Date: Tue, 11 May 2010 20:29:54 -0400
From: andy deats <andydeats@gmail.com>
Subject: Chords And Discord 3

I awoke to a start as suddenly I was sprayed in the face by three jet
streams of water. Opening my eyes suddenly and saying words unfit to hear,
I saw Tommy, Jake, and Landon standing by my bed holding super soaker water
guns. "What the hell is going on?" I sputtered out.

"Good morning," Tommy answered with a grin. The way he said "morning"
sounded more like "moaning," but I knew what he meant.

"Snow day," Jake replied with his own smile.

"How did you three get in my house?" I asked looking at them. Then I fixed
my attention on my Dad in the background, standing in the doorway with his
own mischievous smirk. I simply grinned at him, glad to see him finally
having fun with something.

"Get dressed," Landon ordered me. "We're going to build a snow man."

The three boys filed out of my room, and my dad walked in. "You mad at me?"
he asked, hardly able to hold back his laughter at my surprising awakening.

"Nah, Dad. It's cool. Just a little bit shocking, is all."

"Oh, well, they seem like nice boys. Don't wanna keep em waiting for too
long."

He left the room and I got out of bed. It had been a few weeks since I had
first started attending R-SALT, and the four of us had built somewhat of a
friendship, but this was the first time that my dad had ever met my new
friends.

Suddenly, the realization of what Jake had said hit me. A snow day? In
Riverton? I ran to my window and was shocked to see a solid few inches of
white powder covering the ground for as far as my eye could see. I never
remembered any snow accumulating in Riverton before, nevertheless inches. I
grinned to myself and started to get dressed for my first snow day.

After dressing myself in the warmest clothes I could find, which was no
easy task considering I had never had much of a reason to have winter
clothes before, I stormed down the stairs and into the living room. "I'm
going out with the guys, Dad!" I called out to him.

"Hold up, Liam. You need boots."

"What? My regular shoes will work just fine, won't they?"

"You'll track snow everywhere and it'll soak straight through to your
socks. You can borrow my boots there."

Knowing better than to argue, I slipped off my regular shoes and stepped
into my dad's boots. Before I could be corrected for anything else, I took
off out the door.

I had been outside as it snowed before, but never when it had actually
built up on the ground. Apparently the newness of my experience showed on
my face, as for the first ten minutes or so, Landon could not stop
laughing."What are you laughing at?" I evantually confronted him.

"Your face," he said with a laugh.

"Oh yeah, a wise guy, eh?" I asked with a laugh back.

"Have you never been in the snow before?"

"I've lived in Riverton all my life," I told him.

"This is the first time any snow's piled up since we've been born," Tommy
explained.

"This is nothing compared to back home," Landon mused.

It was our turn to laugh as Jake filled Landon's hood with snow and turned
it over onto his head, causing him to squeal in surprise and dance about
like an idiot. "So much for Mr. Tough Guy, huh?" I asked Tommy. I was
replied to by a snowball hitting me in the back of the head, obviously
thrown by Landon due to his uncontrollable giggling.

The next couple of hours were spent in what had to have been one of the
most epic four-man snowball fights in the history of Riverton, Alabama. All
four of us were exhausted by the time we finally decided to call a truce,
complete with handshakes full of snow.

After the snow-war, we decided to get to work on the snowman that they had
originally come over to build. Since the other three of us had no
experience in building a snowman, Landon instructed us in what he called
"the noble art of snowman-making," telling us exactly how to roll the snow
to get the best parts of it in the right spots. It didn't seem like it was
all that complicated to me, but I bit my tongue and let him feel like the
master of snow-art.

Before long, Tommy, Jake and I had mastered the snowman and were well into
our work. We didn't even notice when Landon slipped away from the group to
start a solo project until he announce it with an over-important "Ta-da!"
The three of us turned around and saw a pile of snow that came up to about
my waist, looking mostly like a mess.

"What is it?" Jake asked curiously.

"It's a snow dick," Landon replied with a laugh. Upon further inspection I
saw that it was indeed an icy reproduction of the male genital system,
designed with incredible attention to detail.

"Poor Frosty," Tommy said with a chuckle.

"He must have made Crystal mad," Jake replied laughing.

"Isn't it kinda big?" I asked Landon.

"They come smaller than that?" He wiggled his eyebrows at me, obviously
trying to imply something about his own endowment, and I hit him in the
face with a snowball.

"Just destroy it before Brandon sees it, ok? I really don't need him
telling Dad we're out here making snow dicks."

He walked over and kicked it at the base, causing the snowy penis to
crumble into oblivion. "Liam, go get your hose and wet our snowman
there. The ice'll make him last longer," he commanded. I retrieved the hose
from the side of the house and handed it to Jake, who did the honors as I
turned the water on at the spicket.

From our spot in the yard, I saw a boy walking alone down the sidewalk. As
he looked to his side to watch us play in the snow, I saw his face and
noticed that it was Kenneth, the boy from my last period class who had
ignored me my entire first few weeks. I decided to give it one more chance,
and waved him over towards us. "Hey, Kenneth, isn't it?" I asked. Once
again, he only nodded. "If you don't have anywhere to go, why don't you
come play in the snow with us for a while?"

His eyes scanned the four of us, apparently considering the offer
seriously, before his eyes locked on Tommy. "I got somewhere I'm going," he
replied bluntly. His voice was smooth and soft, but there was a certain
edge to it that I couldn't quite place.

"If you're sure, I guess I'll see you next time we have school," I said. He
nodded once again and walked off.

I returned to the group and noticed that Tommy was eying me
irregularly. "Are you two friends?" he asked looking at me.

"No, that's the first time that we've talked. I invited him to come play in
the snow with us, but he said he has somewhere to be."

"Good. That guy is nothing but trouble."

"What's the problem between you two? It seemed like you were the reason
that he wasn't going to come over," I said.

"None of your business," he responded coldly.

"Jeez, no need to be an ass about it," I said rolling my eyes as I turned
around. I felt a strong push from behind and fell face-first into the
snow. "What the hell was that!?" I yelled, turning on my back to look up at
Tommy.

"I said it's none of your business. Drop it."

"Is the snowman frozen yet?" Jake asked, obviously trying to diffuse the
situation between Tommy and I.

"Yeah, he won't be going anywhere for a while," Landon replied, his eyes
going back and forth between Tommy and I like he was watching a tennis
match. He helped me to my feet and brushed my back off for me.

"Let's go inside," I said, my eyes still on Tommy. "Maybe Dad can make us
some hot chocolate."

"Jake and I have to go," Tommy replied, the sound of forced gratitude thick
on his voice.

"But I wanted hot choco-" Jake started to whine, but he was quickly cut off
by the forceful voice of Tommy.

"I said we're leaving."

Tommy ushered Jake into the truck that was waiting in my driveway. Landon
and I walked inside, leaving our respective footwear on the porch out
front. "Hey there, Mr Lazy," I said teasingly to Brandon when we found him
on the couch in the living room, watching TV in his pajamas.

"Who your friend?" he asked looking at Landon and me.

"Landon, this is Brandon. Brandon, Landon."

Landon giggled slightly behind me. "You rhymed," he told me. I rolled my
eyes and lead him towards Dad's office where, sure enough, I found him hard
at work over some files.

"Hey Dad, is it cool if Landon and I make some hot chocolate?" I asked.

"Yeah, go ahead, you know where all the stuff is," he told me, not turning
away from his work. "And if Landon needs clothes to change into, you should
let him borrow some of your stuff."

"OK, thanks Dad," I replied as we turned and left the room. "You wanna
change?" I asked Landon.

"That would be nice," he replied. I walked up the stairs to my room and
showed him inside.

"I think my clothes should fit you. We're about the same size," I said as I
went to the closet and opened it up. I found a black shirt from a concert I
had gone to long ago, and a pair of sweatpants. "These OK till those dry
out?" I asked Landon. He nodded and I handed them to him.

Landon immediately started stripping down and, as much as my mind told me
to leave the room and give him some privacy, other parts of my body rooted
me to the ground as soon as I saw his body. He was no muscle god, in fact,
he was fairly skinny for our age, but something about the way his body was
shaped definitely had some major sex appeal. "Do you wanna take a picture
before I put these clothes on?" he asked me teasingly as he stood in front
of me in only his boxer-briefs.

"Sorry," I apologized quickly. "I was thinking about...something else."

"Would you like to put my boxer-briefs in the dryer too?" he asked laughing
some.

"In your dreams," I replied, taking his wet clothes with me as I left the
room. I went downstairs to the laundry room and stuffed them into the dryer
before making my way to the kitchen and starting on the hot
chocolate. After procuring enough to fill two mugs to the very brim, I
grabbed the bag of marshmallows and took the two winter-themed mugs up to
my room where I found Landon sitting in my computer chair.

"Santa or Frosty?" I asked him.

"What?" he replied.

"Your mug, do you want Frosty or Santa?" I showed him the two mugs, and he
pointed at Frosty.

"May as well, after I castrated the poor guy," he explained.

"So now you'll drink his innards out too?" I asked with a laugh.

He nodded. "I'm just a horrible person."

I laughed some as I settled on my bed with the bag of marshmallows and took
a sip from Santa's head. "Marshmallows?" I offered.

Landon walked over and sat next to me on the bed before putting a handful
of marshmallows in with his hot chocolate. "That was pretty intense out
there with Tommy," he said.

"Yeah, what's his problem anyways?" He leaned back against the wall that my
bed ran along, and I sat cross-legged by the pillows so that I could listen
to him.

"Tommy and Kenneth have some problems that not even I could write," he
explained.

"Like what? What could make them hate each other so much?" I asked
curiously.

"Well apparently they had a thing a while back, but eventually Kenneth
cheated on Tommy. So when Tommy got pissed, he did everything he could to
make Ken's life hell. Vandalism, arson, defamation of character, all kinds
of things he could get some serious jail time for. Well, the thing is,
Kenneth never had any proof that it was Tommy, except for the fact that he
bragged about it to anybody that would listen." Landon had been calm at the
beginning of his story, but by this point he had worked himself up into yet
another animated frenzy.

"Calm down, Shake," I said in an attempt to be able to understand the rest
of the drama."

"Yeah, sorry," he said. "Well Tommy eventually started dating Ken's twin
sister. As you can imagine, that didn't sit well with Kenneth, so he got
revenge by spreading the word that Tommy is a pedophile."

"What? Is he?"

"Not to my knowledge," Landon told me as he took a long sip of his
chocolate drink.

"That's pretty messed up."

"Yeah, well there's more to it than that, but Tommy won't tell me anything
about it, and Kenneth hasn't talked to anybody in ages."

"Doesn't anybody know what it is?" I asked.

"Nah, or if they do, they're very tight-lipped about it."

"So nobody knows. We're in high school. Nobody can keep a secret."

"True, but nobody knows more about keeping secrets than the gays of
Alabama," he countered as he finished his hot chocolate and put the mug on
my bedside table.

I had to laugh at that. "Well, remind me not to get in between those two."

"Don't get between those two," he said with a smirk. I put my mug down,
reached out and punched him gently on the shoulder. He punched me playfully
back and, before I knew it, we were wrestling on the bed.

I could only concentrate on how good his body felt on top of mine, and he
soon had me pinned down to the bed, his knees on my shoulders and the
crotch of the sweatpants I had lent him strangely close to my face. I
looked up at him and heard a throat being cleared from the doorway. Looking
that way, I saw my dad and must have turned a bright shade of crimson.

"I was about to ask Landon if he'd like to go to dinner with us," Dad said,
"but that's pretty obvious to all of us, I think."

If it was possible, I turned a brighter shade of red. "I'd love to, Mr
Vale, but I'll need to call my parents first to make sure that it's OK."

"Well, why don't you climb off my son and you can use my phone?" he asked,
obviously trying to embarrass me as much as he possibly could.

"I have my own," Landon replied as he climbed off of me and left the
room. I laid still, trying to hide my obvious arousal from my father.

"He seems like a nice boy," Dad said yet again before leaving the room. I
felt like my face was on fire, I was blushing so hard.

Landon came back into the room a few minutes later, by which time I was,
thankfully, back to normal. "Mom and Dad said I can stay as long as I'm
back after dinner. They think that we're going to be back in school
tomorrow."

"OK, cool," I replied as I sat up. "I guess you'll probably need to change
before we go."

"Any idea where we're going?" he asked.

"Knowing Dad, probably a steakhouse or something along those lines."

"Oh, that's cool. I like meat." I wiggled my eyebrows at him and he started
to laugh.

Landon and I hung out in my room mostly for the next couple of hours until
the buzzer on our dryer announced that his clothes were dry. He changed
into them, this time in a different room, as I changed into a polo shirt
and some decent-looking jeans.

We piled into Dad's car, Landon up front with Dad and me in back with
Brandon, and he started to drive. "So, Landon, tell me a bit about
yourself?" Dad questioned. I knew what he was doing but either Landon
didn't, or he just didn't care. I sat back and listened as he revealed
himself to my dad. I learned some things about him myself, such as the fact
that he was a huge Shakespeare fan, his favorite play being Twelfth Night,
and that he was a published author online. I made a mental note to myself
to read one of his stories later.

We eventually arrived to a small steakhouse that my dad loved to eat at,
and we quickly got out of the car. Brandon took Dad's hand, and I had a
sudden, weird idea that Landon was going to do the same with mine. He
didn't, however, only brushing my shoulder with his slightly as we walked
into the restaurant. Dad asked for a table, and we were led towards the
back of the restaurant. As we walked, I heard somebody say to their table
partner, "that's one of the kids from the fag school. Guess Vale's kid is
one of them too."

"Shame the little one's exposed to that perversion," the woman of the table
commented.

I looked to Landon for his reaction, and he shrugged it off. "Sorry," he
said. "But they all pretty much know who goes to R-SALT. Should I leave or
something?"

"No, don't be ridiculous," I told him. "Why would I say that?"

"Well, I don't want anything bad said about your family cuz of me," he
replied as we were seated.

"Those who mind don't matter," my Dad told him. I finished the phrase.

The rest of the dinner went off without a hitch. Dad sat next to Landon,
and I was across from him with Brandon sitting across from Dad.  Landon
seemed completely relaxed around my dad and Brandon, even getting very
excited when he was asked about his stories. He went into his normal
twitchy mode, and started talking too fast for anybody to understand
him. Dad laughed and asked him to calm down, causing Brandon and I to start
laughing as well. Landon fit in really well and before I knew it, it was
time to leave.

We got back into the car in the same positions we were in on the way up,
and Landon gave Dad directions on how to reach his house. I don't know what
I expected, but the small house that we pulled up in front of was not quite
it. The house was tiny and rather shabby, looking like it was lucky to even
be standing. I bit my lower lip softly as we pulled up in front of it, and
noticed Landon looking straight out the window to avoid eye contact with
anybody.

"Thanks for dinner, Mr Vale," he said softly as he reached for the door
handle.

"No problem, Landon, it was our pleasure."

"Wait," I said. "I'll walk you to your door."

"No, you don't have to," Landon objected, still not looking at anybody in
the car.

I ignored his objection, and scrambled out of the car. I walked around to
the other side and opened his door for him, allowing him to step out. He
looked at the ground now, instead of at me. We walked slowly up the the
door of the house, where he stopped and slowly looked up into my
eyes. "Thanks," he said again. "I had a really nice time today."

"Me too," I told him honestly. "It's been one of the best I can remember."

"Sorry you had to see my house like this, I was kinda nervous about it."

"It's no problem," I said smiling at him. "It's not all that bad."

"I was just...I dunno...worried, I guess."

"About what?" I inquired.

"That you wouldn't, y'know, like me, once you saw my house."

"Money doesn't have a thing to do with whether I like someone or not," I
told him. I was suddenly aware that he and I had gotten closer to each
other with every sentence.

I felt his hands circle around mine slowly and gently, and his mouth
suddenly pressed against mine in a quick kiss. I looked at him for a few
seconds, then gave him a smile which he returned tenfold. He giggled and
rushed inside the house before I went back to the car, grinning but
blushing as red as a tomato.

I shut the door and Dad started to drive off into the darkness. He didn't
say a word as I leaned my forehead against the window and looked out at the
sky. "He seems like a nice boy," my father said with a chuckle.