Lucid (Part 1)

I'm hovering on the scumbled border between sleep and consciousness, not knowing which way I'll go next. Forward to face the day, or back into the warm embrace of dark comfortable oblivion. Back seems best at first, it looks like finishing that bottle of wine last night wasn't the best idea I've ever had in my life, mild hangover symptoms are creeping around the edges of my awareness. I haven't opened my eyes yet, but I've got a feeling that the sunlight which will be washing through my bedroom window on this summer morning will feel like shards of glass being pushed into my brain...then I'm wide awake, because of...

"Hello."

Who? How? When? A plethora of questions all flood into my mind simultaneously, short-circuiting each other and leaving me devoid of the power of rational thought. I turn towards the voice, but I still can't focus either my eyes or my brain on its source.

"Not woken up yet, then?" Gentle laughter.

Suddenly, a clashing of mental gears. There's a boy in my bedroom, what the hell is going on? My wife should be here, my daughter in the next room, but here, as I start to process the scene, is a boy, an early teenage boy, a very good looking boy, and he's wearing...a pair of my daughter's pyjamas, unless I'm mistaken. The first question is on my lips, the "Who?" question, and then it all clicks into place. Leaving the station yesterday morning after dropping off my family to catch the train to the Midlands, they're visiting my wife's family, I couldn't go because of work later in the week, leaving the station and walking back to the car, I saw a boy, on his own, at the bus stop, a boy crying as a bus pulled away, looking...desolate, that's the only word that came to my mind. I stopped and looked, my first reaction to walk away, not to get involved, if you go up to a child in the street you don't know you're immediately a potential if not actual child molester. Then he looked back at me, saw me looking at him, and he was, I don't know how I knew this, but I knew it with certainty, asking me for help.

"What's the matter, young man?".

The tears were still running down his cheeks, as he said "They've left me behind."

"Who?"

"My mum and dad, they've gone to grandma's and left me behind."

"Didn't they know you wanted to go?"

"They told me I couldn't go, they didn't want to be anywhere near me, they said I wasn't fit to be their son."

He slumped against the bus shelter and huge sobs wracked his body. This boy was about the same age as my daughter, and he'd been dumped, on the face of it, at a bus stop by his parents.

"Can't you go back home and wait for them to come back?"

"They've locked me out, I haven't got a key and my dad told me he'd changed the burglar alarm code anyway. They don't want me anymore, I haven't got any money or anything." More sobs.

Something this boy had done had seemingly been so anathema to his parents that they'd just abandoned him, but what on earth could it be? He was, in my limited experience of boys, at least since I was a boy myself, just a normal looking kid, albeit one whose face was reddened and contorted by his anguish. I sat down on the bus shelter bench, and the boy came and sat down beside me.

"What happened?", I asked, "Can you tell me?"

He sniffled, and shrugged. "I don't know. If I tell you, you'll hate me too."

"I don't do hating people, especially those I've only met two minutes ago." I tried to sound reassuring, but doubted that I was making a very good job of it. He was just about to speak again when an elderly couple walked up to the bus stop, looking at the obviously distressed boy sitting beside me and then at me with suspicious eyes.

"Shall we let these people sit down?" I said, standing up and walking a step or two away. He stood up as well, and we walked a little way down the street, the eyes following us.

"They think you've done something to me, don't they?"

"It certainly looks that way. You don't know them by any chance, do you?"

"No, we only moved here a few weeks ago. Apart from some people at my new school, I don't really know anyone round here." He began to cry again.

"Look, I know you've probably been taught not to speak to strangers and especially to stay away from their cars, but would you come and sit in my car while we work out what we can do for you? You've got no reason to believe anything I say, but I promise I won't do anything horrible. I just feel like everyone's watching us out here on the street."

"OK."

The car was parked in a side street a couple of minutes walk from the station. I opened the passenger door and he climbed in. I walked round to the driver's side and joined him. He was looking across to the back seat where some of my daughter's bits and pieces were lying - a magazine and a hairbrush, and an empty sweet wrapper.

"Have you got children?"

"One daughter, she's gone with her mum on the train this morning, that's why I was at the station."

"Which school does she go to?"

I told him - my daughter had passed her 11-plus last year and had started at the local girls' grammar school.

"She's clever, then."

"Yes, she's a bright girl."

"You're proud of her?"

"Yes, very much."

"I go to the boys' grammar, my parents were proud of me when I passed my exams where we used to live, they said we wouldn't move here unless I could go to this grammar school, but now..." His voice tailed off and more tears seeped from under his half-closed eyelids.

"Look, before Mr & Mrs Pensioner interrupted us at the bus stop, I asked you if you could tell me about what had happened..." It occurred to me that I didn't even know his name. "Here I am asking you about your life story, and I don't even know what you're called. I'm Dan."

He smiled wanly, the first smile I'd seen, a smile that almost transformed his face - he was a really handsome boy, I couldn't help but notice. "I'm Alex."

"Well, Alex, do you want to talk about what led up to you being so upset as that bus left - it's up to you, just tell me to mind my own business if you like".

"I dunno - like I said, you'll probably be the same as them", the way he spat the word out, it sounded italicised, "if I tell you."

It was an awkward moment - he seemed to want to talk to me, but, without knowing what had taken place, I was finding it hard to work out how I could facilitate that.

"Alex, I can't promise not to react to what you tell me, if you choose to tell me anything, but I promise I won't dump you on your own at the side of the road with no money, whatever you say."

He closed his eyes again, apparently gathering himself for a decision. "It's my friend."

"What's wrong with your friend?"

"Nothing, I...I really like him, and he really likes me."

"That's how friends should be."

"He's gone away on holiday today, so yesterday was the last time I was going to see him for over two weeks, and he came round to my house. My dad was at work, and my mum said she was going out shopping for an hour, but if we behaved, we could stay on our own until she came back. We hadn't been on our own together before, I've only been here a few weeks, like I said, we were in my bedroom, and..." He faltered again.

"It's OK, Alex, don't get upset, I'm still listening - if you want to carry on, that is."

"She came back. My mum came back, she'd forgotten her purse, or something...and..." Suddenly it all came out in a rush. "We didn't have any clothes on, we didn't hear her come in, she came into my room, we were touching each other...she called us filth, sluts, she told Lawrence to get out, never come back, she wasn't even going to let him put his clothes on before she threw him out, I had to stand between him and her to give him the chance to get dressed, once he'd gone she rang my dad at work and told him to come home. She told him what had happened, he rang Lawrence's parents, I heard him shouting at them on the phone, telling them they'd raised a queer, a whore, he wasn't having his son corrupted by their scumbag offspring. Then they must've told my dad that they knew Lawrence was gay, because he started shouting again, about letting their son near other boys when they knew what he was like, it was disgusting, Lawrence should be locked up, they should be locked up. Then he came and started yelling at me, what was I doing with this queer, he didn't go to work to pay for his son to grow up a homo, it was unnatural, what did I have to say for myself? I didn't know what to say, except to tell the truth - my parents have always gone on about me telling the truth - I told him I loved Lawrence, I knew I'd been gay for a couple of years, but I'd never found anyone before that I wanted to be my boyfriend. He started shouting again, saying if that was what I wanted, I was no son of his, and to stay in my room until he told me I could come out. Then this morning, he told me to get dressed and go and wait for him in the garden. We've had talks in the garden before, so I didn't think too much about it. When he came out with my mum, that's when he said that they were going to grandma's and I couldn't go, and that he'd changed the alarm code. They got a taxi to the station to catch the bus, I ran down there but the bus was leaving by the time I got there...and that's when you found me."

I didn't know what to say - you hear words like dumbstruck, but they don't have much real meaning until it happens to you. Alex looked at me, and when I didn't respond, his face began to screw up again, and he made to get out of the car. "I knew you'd hate me."

"Wait, Alex, please wait,"  I managed to say, "I've just never heard anything like this before, not in real life, give me a minute to think." He closed the car door again, but looked ready to run at any moment. "You're telling me that your parents have thrown you out with nothing, no money, no clothes apart from what you're dressed in, a 12 year old boy..."

"Thirteen", he corrected me.

"Sorry, a 13 year old boy, because you're gay?"

"I don't know, I think so."