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I look at Um/Drew and see he’s upset again but he’s trying to hide it. I take my step forward and the boy frowns in an ugly way.
” Get out of my face, faggot!” He clenches his hands and raises them, I panic thinking he’s going to hit me so I lift my arm and clench my fist and slam it into his face before I know what’s happening. I don’t like to admit that violence comes naturally but it does and I never wanted to use it again. The Boy falls backwards onto the green grass behind the bench. I hope he isn’t dead. I don’t want to go to jail. It all happened so fast I had forgotten about Um/Drew. I turned around with my hand still in the air; I lower it quickly because I don’t want him to think I will hit him too. This time when I look at him it doesn’t take to long to figure out his expression. His eyebrows are up again and his mouth is slightly open in absolute shock. He keeps glancing frantically between me and the boy on the floor.
“Y-you you just…” His gaze steadies onto me and he whispers to himself: “Wow” Then his face transforms into a small smile, it’s only a tiny smile but I can see his smile matches his eyes. It’s beautiful.
“What is your name?” I ask him because I can’t keep thinking of him as Um/Drew.
“Drew” He answers.
“Oh” I say. “I thought your name was Um…Sorry”
Drew just laughs delicately. It makes me smile.
“So who was that boy?” I look at the boy sprawled on the grass.
Drew scowls. “That’s Michael.” He sighed in a kind of angry way. “He always bullies me because…because I’m gay” Drew looks at me and its like he’s challenging me to say something bad. I don’t. He continues, “Today he and his friends cornered me and-and they were going to beat me up but I ran away and that’s why he was there. He came looking for me.”
I was suddenly even gladder I had hit him. Drew just looks at me in an awestruck way and laughs breathily, he says “I just can’t believe you hit him…That was amazing” His cheeks go pink for the third time today and I foolishly forget that he moved away last time and step forward to touch his face. This time he lets me. His face feels so soft and warm. I can feel his cheekbones and his soft cheeks. I want to touch his hair too because it looks so soft. The pinkness is still on his cheeks and when I look at his eyes this time my face gets a bit hot and I have a feeling my face is pink too. Drew looks at my eyes too and I realize I don’t know what my own face looks like, but my eyes can’t possibly be as interesting as his. I forget momentarily about his hair when I notice his eyelashes are dark brown instead of black and they are long, almost concealing his soft colored eyes. He smiles a confused little smile.
The birds are still singing in the background and they make Drew seem even more mesmerizing, the sounds of animals singing makes the boy look even more wonderful…How does that make any sense? Drew’s hand is reaching up and I wonder what he’s going to do with it, its so exiting but then everything crashes. A small girl runs out of a house at the end of the street and yells loudly “Drew!! Mummy wants to know where you are!” Drew suddenly steps away from me and looks around confusedly. His hand drops and his expression looks all shocked again. “I uh um err-” Then he just runs away to the girl. Everything dims. My high mood lessens. I wanted to feel his hand on my face so bad and I had been lost in the moment but now it had been painfully interrupted and I had no other reason to be out here so with a sigh walk into the house came out of. It’s made of old brown boards, there are a few pink and yellow and white flowers out the front in a small garden, and the path to the house is made of grey pebbles. I walk into the house and into the room I had awakened. Back where I started. What now? I looked back on everything that had happened, touching Drew, hitting The Boy, the birds singing. My first experiences. They felt good.
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