Free Crush by Laura Susan Johnson Page A

and so angry! Damn, I hate them! I hate them all!
So now she’s a woman and I’m still just the undersized dweeb in love with someone he can’t have, now or ever. In the locker room I overhear Ray regaling his jock buddies about “finally” getting my best friend into bed. “She was ready, and she was willing!” I won’t talk to her for at least two days. I feel so left
out. I’m not a goody-goody. I’m not angryat Stacyfor losing her V
     
because I think she should have waited for the marriage bed. I’m jealous, lonely, resentful, and wishing Tammy would deflower my
     
ass.The kicker, and yes, that’s a pun, comes when I’m walking
    home one day after school and a soccer ball bounces near me. I go to pick it up and I hear a familiar voice roar, “Don’t touch that ball!” I’m already bent halfway down and my fingers touch it when Tammyruns up to me. “I said, don’t touch it! Are you deaf?! ” I’m too stunned to react as he grabs it from under myfloating fingers and jogs back to where he and the team are practicing. I continue walking home, and as soon as I’m safely away from school grounds, I no longer try to stifle my sobs of despair. Stacy is wrong. He doesn’t like me at all. He hates me, and I have no idea what I’ve done to provoke such rancor.
    Obviously, that’s still not enough. Even though she’s now married and no longer in school, Lard-Ash begins to spread venomous rumors around town that I’m gay. How do I know? Because kids at both school and church are walking up to me, the ones who have never liked me taunting, the ones I get along with simply informing, “Yvette says you’re a queer.” And then one day, I’m walking home as usual when three sophomores jump me. I’m out of school for three days waiting for the welts and bruises to fade a little.
    Stacy notices the subtle change in me after that. “Don’t let them get to you, Baby.”
“Everyone hates me…”
“You can’t let them get to you.”
Then Ray tells me that Tammy is moving to L.A. after graduation, to attend broadcasting school, and my torment is complete. I’ve been thinking, Well, at least I’ll see him around town . But no. He’s going to L.A. Might as well be going to the other side of the galaxy. He’ll find a new harem to service him. Stacyand Ray will probablybe getting married soon.
And I’m just going to staythe same, the same little loser that nobodyloves.
    It isn’t a full two weeks after the first attack when I’m beaten up again, by the same three guys. They call me a faggot and pound me unconscious and leave me laying on the sidewalk, my homework scattered all around me like smaller victims.
    I dream. I hallucinate. A voice says, “Come on, Jamie.” My bodyis swooped into the air. I hear a door slam. The world around me is rumbling.
    “Everyone hates me,” I murmur.
The voice is familiar. “Don’t worryabout those assholes.” “Why does everyone hate me? What have I done? Even
    Tammyhates me.”
For a moment, I think the voice talking to me has left me, then
I hear it say, veryquietly, “That’s not true.”
“He hates me…He yelled at me when I went to pick up the
ball…I wasn’t going to steal it…I was going give it back to him…
but he screamed at me…He’s mean…He’s hateful…I don’t
understand what I’ve done to make him hate me…”
I feel a hand touching myhair, myface. “He doesn’t hate you,
he’s just a prick sometimes.” Then, “I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have
yelled at you. I was just…”
I shake myhead violently, and even with myeyes closed, my
head spins and aches. “He hates me…Nobody loves me…
Nobodywill ever love me…” Myworld blackens.
When I finally come to, I’m in the E.R. at Davis Hospital. I’m
surrounded bybright, glaring white.An IVdrips into me. I’m cold. I
hate the plastic, medicinal smell all around me. My right arm is broken. For a while, they think my jaw is fractured, but the x-rays say it’s just bruised.