His name was Thomas. We caught each other’s eyes in the halls sometimes between classes, and he always smiled and tripped over his feet when he saw me.
What was the harm? I mean, it was obvious he was the sort of guy who wore his pants so high it would’ve taken Brutus and his buddies about seven minutes to yank them down, and he always seemed to be stumbling over something or stepping on his own feet. Silly Christian homeschooler boy, that’s what I always thought.
And yet, one day I finally stopped to talk to him. I remember he cleared his throat and coughed into his hand – oh my gawd what an idiot – for about two minutes before saying ‘hi’ in a very small voice.
Let’s skip forward two months—after we went to the movies and talked about actually interesting stuff and I found out he was Catholic – cup of ancient history, anyone? – to a night in my bedroom reading Shakespeare. Mom and Dad had taken one look at him when he came over that first time and thought in unison, He’s totally homosexual. Threat neutralized.
And wow, until that night, I thought so too.
“What is the point, Tommy? They spend all this time going on and on about ‘thou’s and ‘thee’s and then suddenly someone dies and everyone cries, and then that’s the end. Did people actually used to like his plays?” I moaned, rolling over onto my back and looking at him from upside-down, where he lay sprawled on my fluffy rug. He gave me that all-teeth homeschooled smile and pushed his glasses back up on his crooked nose.
“Well, apparently Mrs. Holden thinks there's a point, because we need to get through all of Macbeth and Othello and write an essay on the role of women in Shakespeare’s plays by Friday.” He wrinkled his nose—somehow my stomach always jumped when he did that. Why on earth? He was quite obviously gay, and yet it didn’t stop him from being abominably cute.
There was a zit coming out on his chin and his crooked nose he said he’d broken falling down when he was five stuck out rather impractically from his freckled face. God, how I loved those nights.
“Yes, apparently,” I sighed, and rolled back over on my bed, feeling dizzy. The words on the old musty page danced in front of my eyes and I shook myself, feeling ridiculous. Of all the guys to have a totally-not-crush on, why Thomas? He was so…so…cute.
No! I meant—I meant laughable, I swear I did! Sighing at my own argument with myself, I turned back towards the page and started to read, the words beginning to somewhat-behave.
Now fast-forward an hour. We’d finished reading for the night, and were sitting against the side of my bed, saying things we’d later wish we hadn’t and giggling at the unfairness of the world. “Golly,” said Thomas, shaking his head at my unrepeatable comment about the school slut. He turned to look at me, and soft green eyes twinkled behind his rimless glasses. “So tell me, Sara, how many boys have you dated?”
“Whoa,” I said, staring at him. “Where’d that come from?”
“Hey, hey, just asking.” He put his hands up like I was arresting him and I giggled, elbowing him in the ribs.
“Fine. None. You?”
“Seventeen since first grade,” he said importantly, twiddling his thumbs in his pleated-pants lap.
There was a long, terrifying silence, and I gaped at him. I swear it was so quiet I could hear Mom and Dad sleeping next room over. “W-what?”
“Seventeen. Jessica, Anna, Liesel, Hannah, Nina, Laura, Kaysi, Monica, Brianna—”
“Okay! Okay! I get the point,” I snapped, feeling suddenly small and powerless. The whole reason we’d become friends was because I was the cool, fashionable one and he was the nerdy loser who no one even knew. All right, said the reasonable voice in my head, but for all you know he’s kidding, and if he isn’t, they were probably all the sort of girls who pick their noses during class and laugh like asthmatic pigs. That made me feel a little better.
“What’s wrong, Sara? Can’t imagine any girl would want to date someone who resembles an emaciated chicken?” Tommy was laughing now, and his cheeks had got all red like they did when he thought something was super funny. I waited like I normally did for him to calm down.
“Not really,” I giggled, and threw my arm around his shaking shoulders. “But that’s okay, because—” I stopped suddenly, attempting for the first time ever to stare at my own mouth. Because I do. What the hell?
He twisted his head around to look at me and grinned. “Because what, Sara?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly, heart starting to race with how close his face was to mine. “Just gonna say ‘because you’re cool anyway’ or something like that. It’s true, right?”
He gave me a funny look, and for a split second, I thought he’d let it pass, get up, say it was time to go. For the tiniest millionth of a moment, it seemed he’d believe me.
And then all at once he went that extra two inches and our lips met and I totally forget to be angry. What kind of homeschooler kissed like that?
He picked me up effortlessly and dumped me onto the bed. There was something different in his eyes, something very…old. “Don’t worry,” he murmured, laying down over me so his breath brushed across my flushed face. “I’ve done this a million times.”
Two minutes later his hand was creeping under my shirt and suddenly his shoulder-high pants were lost somewhere on my bedroom floor. “Tommy,” I said, turning my face away even though I didn’t want to. “Tommy, I’ve no idea how you’re somehow Brad Pitt and Steve Urkel at the same time, but I don’t want to do it no matter what. I’ve seen some of the girls at school with their STDs and their abortions and I—I don’t want to end up like them.”
Did I imagine he’d laugh? No. But he did, and kissed me again, his tongue flicking across my lips. A single brown curl tumbled over onto his forehead, and he pulled off his glasses, chuckling in the semidarkness. “Did I ask if you wanted to do it?”
And suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore.
Five months passed, and there I was in my bedroom, rifling through the clothes on the floor, thinking about school and my new bed. I was going to a party with Kelsey and John that night, Friday, and I’d just found my favorite yellow dress when—
Clink.
Something flashed out of a bundle of bloody clothes I’d picked up in my bedroom cleanup and clattered onto the floor. I stared a moment, blindly, at that old dried blood; in the sunlight from the windows, the long, thin silver scar on my forearm glowed dully as I held up the…object.
Glasses. Rimless glass. Slightly scratched, one lens flecked with a brownish-red liquid. His glasses.
Not now oh not now not now not now, I thought, and I felt the bile rising in my throat, that burning sensation in the back of my mouth. I threw those filthy glasses across the room, watched as they shattered across the hard wood floor. I felt suddenly dirty, and as I stared down at that bloodstained shirt I used to love, I wondered if I really had just stuffed it under the bed that nightmarish next morning, if I really had just let him get up at five in the morning, brush my cheek with a kiss, and disappear forever.
And as I gulped back the horror, as I stuffed the bloody bundle under the bed, I decided something. As I picked up those shattered glasses, each tiny piece, and dropped them out my window into the trees below, I knew I was right.
Never trust Christian boys.
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Weird, huh? So thought I. But gimme your opinions, pleeez.
(And PLEASE don't nitpick. I much prefer straight-forward opinions to "Oh dear, you forgot to put an apostrophe there and there." Thanks for reading!)
you may have your own opinion about Homeschoolers and Christians, but please when your sharing things like this to many people who may happen to be a homeschooler and/or a christian keep it to yourself. If you were asking me homeschoolers aren't all nerds. I happen to know alot of homeschoolers who are just like any other kid. And many people claim to be christians, but prove otherwise. Trust me I know. Anyways you shouldn't try to be biased about anything on here. Millions of people are a part of YWS and don't want to come across some story that talks crap about who they are. Everyone is different and has their own opinion we need to respect. 
