Free Raise Your Glass by John Goode

grabbed my stuff and walked out of the gym for the second time today. This time, though, it felt like it was for the last time.
    I threw my duffel bag into the backseat and burned rubber out of the parking lot. I was so pissed I couldn’t even see straight. As the Mustang screamed past the school, I saw the banners hanging on the back fence proclaiming it the proud home of the Foster Cowboys. I resisted the urge to stop and pull the damn banners down and light them on fire. I just kept driving. I turned on my stereo and blasted it as loud as I could, driving toward nowhere in particular.
    Which, if I thought about it, was a pretty good metaphor for my life.
    I had been heading toward this point for so long I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t, sacrificing everything along the way just to get me once inch closer to the goal of getting out of this town forever. It didn’t matter if I dated Jennifer and never told her I liked guys, because the longer people thought I was straight the better my chances were of getting away. Who cared if I pretty much treated people around me like crap? Once I left for college, I’d never see them again, so what did it matter? And so what if my parents were one bad night away from reenacting some of the better parts of Fight Club ? They had gotten as much mileage out of using me as a bargaining chip as they could; I didn’t owe them a damn thing. And who cared if I wasn’t happy?
    Certainly not me.
    Though I didn’t mean to, I ended up at the lake, at the same spot I had taken Kyle when we skipped school. Before, it had been my old stomping grounds, a place where I had practically grown up. Now it felt like an alien planet. All of its previous luster and appeal were gone, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what I had ever seen in it. I tried to remember the nights and the parties and all the fun I was supposed to have had here, but nothing came to mind. Instead, it looked like a crappy lake in a crappy town that I was never going to be free of.
    It looked like a goddamned prison, a prison of my own making.
     
     
    Kyle
     
    I CAN ’ T think of many things that people would consider universal.
    As human beings we spend so much energy arguing over every little thing it’s easy to forget sometimes that deep down we are all the same creature. White, black, straight, gay, liberal, conservative, all those labels do is point out how different we seem, when the truth is almost everybody feels the same way about the important stuff.
    For example, when you see someone in pain, you want to help, and when you are in pain, you want help.
    If you had asked me a week, a day, hell, even an hour ago if I would think these words, I’d have thought you were completely freaking insane, but as I knelt there and sobbed, I only had one desire running through my bones:
    I wanted my mom.
    It sounded so stupid and trite that I was embarrassed for even feeling it, but when she knelt down with me and put her arms around me, all the walls I had erected over the years to keep the sorrow and the pain away from my life shattered. I was overwhelmed. The more she comforted me the more I ached, as a lifetime of emotional venom began to seep out of my heart. I told her the story the best I could between huge, earth-shattering heaves. I have no idea how she understood me but I had just to assume moms speak Crying Children. She didn’t interrupt me or ask any questions, she just sat there and absorbed the tale without any indication of judgment.
    When I was done, I felt exhausted and drained and more than a little bit embarrassed. I dried my eyes and got up slowly. “So, yeah,” I said, sniffling. “So basically my life sucks.” She didn’t smile; she didn’t so much as chuckle. “So, say something,” I said after agonizing seconds of silence.
    “They can’t do this,” she said, a clarity in her eyes that I couldn’t ever recall seeing before.
    I scoffed. “I beg to differ since they are doing