How the misery begins

I opened up the suitcase and pulled out some black torn skinny jeans, the ones I had on were caked in mud from the lake, a smashing pumpkins t-shirt, because the hospital shirt was plain and boring and really fucking itchy, and then a dark blue jacket since I didn't really want my arms on show and my other one was full of holes. I quickly changed, then stood in front of the mirror to check that I looked somewhat acceptable. I never did, so it was pretty pointless. Anyhow I sorted my hair and put on a tiny amount of black eyeliner, I never liked going anywhere without wearing some, It somehow made me feel a little more confident. I shuffled quietly down the steps, stopping when I heard whispered shouts. I stood still around the corner so nobody could see me and listened. "Gerrard honey, I promise you we didn't know until last night. I would have told you something if we did" I recognised Donna' s voice immediately, since she's the only person I'd spoken to apart from Jamia. "Well you managed to keep a pretty big secret from me for seven years, so how the hell do you think I can trust anything you're saying?" A boy, whom I guessed was Gerard, shouted back aggressively. "Gee, I swear we had no clue. I promise." Someone else half-whispered. I coughed and walked down the rest of the stairs, it wasn't right for me to listen to their conversations. They all looked up at me, staring intently. This didn't really do much for my self esteem. One of the boys stood up slowly, not taking his eyes off of me and putting his hands to his mouth, looking scared to death. Donna turned to him "Gerard honey, this is Frank." She said the boy warily. He redirected his gaze from me to her, glaring hatefully into her eyes, then stormed out of the room and slammed the door. I was left completely confused and utterly oblivious to the whole situation. "Oh don't mind Gerard, he's just in a bad mood today, I'm sure he'll come around" Donna said, attempting to sound cheerful but failing miserably. "Anyway, this is my husband Don" she pointed to tall grey haired man stood next to an armchair, holding a wine glass. "And this is our son Michael" she said, gesturing to a lanky brown haired boy with thick glasses. "You can call me Mikey" he said, giving me a nervous wave. Why the hell was he nervous, he hadn't just moved in with a bunch if complete strangers? Again with the bitterness, I really needed to get out of that habit. We spent about an hour and a half just talking about ourselves, well mostly about me, but I found out quite a bit about them too. They somehow managed to avoid Gerards name completely, and dodge all my questions about him. A while later Donna stood up and said "Well I think I'll go help Jamia make us some dinner, are you still a vegetarian Frank?" "Yeah....Wait, what do you mean still?" I asked cautiously, I had no idea how she knew I was a vegetarian. And why did she say 'still' as if she had known before? "Oh uhh your...your files were sent to us and i-it said you were a vegetarian, but I didn't know if you still were or not" I wasn't totally convinced by her explanation, but I let it go anyway. I stayed in the living room with mikey, talking about bands and movies and other various topics until Don called us in for dinner. We sat down to eat, even Gerard was there, but he mostly just glared at the table. We had spaghetti, though Donna made sure it was meatless for me. We talked about things like my old town and my school, I told them how I was a grade A student, but I left out the part where I was bullied mercilessly. I didn't tell them about my sexuality either, I had no clue as to how accepting they were towards gay kids and I didn't want to jeopardise my chances of a fresh start. I found myself glancing towards Gerard every once in a while, a few times I caught him staring back at me, others he was still glaring at his plate as if he were trying to burn a hole through it with his mind. The few times he was looking at me though, I got to see his face properly. He had pretty hazel eyes rimmed with thick black eyeliner, thin lips that were a dark shade of pink, incredibly smooth looking, pale, porcelain skin, and shaggy jet black hair that fell around his face perfectly. He looked so familiar, yet I hadn't a clue where I'd seen him. I was sure I'd have remembered a face as gorgeous as that. "Frank?" Don pulled me away from my daydream, I wasn't aware how long I had been staring at Gerard, but I knew it wasn't long enough. I began to feel myself blush when he noticed I was staring at him. "We were saying about how you'll have to transfer to Belleville high school, it's only about ten minutes away and I'm sure Gerard will be more than happy to take you along with Mikey. Of course you won't be starting for about a month or so, with all that's happened I'm sure you'll want some time to recover, but we thought we'd better give you a heads up beforehand." "Yeah, that sounds great, thank you" I smiled back. In the few short hours I'd been here, Mr and Mrs way had been kinder and more supportive than my mom had been ever since her drug habit had started. And I couldn't be more grateful.

Notes