7Brandon Dean pushed open the double doors to Spokane High with a grunt and walked through the lobby of the school, scanning for Shane. He couldn't find him, but what he did notice was that an overwhelming number of people around him were crying.
Oh my god, he thought. Something big must have happened for so many people to be crying. Where is Shane? If he's crying too, he probably needs me there to comfort him. Brandon scanned the lobby full of crying faces one more time, but still no sign of Shane. Finally, he decided to go to Shane's locker and see if he was there.
Brandon began striding through the hallways of the school, and spotted Shane by his locker. Much to Brandon's surprise, Shane wasn't crying. Instead, he was cursing at his locker door because it wouldn't shut. Brandon walked up to his boyfriend and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Hey Shane - what's going on here today? Why are so many people crying like this?" Brandon asked.
"Oh, that jock Tony is dead." Shane answered him in a matter-of-fact tone.
A shocked look came over Brandon's face.
"What?! When? How? Good god"-
"Calm down, Brandon, it's just Tony. He was found this morning in his bedroom, stabbed to death. Somebody murdered him." Shane said.
"Shane, how can you say something like 'It's just Tony'? I mean, granted I don't know the guy well so I can't really cry, but still that's a horrible thing to happen to someone." Brandon explained.
"He deserved it. Ever since the day I had started dating Kasey, he'd been giving me hell. Always threatening me, talking about how I didn't deserve Kasey and he was the real true one for her. Then when he smashed up the windshield to my car after I sent Kasey those flowers the first couple of times"-
"So he's jealous. That's no reason for him to be murdered." Brandon said.
"Yeah. Well I hate him just the same. I gotta get going to first period." Shane answered.
"Okay. See you during lunch. Love you." Said Brandon, and the two leaned in for a kiss.
Just then, a male voice called out-
"Faggots!"
Immediately, Shane turned and raced in the direction of the sound that was the insult, and tackled the guy, slamming his back directly into the metal lockers behind him. In momentous pain, the boy cringed and slumped down into a heap on the floor. Shane grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, pulling him up and putting the two of them face to face.
"If I ever hear a word like that come out of your mouth again - it'll be the last word you'll ever say." Shane threatened.
Shane reared back to punch the guy right in the nose, but he moved, and in fright, ran down the hallway and turned a corner into the principal's office.
Shane's fist struck the metal lockers instead of the guy's face, and immediately, blood started pouring from his knuckles. Brandon walked over to his boyfriend with quite a worried look on his face.
"Shane, are you okay?" He asked.
Shane's face grimaced as he felt the sting of the open wound letting blood reach the air.
"Yeah. I'll be fine, I just need some bandages." He answered Brandon.
"Good. Shane, I know you don't like it when people insult us like that, and neither do I, but I really think you overreacted there. You could have gotten that guy seriously hurt." Brandon said.
"Good. He needs to get hurt. He needs to learn that no matter what the hell a person's sexual preference is, we're still all human and we need to be loved - just like everybody else does. Yeah sure, I may be a little violent when it comes to those sorts of things - but, do you not see what is going on around you? All these hate crimes that we see day in and day out on the news, homosexuals getting beaten and tortured, sometimes bad enough so that they even die. That's a hell of a lot more violent than punching somebody in the face. It just goes to say, if they wanna be violent, I'll be violent back. Fight fire with fire. It's a logical answer."
"I just don't want anything to happen to you, Shane, I love you so much, and I don't know what I would do without you." Brandon told him.
"Hey, I love you too. I always will." Shane said back. "Hey Brandon, let's cut class today - just have the day to ourselves. To be together."
A wide smile overcame Brandon's face before he answered with a resounding "Sure!"
Brandon and Shane made their way out the double doors of the school and headed towards Shane's blue pickup truck. Brandon had said he would drive because of Shane's hand and Shane had agreed. As they sat in the truck, Brandon open up his backpack and pulled out a black shirt. He then proceeded to wrap it around Shane's still bloody knuckles.
"Here, use this, I don't need it anyway." Brandon said.
"Thanks hun." Came Shane's answer.
They ended up going back to Brandon's house, where Brandon insisted on treating Shane's wound. He was in the bathroom and was rummaging through the cabinets, searching for cotton balls. On the surface of the sink sat a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
"I know they're here somewhere"-
"Brandon, I'll be fine, I promise. You really don't have to do this." Shane called from the hallway.
The proclamation was to late, though. Brandon had found and gotten out the bag of cotton balls. He uncapped the hydrogen peroxide and dipped the cotton ball in it, then turned and went out into hallway.
"Okay, unwrap your hand now."
Shane slowly did as he was instructed, and once that was done, he wiped away at Shane knuckles with the hydrogen peroxide doused cotton balls.
"Shane, you keep doing that, I'm going to go back in the bathroom and look to see if we've got real bandages." Brandon said.
As Brandon turned to go back to the bathroom, something caught his attention. It was his bedroom; there was something about it- something different something strange. The door was open, which was normal, because just about the only time he closed it was when he was in there with Shane, but still, he felt something was wrong.
"Hey, just a minute Shane, I'll be right with you." He said, walking towards the doorway of his bedroom.
Brandon entered to find his bedroom had been completely ransacked. His bed had been torn up, his belongings were strewn everywhere, and his desk was toppled over.
"Oh god- Shane, somebody has been here!" He called out.
"What did you say?" Shane voice asked from afar.
Brandon noticed immediately that his blown up picture of Shane that he kept on his bedpost was missing. Brandon walked around the room, surveying the damage once more. It was complete mayhem.
Brandon's eyes scattered erratically around the room, finally settling on a picture that was located on the wall above his now ruined bed. It was a picture of himself - a picture he hadn't taken, nor did he have any body else take - the picture was of Brandon, sometime when he must have been walking home, because the scenery in the picture indicated he was on a corner of a street. The street sign above his head in the picture read "Prescott Ave". But that wasn't the disturbing part - there was also a fairly decent sized knife shoved right through the image into the wall.