This choice: Tom, finally there to walk to school with him. • Go Back... "HEY BILL"
Jerked out of his angry state, Bill looked up and saw his friend Tom rounding the corner across the street, backpack hooked over one shoulder and looking like he had his own personal raincloud above his head.
"Fucking finally..." Bill muttered to himself as he hustled down the front steps and quickly made his way across the street. Tom looked even worse up close, Bill saw; the other teen's face was pale and bags hung heavily under his bloodshot eyes. The disgraced jock's clothes were wrinkled, and Bill was pretty sure those were the pants that Tom had worn yesterday. It was clear that even by the now normal standard, Tom had a particularly rough night.
The two friends exchanged a fistbump and made their way along the concrete, their footfalls and birdsong the only words between them for a few minutes before Bill finally broke the silence.
"Hey, check this out." Bill said, holding the strange green gemstone over to Tom as they walked. Tom took it and spun it around in his hands for a moment.
"Wow. This your mom's or something?" The other boy asked, stopping and holding it up to the sun, his tired eyes squinting as he watched how the light seemed to curve, not refract, through the smaller, central gem. Tom let out a low whistle before the two started walking again, Tom continuing to inspect the artifact.
"Nah, I literally just found it. It was sitting on the porch! I was thinking that maybe we go back to your place after school and then drive out to the mall so I can have the jewelers look at it?"
"Yeah...About that..." Tom muttered, his fist closing around the gemstone and his exhausted face growing dark. Bill knew that look, it was the look Tom got every single time that Gloria was involved in something. He shook his head and placed a hand on Tom's shoulder.
"So, what happened this time?"
Tom sighed and shrugged Bill's arm away, "My parents were out last night so I walked to McFly's to get something to eat. Turns out the G-Squad had the same idea." The G-Squad was Tom's private way of referring to Gloria's groupies, her little clique that hung on every word Tom's ex had to say and then spread it around the school at the speed of gossip. McFly's was a local indoor/outdoor burger joint that stayed open late and sometimes featured local artists. It was decently popular with high school students for it's cheap prices.
"Oh shit" Bill said.
"Yeah. So I didn't actually realize they were there until I had already started eating. They surrounded the table and gave me so much shit, man. Then they fucking followed me halfway home! I bet they would have kept following me if it hadn't been for Ingerman and Bolstrum. So then they gave me shit. But apparently a ten dollar bribe wasn't good enough because they egged the house AND the car! And of course no one actually sees it and mom and dad actually buy into Gloria's bullshit so they think I'm making all this shit up...So I had to clean all of that mess up and dad took my keys. I maybe got like thirty minutes of sleep, all because of her bullshit!"
Neither of the boys noticed the green-gold glow coming from Tom's closed fist.
"Tom. You gotta repo-" Bill tried again, but he was again shot down as Tom flew deeper into a rage fueled by lack of sleep and emotional trauma that was the other boy's life. Bill had seriously been trying to get Tom to report all the abuse he had been taking to the police or get a counselor or just...something. It wasn't healthy.
"It's like no matter what I do, it's wrong! I mind my own business, I'm being cold and distant and a brat. If I try to just talk with her about all this, she gets to play me off as desperate and that I won't leave her alone! I can't even get angry because then who the fuck knows what she'll say! I just don't understand what to do, Bill!"
At this point Bill noticed the glow coming from Tom's fist. Was the gem causing that? He needed to calm Tom down so he'd drop the rock before it exploded or something like the space rock did in the rebooted Spiderman movie. "Tom" He started, but was again cut off as Tom said the fateful words that would change both of their lives forever.
"Damnit! I wish that..."  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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