Entering the room, Sam kept his head down to avoid making eye contact with Clifton. The hair at the nape of his neck pricked with the knowledge of Clifton's steady gaze watching him come into the room. He watched Clifton's Adidas twitch together under his seat. Sam stopped for a moment and surveyed the rest of the room, as if for the first time. He'd never had to think about it before. The corner front row seat had been his from day one, and he knew switching seats, even this early in the yea...

Three hours later, Miss Cass stood at the piano pounding rising and descending scales from the keys, bobbing her red curls toward the room to encourage her class to sing out with the same force and confidence. "Mama Mia, Mama, Mia Maaaaa," the chorus of 60 boys swelled. Everyone who was anyone joined choir at River High School, and Men's or Women's Chorus were the only options available to Freshman. "Sing it strong! Prove to me that there are MEN in this room," she shouted above the voices. T...

Clifton Hendrickson is thirty years old today, and considers himself a virgin. But it's not what you think. He even had a wife and two kids. So, he's had enough sex to create offspring, and most people would say that disqualifies him from virginity. But I'd venture that virginity is about more than sex. And in that context, yes, Clifton could be considered a virgin. I could argue this all day, but I'd rather start from the beginning... the day Clifton met Sam. He should have seen this coming...

I looked down and read the tab as I prepared the tea bag for it's hot bath. "What you're doing now is the most beautiful thing." Did they mean to say making tea was the most beautiful thing? Gotta love marketing. Did they purposefully put it at the end of a Lemon Ginger bag... When I'd only grab that pungent flavor for the ease it gives the nausea. Did they see me, hobbling upstairs in my husband's fleece robe, forcing myself to eat, Risking another episode of holding my bangs back from integ...

Sam was reading line after line from their assigned scene, but Clifton wasn't listening. With Sam standing there, the pages of the script were as meaningless to him as Aztec inscriptions. He had to interrupt, "Sorry, I can't do this right now. I mean, I care about the scene. I do want to practice, I swear, but I gotta get this off my mind or we'll never get anywhere. Can we stop and just talk for a minute?" Sam looked up from the pages, and eyes the clock. "Sure, okay. But I don't have all ni...

It's not like he shouldn't have seen this coming, but the truth is, he hadn't. He'd been groomed for greatness, but this would stuff that like a bully punishing a gangly nerd. Not just a popularity killer, this wouldn't even mean unnoticed normalcy (as if he would have settled for unnoticed anyway). It's just, like any Freshman, he wanted to be noticed in a good way. Yes, he should have planned for this. He'd suspected it, but spending a comfortable girls-only summer helped him ignore the pos...