Changing Tyler-Chapter One

The world changed the year after I turned seventeen, but no one noticed except me.

I admit that it was subtle. everything looked the same. The sky was still blue, the grass green and all that crap. Telephone poles studded the streets, and pigeons dotted the rooftops like fat, gray and white pimples. Trucks bottomed-out on the dip betwixt Harper and Vine as they always did, tailgates clanking and mufflers scraping the road. Postal workers delivered mail; phones rang, early morning TV still sucked.

My name was still Tyler Archers; I still lived in my mom’s house on Midland Avenue. My eyes were still blue, and my hair was that funky color that couldn’t quite come to a conclusion if it wanted to be blond or brown. I was a text-messaging demon with the fastest fingers in town, and I wasn’t just a Guitar Hero, I was a Guitar God, rocking out whenever I got the chance.

Things had changed, though, and after I figured out exactly what these changes were, I knew that my life would not ever be the same afresh.

The morning I first noticed that something was out of whack started out like any other – with my alarm clock dancing on my nightstand at the booty crack of dawn, doing that mad vibrating thing it does when I’ve got the volume maxed out. I always had it set that way so that I wouldn’t sleep straight though it. My mommy used to say that I slept like the dead, even as a baby. Kind of a creepy thing to say to a little kid – used to give me nightmares.

Anyway, the alarm went off, and I woke up – eventually, after beating the crap out the snooze button a half-dozen times – showered, shaved, dressed, and slapped a Pop-Tart into the toaster. My first class was at 8:20, which left me exactly twenty-three minutes to ride the seven blocks to school. That was plenty of time, greater amount so than ordinary.

Except that I had the weirdest feeling that morning that smth just wasn’t right. Not wrong, exactly. Not like when you realize you’ve forgotten your wallet and do that funky self-frisk thing, smacking your butt and your haunches with your hands like you’re hoping it’s hiding in there somewhere. u know the feeling. It’s the one when your chest gets taut and your heart starts to thump in your throat, and u say things below your breath that would make Grandma eat her knitting needles ‘coz how in Hell are u going to pay the waitress for these two double cheeseburgers u just ate if you don’t have your wallet?

Not that kind of wrong.

Just…not right.

I couldn’t put my finger on anything specific, though, couldn’t figure out what was off. I felt okay. I didn’t have a fever, a sore face hole or the sniffles, and I hadn’t grown any extra body parts during the night. The house looked fine, no sign that serial killers had broken in; no maniac had scrawled my name in blood on the wall over the ottoman.

My mommy was in the kitchen, already clothed for work, throwing carrots, potatoes, and beef cubes into the Crock Pot. It was Thursday, which meant that we’d be having beef sludge for dinner. I not ever blamed mamma for not being Susie Homemaker. this babe was a server down at the Curbside Diner; had been for as lengthy as I could remember, and I knew that that babe worked her butt off serving burgers and whatever else passed for food in that grease pit. Beef sludge was the one of the few meals that babe could manage on a workday.

I did blame her for Doug, though. Still do.

My daddy died when I was 3 – I don’t remember much about him, except this guy was a large man, and a cop. I have 2 photographs of him framed on my dresser. He’s in his uniform in both of them –he’s holding me in his arms in one, and he’s straddling his police motorcycle in the other. He’d died the winter after mamma had snapped that last photo. He’d skidded on a patch of ice and had slid beneath the wheels of a semi. End of story.

Doug is my mom’s second husband. she met him at the diner 2 years agone and married him six months later. He’s a construction worker, or so this guy says. Personally, I’ve not ever seen him build anything greater amount complex than a sandwich. Doug spends all of his time bitching about being unemployed and watching repeats of Orange County Chopper or Build It bigger. If the show has a hammer, an engine, or a bulldozer in it, he’ll watch it. From the moment that guy moved into the house, this guy claimed the television as his own personal property. I’m nearly surprised that guy didn’t urinate on it to mark his territory.

“Darlene!” Doug yelled from his armchair in the living room. he was wearing his standard attire – a white wifebeater, a pair of blue boxers, and dark socks. “Who’s been screwing with the DVR? I didn’t record this crap! That fag boy’s been touching my shit again!”

That fag guy would be me.

Yeah, I’m gay, but I’m not out – not to my mommy and Doug, or to anyone else, for that matter, except for my most good friend, Billy. I’m not looking forward to having that special conversation with my mom, and I’m definitely not going to do it while Doug is sitting in the living room screaming about fag boys and the latest movie scene of Dancing with the Stars that I’d recorded. I think that he calls me “fag boy” not as a reference to my sexuality, but coz he loathes me and in his tiny, bigoted mind, it’s the worst insult this chab can possible throw at me. It would truly urinate him off to know that I am queer. I almost desire to tell him just to see if I can get that vein in the middle of his forehead to explode.

The fact of the matter is that I could have been a football jock, spent all of my free time up to my elbows in car parts, papered my bedroom with the latest Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and Doug would still think that I was scum coz I wasn’t his biological son. I realized early on that no thing I could do or say would be priceless enough for him. Knowing that didn’t stop me from trying when I was younger, or for detesting his fat guts when I failed.

Billy says that it’s Doug’s problem, not mine, and he’s probably right. this guy knows all about parents’ hang-ups, especially with homosexual kids. His own parents tried to bury him in ritzy boarding schools since this guy came out to ’em 3 years ago. Did Billy acquire upset about it? No. he came home and rubbed their noses in his latest expulsion paperwork like they were a couple of wicked puppies, and went right on being himself.

Sometimes Billy is my hero.

“Don’t forget your lunch, Tyler. I’m working a double today, so I won’t be home until midnight. The Crock Pot will be done by five,” my mother said, ignoring Doug. that babe has the ability to tune him out the way almost all people tune out elevator music or the sound of traffic. Unfortunately, that too means that she never says a word to him when he gets on my case or calls me names. Maybe she just doesn’t want to receive betwixt us or make things worse. more likely, this babe doesn’t wish his temper turned back on her.

That’s the reason that I still blame her for him being a part of our lives. that babe married him, not me, but I’m the one who has to put up with his crap.

“Mom, I’ve got track after school today. I won’t be home until six, maybe seven,” I said, just to remind her that I had a life of my own. I didn’t, not really, but she didn’t need to know that. Going out for track was one of the things that I did to try to acquire Doug’s approval. It didn’t work, but surprisingly I found that I was worthy at running and liked it. Besides, Dylan Anderson was on the track team, and I’d had a crush on him since our first year in junior high, back when I didn’t even know it was a crush – or wouldn’t admit it. Either way works.

The toaster spat up my Pop-Tart, and I snatched it up, tossing it from hand to hand until it cooled enough to stuff into my face hole. I love those pockets of sugar. Instant rush.

I grabbed the paper sack from the fridge, the one I knew out of looking would contain 2 meatloaf sandwiches made from final night’s leftovers, and pushed it into my backpack. I took a not many quick gulps of milk from the container whilst I was in there, hidden by the fridge door, previous to closing it. After getting the obligatory peck on the cheek from Mom, I trotted out the kitchen door.

Outside, everything was where it was supposed to be. My bike was still leaning against the abode on the side of the yard where I’d left it the night previous to. There were a scarcely any cars on the street despite the early hour, people driving to work, construction workers on the way to the job. A patrol car cruised by, and a cable repair truck.

No matter how normal anything looked, smth still didn’t feel right.

I remember shaking the feeling off, telling myself to receive a grip, that I didn’t live in the centre of some freaking splatter flick, that there weren’t pod people growing in the basement, or zombies hiding in the shadows, waiting to eat my brain. There were no aliens, no biggest rabid hamsters in the sewers – nothing but ordinary, forgettable people living ordinary, forgettable lives.

no thing was wrong. nothing was different.

I remember thinking that maybe if I told it enough, it would be true.

Benjamin Jackson worthwhile High School, named after one of the town’s renowned founding fathers and affectionately called BJ good by three generations of snickering students, was a squat, two-story, red brick building. It sprawled over a not many acres of hilly ground in the center of city. The hills were marvelous steep, which made them great for snowboarding in winter, but they sucked butt when spring rains turned them to mud.

Parking at BJ worthwhile was at a premium; the lot was tiny, and the only people allowed to drive their own cars to school were the staff and seniors. Even so, student-parking passes cost a hundred bucks a year, so most of the seniors opted to either take the bus or chip in for one pass and carpool. A hundred dollars is steep when the only jobs in town available to teenagers pay minimum wage, hence the reason I rode a bike to school. Even if I had owned a car, which I didn’t, I would never fork over cold, hard cash to the school for the privilege of parking on their worthwhile asphalt. Not intend to happen in this lifetime. I had about a billion other uses for my meager savings.

Sliding the front wheel of my bike into the aluminum bicycle rail and clicking the lock, I was making my way toward the front doors of the school when I heard my name called.

“Hey, Tyler! expect up!”

I turned and spotted a head of bright red hair bobbing in the sea of students behind me. I flattened myself against the wall to await for Billy to catch up.

William Prichard-Everest III, born to money, expelled from 3 of the finest boarding schools in the eastern United States, had become one of my best allies over the past year after that guy transferred to BJ worthwhile. Billy was a piece of work if ever there was one. Openly gay, his hair wasn’t the solely thing about him that was flaming. Billy was as out as a guy could get, short of taking out a full-page ad in the school newspaper. this chab took great pride in the fact that his insistence on wearing his sexuality on his sleeve royally voided urine off his straight-laced socialite parents. All 3 of his expulsions had been for his inability “to conform,” and for “scandalous behavior inappropriate for a student.” He’d shown me the letters the schools had sent to his parents to that effect. He’d had ’em framed.

Today, Billy was clothed nearly conservatively, in a rainbow-colored T-shirt and cargo panties. that guy was smiling broadly, which told me that one of two things had happened – either Billy had finally managed to give his parents simultaneous brain aneurysms, or he’d gotten the date he’d been after with the sexy chap who worked in the paint department at Home Depot.

My money was on the date. he didn’t look happy sufficiently for it to have been the aneurysms.

“Guess who has a date the next day night with Robbie-the-Hunk?” Billy squealed, bouncing up and down on his bright red, Converse sneakers.

“Robbie-the-Hunk does know that you’re jailbait, right?” I asked, feeling the sudden need to knock Billy down just a peg or 2. I was a little jealous ‘cuz he had yet some other date, whilst I was still trying to work up the nerve to hook up with somebody – anyone – for the first time.

“For God’s sake, Tyler, he didn’t card me when this guy asked me to the movies,” Billy said, rolling his eyes.

“You’re solely seventeen, Billy,” I reminded him, as if it was going to make a difference. I knew that I sounded like the parental units, but I couldn’t stop myself. smth told me that Robbie-the-Hunk, whilst marvelous to look at and no doubt delightsome to hold was going to be trouble with a capital “T.” Billy was my ally. If that guy got into trouble again, this time his parents might ship him off to a boarding school somewhere in Siberia.

Besides, I admit it. I was jealous. Robbie the Hunk was six feet of hot stuffed into a couple of constricted Levis.

“Seventeen and a half – I’ve solely got six greater quantity months until I can Free Willy and have enjoyment whenever I want.”

“You have enough fun now to qualify as a three-ring circus,” I retorted. “How old is he, anyway? this chab looks like he’s shoving thirty.”

“Who cares? He’s gorgeous!”

“He’s ancient.”

The first bell rang before we could say anything else, and like the worthy little drones we were, we turned and hustled to our respective homerooms. Billy and I had the same lunch period, and I made a mental note to continue the conversation in the cafeteria. Maybe this date Billy had with Robbie-the-Hunk was the reason for the unease I’d been feeling all day.