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Hey Guys!!! This is my very first book. Tell me what you think! Please vote and comment! Sorry if I update slowly, but I promise I will do my best. Thanks!

*UPDATE: Thank you so much for all the love - I wrote this when I was struggling through school myself as a means to cope and hopefully make others not feel so alone. Now, 6 years later I am coming back to these roots to improve this story...

Prologue:

(Jesse's Point of View)

I hear the rain hitting my ceiling. Sunday night. I can still smell Church underneath my fingernails, and I can't get it out no matter how hard I scrub.

Why do the weekends always seem to short, and the week too long? They say "what you focus on grows" but thats not seeming to help today last any longer. I'm dreading waking up tomorrow to face another day of Senior Year. This city is beautiful on the outside, but --

My train of thought was interrupted - my stomach grumbles. Hungry? I'm never hungry... I've have a difficult relationship with food ever since I can remember. I just don't like eating. But I get made fun of for being too skinny, so after considering my options, I decide to endure a sandwich. I note the strange look I get from my cat, Zoey, she almost never sees me eating aside from the usual dinner table game of push-your-food-around-with-a-fork-until-excused. She meows and I cock my head to the side.

"Fine, silly" I say to no one in particular, tossing a small piece of bread to the floor, which she sniffs a couple times before pushing with her paw, across the wood floor, and finally under the fridge. She looks back up at me, almost looking like she's asking for more. I smile a little, and walk back into my room.

Trying not to think too hard about the food in my hand, I finish it, and hold it down. I sit on my bed, wondering why I had to be gay. I've never understood how people think this is a choice - it weighs on my heart like a ton of bricks each and every day. I just wanted to be normal. I can vividly remember sitting on the grey wall outside the playground on valentines day, with the smell of white and pink chalk on my fingers and realizing something... something wasnt quite right in my heart. No, I couldnt be. Certainly not. I didnt even quite have the words for it yet, but I just wasnt. I knew it wasnt an option.

That must have been early elementary school - Now, I guess I'm okay with being gay, just not in this homophobic, religious community. I walk over to my closet, and rummage through the bottom shelf. Nothing, nothing nothing - Until I found it. I pulled out a forgotten tub of chalk just in time to see a faint flash coming through my window, reminding me of the current weather conditions. By instinct, like my dad taught me so many years ago, I start counting... 1.... 2... 3... 4.... 5... 6.... 7... The walls rumble, and the deep sound of thunder rushes through my house. I seize up and sigh as it passes. I put the chalk back in the closet and cover it up with as many odds and ends I can find - board games, spare socks, and top it off with a vinyl record - one of the first I started to hide from embarrassment after being made fun of - Donna Summers "On The Radio"... I look at the way her shoes hang off the jukebox looking radio, and wish it really could just be that easy to be beautiful. I've never had somebody take a picture of me that I've loved. It seems like I'm always the one behind the camera, behind the scenes, behind the conversation. Is it possible that other people feel this way?

I look at the clock. 10:36... I better get to bed, unless I want to look like a zombie tomorrow. I get in bed, and curl up into the familiar shape of my body pillow, just like every night, hoping for a better tomorrow. Maybe one of these days.

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