Free Raise Your Glass by John Goode Page A

it.”
    “No,” she said, standing up. “You don’t understand. They can’t do this.”
    That was when my spider sense started to tingle.
    “They can’t discriminate against you because of that,” she said with more force. “It’s against the federal law.”
    “Don’t,” I said, trying to cut her off at the pass.
    “Kyle, you can’t let them do this to you,” she implored me. “You have to stand up for yourself.”
    “No, no, I do not,” I countered with emphasis on the “no.” “I just need to get through the rest of this year and graduate. Nothing is gained by making them even more pissed at me.”
    She gave me a stern look. “That’s the old Kyle talking.”
    “No, that’s the me Kyle talking. See? This is me talking, and I am saying no.”
    She shook her head and held her tongue, but I knew this was far from over. “It’s not fair,” she said as she was walking out of my room. She paused at the doorway. “And I know life is not fair, that doesn’t mean you just accept it.”
    She closed my door and was gone.
    If I had run a marathon fully clothed in the desert I wouldn’t have felt this drained. It felt good to unload, but it didn’t change that I was still in the same situation I was before I lost it. I slipped my shoes off and lay back on my bed, feeling like I was a thousand years old. She was right, what they were doing wasn’t fair, but what the hell could I do about it? They held all the cards, and even if the school was somehow on my side, the other students would still treat me like trash no matter what.
    And then there was Brad.
    It felt like the bed was pulling me into it as I began to nod off. Every impulse I had was to try to help him, but I didn’t know how. Even if I distanced myself from him now, he’d still be outed and just as shunned as I was. We were both fucked, but the difference was he had so much more to lose than I did. I was just a loser that turned out to be gay, the only difference now was that people openly shunned me instead of doing it unconsciously. If Brad lost baseball, I didn’t know what he’d do….
    That was the last thought I remember having.
    A jumbled series of images made up my dreams. I saw Brad shirtless, tied to a pole like a scarecrow, bloodied and beaten, held up only by the ropes. He was surrounded by the school, students and staff, all of them screaming at him like an angry mob of villagers attacking a monster. Kelly was holding a baseball bat and brandishing it at Brad’s head like he was about to try for a stand-up triple. I would have been more concerned if part of my brain hadn’t realized that most of this imagery was pulled from the pilot of Smallville so I kinda knew it was a dream.
    When I woke up it was dark out and I was drenched in sweat.
    I sat up, trying to remember what I could from the dream before it faded away into wisps of nothing but all I could focus on was that Brad had been in danger. I got up and checked the living room for signs of life and possibly food. I wasn’t too surprised to find my mom gone. It wasn’t 2:00 a.m. yet, which was the time most alcoholics turned into pumpkins. I should have known that her moment of clarity was another mirage created by years of wandering this desert by myself. I grabbed a banana and headed back to my room, wondering how many times I was going to run at that football of hope, knowing she was going to pull it away eventually.
    I thought about taking a shower but decided I was just going to stink myself up all over again, so I just pulled off my clothes and went back to sleep.
     
     
    Brad
     
    A TAPPING sound on my car window woke me up instantly.
    I jerked away in a blur and ended up slamming my knee into the steering wheel. “Motherfucker!” I called out as a light blinded me from my left. I held up my hand as images of alien abductions flashed though my head.
    “Brad? Bradley Greymark?” a voice asked on the other side of my window.
    The aliens knew my name?
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