Page 1 of Something So Strong

Bum-fuck nowhere

Manitoba, CANADA

For the first time in my life, I’m thankful my house is at the end of the road.

The worst property on the worst street—a real estate agent’s dream. Who wouldn’t want to live in a shit box with an overgrown lawn littered with random scraps from my father’s failed endeavors? I know the pride that swells within me when I see him sitting on the front porch with a beer in his hand. It hits me deep in my soul. And he’s truly the role model of the century when he yells at my chicken-shit mother to bring him something to eat, or forces my sister to play bartender for his friends.

This evening would have been no different. He’ll have empty cans scattered on the worn boards, left for someone else to pick up. He was sitting on his rotten recliner listening to the radio when I left.

“Gonna get your dick wet tonight?” he scoffed as I rushed past him down the front steps. “It’ll be the first thing I have to be proud about, Nancy boy.” What a delightful goodbye to your sixteen-year-old son. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell him I like girls, the only thing he hears is I don’t like sports, so I’m a fag.

I pause beside the pole where the street sign should be, and estimate how many steps it’ll take me to get to my window. One hundred? One-twenty, maybe? Probably more, considering the state I’m in.

One. Two. Three… I start counting in my head as my feet scuff along the gravel road.

At least they didn’t take my shoes. But who’d want high-top wannabe Converse from Walmart?

As with most small towns that offer nothing for their teenage populus to do during the lacrosse off-season before hockey starts, I met my friends at the park. Amy, Millie, Candace, and Laura. Hot, cute, sexy, and beautiful, and all with boyfriends who hate me. Though, is it really my fault that I listen to what they have to say instead of watching their lips move and wondering how long it’ll be before they can put my cock between them?

The most painful irony is that I know they’d cheat on their jock boyfriends with me in a heartbeat. I can see it in their eyes when I roll up on my skateboard and as they bite their bottom lips whenever I punch someone in the face with my wit. I’m queen B of the mean girls, and any of them would quit flicking their beans over me to get a taste of the real thing if only I’d ask.

If only I wanted them like that.

If only I saw them as objects instead of my best friends.

And, as logic would have it, the off-season also means the players have nothing to occupy their meat-head brains with, especially when the pussy that’s ‘meant’ to be theirs is drinking cherry schnapps with me.

Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two...

My swollen eyes squint as the streetlight flashes above me. It’s the only one that isn’t completely broken. Without it, Russell Road would be as dark as the far side of the park before Josh and his goons pulled up in his dad’s pickup.

The girls weren’t expecting them, but I was. I had been since the start of ninth grade. I just didn’t expect their justification for taking it as far as they did to be so ass-backward.

Millie was the first to scream when Josh hit me. She tried to pull him off, but he sent her flying. His own girlfriend, crying and covered in mud because he had a twisted vendetta.

One by one, they forced the girls into the back of the truck and Josh threw Trevor the keys. “Take ‘em home. But don’t bring it out here when you get back. Park it in the lot and walk.” Trevor nodded, blindly following his orders because that’s how these types of guys work. They were a team, and I was the opposition. The out-of-towner they’d show who was boss.

Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight…

I couldn’t see anything in the dark with my face in the mud, but my mouth still worked.

“Have you been fucking Millie behind my back?” Josh yelled down at me—no doubt believing himself to be the hero in his own story.

“If I was fucking her, she’d have dumped your ass.” I got a kick in the guts for that one.

“So, which one have you been messing around with, then?”

“What makes you think it’s just one?”

Three different brands of running shoes rained down on my head, my ribs, my legs, and everywhere in between.

Sixty-nine, seventy, seventy-one…

“I’m not fucking any of them,” I tried to scream, but a mixture of spit and blood gurgled out of my mouth.

“Are you saying they’re not good enough?”

“We’re just friends,” I coughed.

---