Hate
Some days are good, and some days are bad. Some days Lash cries. Some days I want to cry, too. Prison was not fun.
To be honest, we got out in fairly short order, what with being minors (thank God that we were a few months younger than insane queen bitch Gwen) and what with being accessories, not perpetrators. I mean, we thought it was fun, mess with a few heroes, Gwen would turn everyone into babies, demand her million dollars or whatever she wanted, then she’d turn them back to normal, and we’d go back to life as normal, only, well, I dunno, richer. How were we supposed to know she was really a psycho bitch as old as our parents and that she intended to destroy the school and raise all the heroes as villains? Sheesh, if we’d known that, we wouldn’t have helped.
Turns out Penny was the only one she told about her plans to destroy the school. Did you know Gwen planned on leaving Lash and I in the school when she destroyed it? We were going to die because she’s a bitch.
So suffice to say, we were horrified when we found that out, and even Telepath, the, well, the telepath, she was able to read our minds and find that out. She said we weren’t really all that involved, and though we had assisted in turning our entire school into babies, she thought we were doing it for a really fun prank.
Because man, that’s what it seemed to us.
So we got three months for it. Three months isn’t so bad, especially considering what we could have got (Penny’s looking at 15 years, Gwen at life or so). Three months where we sat around in our cell most of the time, trying to avoid Gwen and Penny, and mocking Stitches because that was always fun.
Did you know we got together while we were in prison? We were in there a week before a guard, who apparently felt sorry for us, said it was actually easier on prisoners if it seemed like they were already ‘with’ someone, because then, well, let’s just say showers tended to be safer.
So Lash and I laughed and pretended to be ‘together’, and wouldn’t you know it? People did leave us alone, and after another month, we had our preliminary hearing, got sentenced to just serve the two more months that would make it a full three, then got stuck in a new cell. Just the two of us.
Man, after a month with Gwen and the others, that was paradise! Utter pure and sweet paradise, and we loved it. We still pretended to be together, of course, because that was the plan, but after awhile, I dunno. It stopped being pretending, and started being real. I don’t know if it started when I realized that Lash had the most beautiful hips I’d ever seen, and all I wanted to do was run my hands over them, or what. Lash told me it was the first time I shoved someone’s tray off the table and glared down at them when they protested, all because they had had the balls to insult Lash, and I wasn’t gonna stand for that.
Next thing I know, though, Lash is crawling into my bed at night and I’m not even minding. Prison messes with your head man, but Lash is warm at night, and he kind of just drapes himself over you, so he’s like the best blanket ever, and it doesn’t hurt that he has those sexy hips and those cute dark eyes under those bangs. He’s a beautiful boy, and I dunno what he sees in big old overweight me, but I don’t even care.
So after three months, they let us out, and even though our parents were beyond pissed at us, we went home and Principal Powers even let us back into school. We’d have to take a bunch of summer courses in order to actually graduate that year, but that was cool. We just wanted to be normal again.
So when I say normal again, I know. I was an idiot. Feel free to laugh at me.
Things were not normal again. I mean, once everyone got over the initial shock of ‘the guys who got them stuck in the cafeteria on homecoming so they got turned into babies and almost died’ were back, things quieted down. Lash and I were by no means cool anymore, we were actually kind of shunned. We just stuck to ourselves, and you can believe we never swirlied anyone, not even the popsicle kid.
On good days, everyone ignores us. Will Stronghold had come to the decision that he wasn’t going to hate us, and in fact, even says hi in the halls when we pass. So for the most part, the rest of the school follows our famous classmates’s example and pretty much ignores us. Those are the good days, because Lash and I can sit in the corner of the cafeteria and eat, talking quietly between ourselves, or hide in the library and actually study for once.
There are bad days, too. Days when someone else is having a bad day too, and they decide that the outcasts are a much better target than the sidekicks these days. Those days we get nasty notes shoved in our lockers, things thrown at us during lunch, we get tripped in the hallways. On one really bad day, I caught a couple juniors trying to stuff Lash in his locker, and it took a good beating before they figured that maybe that wasn’t a good idea.
Some days though, some days I want to cry. Lash does, sometimes. These are the days when bigots attack.
I don’t get it. I really don’t. I mean, Peace and Stronghold are dating, and no one rags on them about their ‘sick lifestyle choices’. But these jerks see Lash and I holding hands and they freak, calling us monsters, sick, faggots. I mean, I knew not everyone would accept Lash n’ me, but I really had never expected that. The time we walked to our lockers, and found someone had spray painted ‘fag’ on them, that was really my last straw.
I vaguely remember dragging Lash behind me as we ran for Principal Power’s office, and I know I cried. I remember that, just breaking down while Lash wrapped his arm around my shoulder and Principal Powers listened quietly, concerned. She was so nice, even letting us come back, and then she listened as I chocked out all my problems, about the torment, about Gwen and her plan that didn’t include us, about the ignoring and the bullying. About how I was afraid to admit to Lash that I loved him, that if he decided that he couldn’t take this crap anymore and broke up with me I’d probably die.
And then Principal Power’s hugged us both, shaking her head, and promised things would get better.
Things did, a little. I mean, she tuned the whole school in, and threatened expulsion if anyone tried any ‘hate crimes’, she called them, like that again. She even threatened to sic the Medulla - Boomer dream team on them, which really scares people. So we don’t get mocked because of our choices so much anymore, and really, anything we get now, we can handle.
But still.
Some days are good, and some days are bad. Some days Lash cries. Some days I want to cry, too.
Return to Sky High.