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Lance threw his books on his bed with a groan. He hated his new school. The kids there were just so mean. It wasn’t his fault his first language wasn’t English, it wasn’t his fault he grew up in Cuba, and it damn sure wasn’t his fault that he didn’t turn in his homework because a group of upper classmen decided to throw his book sack into a nearby ditch.
He realized too late that he had just tossed his wet books onto his bed and with a curse grabbed them and spread them out on his window to dry off, then stripped his bed and brought his sheets down to wash them. While he was downstairs he raided the kitchen for a bag of chips and a Dr. Pepper and headed back upstairs and opened his computer.
One of his teachers, Mr. Smythe, had recommended to Lance a website to help with his English comprehension. He was fairly proficient, just the occasional miscue and misinterpretations caused him to be the butt of some pretty hateful jokes. Mr. Smythe was nice though. He helped Lance with his essays and even introduced him to a TA that volunteered part time at the YMCA for the big brother program. Adam was great and took Lance on as his ‘little brother’ at the YMCA and he promised to introduce Lance to his fiancé at some point.
Lance logged into the website and went through the new user process of creating a user name and password and setting profile preferences.
It wasn’t long before he found a forum where several users were venting over their common struggles of English being their second language.
BluEyeLvrBoi: I wish people weren’t so judgmental about other languages. I mean the jerks making fun of me only speak ONE! I can speak three and a half!
BlkEmoScarFace: How do you speak half a language?
BluEyeLvrBoi: Easy, I speak Spanish, English, I can half-way bullshit my way through French, and completely fluent in sarcasm ;)
BlkEmoScarFace: Hmmmm. My brother says I’m proficient in sarcasm and assholism
Lance let a laugh bubble out of him for the first time today.
BlkEmoScarFace: Sucks that people are jerks about you being multi-lingual. I get the same shit at my school and I get ragged on for the scar across my face.
BluEyeLvrBoi: So then your user name wasn’t in reference to the movie?
BlkEmoScarFace: Mostly no, but it is a great movie.
BluEyeLvrBoi: Do you mind if I ask what happened? If I crossed a line just tell me to mind my own business.
There was a long pause and Lance thought he fucked up. Leave it to him to invade someone’s space just a little too much.
BlkEmoScarFace: I was jumped by some guys that not only had a problem with me being Korean but because of some of my lifestyle choices as well. One of them had a knife. My brother and his partner pulled me out of school and I’ve been homeschooled until this year. We moved and I’m in a new school, but some shit never changes. Still get a shit-ton of crap because I’m ‘foreign’
BluEyeLvrBoi: Sorry you went through that.
BluEyeLvrBoi: How about we quit talking about our tormentors and discuss better things. For instance are you a cat person or a dog person?
By the time Lance’s sheets were clean and his text books were mostly dry, he was in a much better mood thanks to the kid in the chat forums. He would have to thank Mr. Smythe for the website tomorrow.
Over the course of the school year, Lance found out his new friend’s name was Keith; his brother’s partner was named Adam (“Hey small world! My big brother at the YMCA is named Adam!”), and they bickered over everything. Other than chatting with Keith on the English Learning/Comprehension (ELC) website, the two never exchanged personal information like phone numbers or where they lived. Lance never even thought to ask Keith where he was from until he was involved in another bullying incident at school.
~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~
Lunch. If you ask Lance he would say it’s possibly the best and worst part of his day when he’s at school. The best because he gets a break from his classes, the hassle of trying to interpret his teachers’ intentions when it comes to homework assignments and then the worst because he never knows if any of his tormentors are going to choose that day to, well, to torment him.
Just his luck, today was a day of torment.
Lance his making his way through the cafeteria hoping to find a quiet table in a corner where he won’t be noticed when some football jock, James Griffin, spots him.
“YO McClain! When do you and your family plan on swimming back to Cuba?”
Lance pretends he didn’t hear him and keeps walking. But as luck would have it, one of Griffin’s lackeys, Ryan Kinkade sticks a foot out and trips Lance as he walks by. His tray goes flying and Lance lands face first on unforgiving tile while the entire cafeteria population erupts into laughter. There’s no getting up quietly because Griffin is standing with a foot on Lance’s back to keep him from getting off the floor. Kinkade is next to him laughing and reaching for Lance’s book sack. He doesn’t see it happen but there’s a hush over the cafeteria and James is on the ground next to Lance and sporting a bloody nose. There’s a guy Lance has never seen before bending over to grab Lance’s book sack and hands it to him. He’s got dark hair and dark broody eyes, and Lance swears he has a scar on his lower left side of his face.
Suddenly there’s yelling and Lance is being pulled up by a freshman, he thinks her name is Katie, and there’s a fight. It’s five against one, but strangely enough, the football jocks are not faring well against whoever this new person is. Katie pulls Lance to a table and he sits next to a guy from Algebra he recognizes as Hunk. He’s not sure what’s happening other than he’s given some food and the teachers finally manage to break up the fight.
By the end of the day Lance has two new friends, Katie or Pidge as she prefers to be called and Hunk, and word has it that the fight was caused by some new kid and he was suspended for a week after only being enrolled for two days. Of course there were tons of rumors about the new kid pulling a knife on someone, he threatened to have Griffin killed, he was going to run over Kinkade in the parking lot with his motorcycle, and the list went on and on each rumor getting progressively worse.
Lance decided to try and find out who this guy was and thank him for helping out, but the principal, Ms. Johnson, wouldn’t tell Lance anything.
And then things got even weirder. Lance got a text from Adam saying he couldn’t meet up for their big brother program because the kid he and his partner had fostered and then adopted got into some trouble at school. Then Keith sent a message through the ELC website that he had gotten into a fight at school and was grounded for a week and all his internet privileges were revoked. It’s not possible, it’s totally possible, but what are the odds that this new kid is Keith? Before he can talk himself out of it Lance sends a message back.
BluEyeLvrBoi: Did your fight happen in the cafeteria? Lance doesn’t get a reply. He tries to not let it bother him. Keith is grounded, he probably can’t respond anyway. So he lets it go, he’s probably just wishing for something too good to be true.
~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~
Lance throws his books onto a table in a small study room and waits for Adam. They’re back on schedule for their big brother meetings and Adam is helping him study for his upcoming Physics test. Lance has already started looking over his notes when Adam walks in and doesn’t see the broody teen following behind him right away.
“Hey Lance, sorry I’m late. We’re going to have some company today if that’s ok?”
Lance looks up and smiles at Adam, “No problem.” “Great! This is Keith. He’s grounded and not allowed to be at home alone and he’s got some catch up work that he’s going to finish while we tackle Physics.”
Lance looks up at the name Keith. He blinks and tries not to stare because this kid definitely has a scar on his face. And the coincidences are just too many. And his brain works faster than his mouth and his filter is broken because he blurts out without any sensitivity, “Scarface!”
Adam is staring in shock, “Lance! That’s not cool. Keith I’m sorry he’s not usually insensitive about things like this.”
Lance gets up from the table and stands in front of Keith. “It’s you isn’t it? Emo Scarface or whatever your screen name is. You’re grounded because you got suspended for fighting in the cafeteria. You’ve only been at school for less than a week because you’ve been homeschooled. It’s you.”
Lance watches as recognition lights up Keith’s eyes. “You’re Lance.”
Lance nods and can’t help the huge grin on his face. “I can’t believe we’ve been in the same town this whole time.”
Adam is looking back and forth between the two boys, “You know each other?”
Keith turns to Adam, “Lance is the guy I told you about when I got suspended. I didn’t realize his name was Lance or that he was the same guy I’ve been talking to on the ELC website.”
~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~
School got a lot easier for Lance since that week. Once Keith was no longer suspended he began hanging out with Lance, Katie and Hunk. And the football jocks left Lance alone after that because none of them wanted to be on the receiving end of one of Keith’s fists.
By the time Lance’s senior year rolled around he was team captain of the swim team and center on the basketball team. Keith was team captain and quarterback of the football team and he was pitcher for the baseball team. Hunk and Katie were members of the science club and their project; which they dubbed as Rover won first place at the national science fair in Washington DC.
Lance was at his locker digging for his Calculus book when a purple slip of paper fell to the ground. He picked it up and made a face. He didn’t recognize it as being his so he shoved his books back in his locker and unfolded the paper. He didn’t recognize the handwriting as he read the small note containing only a number three in the top corner and one word:
Go
Throughout the day Lance found various other notes; each with the same format, a number in the top corner and only one word. Several of the notes had random letters capitalized. He had asked Pidge, Hunk and Keith about them but they all seemed to be just as confused as Lance. At the end of the day Lance had a total of eleven notes and no clue about any of it except maybe it had something to do with prom since that was one of the words on the letter with the number five in the corner. By the end of the day Lance was going crazy. He was sitting in the bleachers with Hunk and Pidge waiting for Keith to finish baseball practice. Between the three of them they had the letters spread out in the order Lance received them.
3 go
8 checK
11 no
4 To
7 mE?
5 prom
9 yes
1 wIll
6 witH
10 or
2 you
Lance sighed as Hunk and Pidge both gave up and started talking about some new computer tech something or another, “Come on guys! I thought you were gonna help me figure this out?” Hunk shrugged, “I was never good at puzzles like that, I’m better with my hands.”
Pidge just gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, “If it’s matters of the heart or prom I’m pretty useless.”
Lance flopped dramatically back on the bench and shuffled the papers in his hands. “Maybe they just go in numerical order. Nope probably too simple.” Pidge nudged his shoe, “What have you got to lose?”
Lance sighed and looked at the offending papers in his hand and decided to give it a try. Halfway through he gasped. “Holy SHIT! This might actually be it!”
Once the papers were in order he read what he had.
- wIll
- you
- go
- To
- Prom
- witH
- mE?
- checK
- yes
- or
- no
Lance felt his face heat up, “Oh my god! How can I answer if I don’t know who this is from?”
He stared at the pages a little longer, forgetting about Pidge and Hunk. He was now fixated on the bold letters and his heart was trying to beat out of his chest. There’s no way it was that simple. His hands were starting to shake as he rummaged around for a pencil in his book sack and wrote out the bold letters: ITHEK
If he just rearranged them…but was this real? Was someone playing a joke on him? He looked up and noticed Pidge and Hunk were gone and the baseball team was done with practice. Lance grabbed his book sack and ran down the bleachers. Just as he jumped from the last steps Keith was standing there waiting for him. He was still in his uniform and when he saw Lance he ran a hand across the back of his neck. His cheeks were a brilliant red and Lance wasn’t sure if it was from practice or anticipation.
He stopped in front of Keith and tried several times but failed to form a coherent sentence, “You….this…..I…is this real? Is this a joke?”
Keith’s head shot up and his eyes were wide, “No, Lance I swear this isn’t a joke. I wouldn’t do something like that.”
Lance took another step closer, “You want to go with me?”
Keith blushed and ducked his head down. He didn’t look at Lance but he nodded, “I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while.”
Lance tilted his head, “why?”
Keith kept his head down but peeked at Lance through his mop of hair hanging in his face, “I like you. I like you a lot and I’ve been wanting to ask, not just if you’ll go to prom, but if I could take you on a date or something. But if you don’t want to its ok. I won’t get mad at you.”
Lance’s voice was almost a whisper, “You like me?”
Keith nodded, “Yea I …”
Before Keith could finish, Lance lunged forward and slammed his lips to Keith’s and pulled back just as quick. “Yes.” Keith stared, eyes wide, “Yes?” Lance grinned, “Yes. I like you too and I want to go to prom with you.”
Keith stood there in shock before the realization of what Lance said caught up to his brain. “Oh. OH!”
Lance was still grinning when Keith began smiling. He rested his forehead on Lance’s, “You like me too.”
Lance nodded, “I do.”
Keith placed his hands on either side of Lance’s face and Lance let his eyes slide closed. He heard Keith’s soft whisper, “good.”
Lance melted when Keith kissed him. It was the opposite of the rushed clashing of lips that Lance had ambushed Keith with. It was slow and gentle, and Lance couldn’t wait for prom.