myself in a reality where Beck and I were still friends, a reality where he didn’t hate me. I pictured him smiling at me with those perfect lips, blue eyes shining with love and laughter. Heard him say, “I’m the sky and you’re the stars, Gav. You’re stuck with me.”
I closed my eyes and pretended I was anyone but the person I’d become.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
An annoyingly persistent sound was drawing me out of a cocoon of endless nothingness, and I resented it so much that a shot of anger surged through me, bright and red and loud.
I resented that, too.
My eyes were rolling as I tried to peel back my lids, my mouth so dry I could barely move my tongue. When I finally cracked them open, my vision was blurry. I blinked and blinked and blinked, trying to make the blobs come into focus.
When my vision finally began to clear, I wished it hadn’t. I was in a hospital room and my dad was sitting in a chair near my bed, his brown eyes blazing with disappointment and disgust as they stared into mine.
I tried to swallow, but there wasn’t a single drop of saliva in my mouth. My dad didn’t say a word, and my hands started to tremble. I was glad they were under the blanket.
“What—” The word scratched painfully at my throat. I really needed some fucking water. I looked around the room and silently thanked whatever nurse had left the rolling cart with a cup and a pitcher of water on it near the bed.
I dropped my gaze from his and tried to sit up, an uncomfortable warmth radiating from the blanket draped over my body. I reached for the pitcher, but my hand was shaking so much that I only ended up knocking it over. All the water splashed across the surface of the cart and spilled onto the floor, some of it hitting me and seeping into the blanket.
“Jesus Christ,” my dad muttered.
When I glanced back at him, I tried to make my voice work again. “What—what happened?” I croaked.
“You’re fucking pathetic, that’s what happened,” he said, his voice soft and full of venom. “While I was out there clearing the snow, I got a call that my son was found half frozen in someone’s front yard. You think I want to be sitting here right now? I have a fucking job to do. What in the fuck were you doing out there? Huh?”
I couldn’t stop the tears from welling up, and I didn’t want him to see them because it would only make this so much worse, but if I turned away from him, that wouldn’t be any better because he would think I was disrespecting him.
“I don’t—I didn’t?—”
“You know what, I don’t actually fucking care. As soon as the doctor comes back, you’re getting discharged and then I’m taking you back to that fucking house.”
Despite the heat of the blanket, my entire body went ice cold in an instant. “I can’t go back there,” I whispered. I covered my face with my hands when the tears started to fall, wishing I’d died in the snow.
“What?”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “They kicked me out.”
He was quiet for so long that I finally moved my hands and looked at him. There was nothing but contempt for me in those eyes.
“They kicked you out,” he said slowly, leaning forward. “You begged me for three years to live in one of those houses, and you get yourself fucking kicked out? This is exactly why you’re incapable of being on your own. Can you even name one thing you’ve done right this entire year? I raised you better than this. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe you need something to remind you how to act right.” He held my gaze as he turned his head and spat on the floor of the room.
I didn’t argue with him. Didn’t tell him that the steroids were eating away at my brain, destroying my sanity and turning me into a fucking monster. Didn’t point my finger at him and say that he was the one who made me take them in the first place.
I sat there and said nothing, staring down at my hands.
A nurse came in a minute later, her cheerful demeanor feeling almost absurd in the miasma of loathing in the room. When she saw the spilled water, she clucked her tongue and called me a poor baby , then cleaned it up with a smile on her face. Told me the doctor would be in shortly, that everything looked good, I only had moderate hypothermia, and I’d most likely be able to go home very soon.
My dad smiled at her and thanked her. When she left, his smile dropped away like it’d never even been there, and the anger in his eyes made my breath hitch. I felt like someone had ripped open my breastbone and was squeezing my heart.
“We’ll discuss this when we get home,” he said.
I clenched my teeth together so hard I thought I heard a crack. I nodded, because I knew he needed a response from me. And then I remembered I’d been carrying all my stuff with me. “My bags?—”
“They’re in my truck.”
“Th-thank you.”
He laughed derisively.
A doctor came in a few minutes later, and I barely heard her at all as she talked about my health and told me I would be just fine and blah blah blah.
I wouldn’t be just fine, but I didn’t tell her that.
My dad had gotten some clothes out of my bags, and I changed into those once they’d taken the IV out. He didn’t speak to me again until we got home. The drive back was miserable, the anxiety building and building as I stared at the snow flurries. The plow he had attached to the front of his truck furiously cleared away the piles and piles of snow, and more than once I wanted to jump from the truck and lay myself out in front of it. Let it crush me before he even had a chance to get his hands on me.
Fear kept me frozen, and once we were home, once the front door was shut behind us, he slapped me so hard that my neck cracked as my head whipped to the side, and I stumbled into the wall. I knew better than to make a single sound.
“I want this place cleaned up by the time I get home. Then we’ll talk.”
He yanked the front door open again and disappeared into the storm to go plow the roads.
The cowardice that had seared itself into my soul had me sinking to my knees in despair. Humiliation rose, crushing me to the floor under its weight. I was a scared child in the body of a grown man, so spineless I couldn’t even stand up for myself. I should have done something a long time ago, because now it was too late for me.
I knew that slap was only the tip of the iceberg of what was to come, and I prayed it never stopped snowing, that he never came home.
But no one ever answered my prayers, so I wasn’t sure why I bothered.