A Broken Kind of Life (22 page)

“I only take the pills when I get really stressed out, like when I have a flashback or something bad happens and I can’t deal with it. I used to drink, a lot,” Aaron admitted and then wished he hadn’t said it. His parents could get into trouble if anyone knew their underage son drank.

When he stopped talking abruptly, Dr. Thomas grabbed his soda from the table and popped open the top.

“Aaron, I’m not here to judge you for drinking. In fact, I’d honestly be surprised if you didn’t after what you went through. It’s a horrible thing to cope with, and alcohol is a pretty effective way not to think about it anymore. Of course, it’s not a long-term solution by any means, but I need to know all of the elements of your situation in order to be able to help you.”

“I did drink. I’d sneak liquor from my parents’ cabinet, only… after a while, I don’t think it was much of a secret anymore. I think they were at a loss about how to help me. They never said anything about the missing booze, but they had to know. At least they could get some sleep at night too,” Aaron finished in almost a whisper, ashamed that he’d forced his parents to condone underage drinking just to be able to sleep.

“And when did that stop?” Dr. Thomas asked quietly.

“When I met Spencer.” The words were out of Aaron’s mouth before he could stop them.

Spencer looked shocked, chicken and noodles suspended in midair from frozen chopsticks. Aaron’s face heated as he studiously avoided Spencer’s gaze, and he felt the blush radiate, lighting up the room. Aaron caught the look Dr. Thomas gave him, and then Spencer, and wished he could melt into the carpet.

Dr. Thomas continued to question Aaron, who answered the best he could. Spencer became unnaturally still as he watched from the corner, and Aaron would have given anything to know what was on his mind. If only he had the balls to ask.

SPENCER
:
Okay, I’ve been looking at this for an hour! WTF!?! I am taking a break. Please tell me what I am missing?? Please???

SPENCER:
public static class StringExtensions

{

Public static DateTime ParseDateTime(string dt)

{

string dayOfWeek = dt.Substring(0, 3).Trim();

string month = dt.Substring(4, 3).Trim();

string dayInMonth = dt.Substring(8, 2).Trim();

string year = dt.Substring(10, 4).Trim();

string dateTime = string.Format(“{0} - {1} - {2}”, dayInMonth, month, year);

DateTime returnValue = DateTime.Parse(dateTime);

return returnValue;

}

}

Aaron laughed a bit at Spencer’s frustration because he knew exactly what that felt like. He’d just gone through it a few days ago when he screwed up and forgot that the base index on an array was 1, not 0. So, his entire loop was off by one value. It drove him crazy until he finally found it. Copying Spencer’s code into his .NET development environment, it took him about ten minutes to create a quick program to instantiate the class and bounce data off it. Isolating the problem code made troubleshooting easier than keeping it in the entire application, if at all possible.

The first date he sent into the instantiated object worked fine; so did the second and the third.
Okay, you want to be difficult, then.
He thought back to what Dr. Mayer had taught them just the other day about testing their applications—always test the extremes, the boundaries, and anything it’s not supposed to be. If a user
can
enter something into an interface, they
will
. So, he took the lowest and highest dates that the DateTime type would accommodate. They were fine. With all the specific substring functions Spencer used, maybe it had more to do with the format of the date when it came into the class. Not to mention he had no error trapping and no formatting tests within the class. It was almost like he wanted a user to screw it up. So, instead of entering a date with the standard format, he dropped the first digits on the month and day and entered 1/1/2000 instead of 01/01/2000.
Bingo

AARON:
Oh yeah
!

Aaron minimized the chat window and went to work on adding some testing to the class for different date formats while he waited for Spencer’s response. He was surprised when the computer dinged almost immediately. Spencer must be done with his break and back to coding. When he brought up the window again, his breath froze in his lungs.

SPENCER:
Yeah. You make me so hard
.

What. The. Ever-loving. Hell?
He pushed the desk chair back, distancing himself from the shocking words on his screen. Panic choked off his lungs, and his heart threatened to leap from his throat. Aaron couldn’t believe, after everything they’d talked about, everything they’d been so careful
not
to say, how Spencer could say that to him. A vibe must come off him that just said
screw with me
. God, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be friends with Spencer if that was the expectation. He couldn’t…. He just… he….

SPENCER:
Oh God, I’m so sorry. That was not meant for you. I was talking to someone else in another window, and when yours came up, I didn’t check the name
.

Aaron couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t answer, he couldn’t do anything but just stare at the words on the screen and try to stop the images that flooded his mind. As he pulled back up to the desk, his hands shook on the keyboard. His throat burned as the words came back to him and assaulted his mind.

Just like that, kid.

You make me so hard.

SPENCER:
Please, Aaron. I am sorry. Please say something
.

AARON:
I found your error. I’ll send the code in an e-mail
.

SPENCER:
Not about the code. I could care less about the code right now
.

AARON:
What the hell kind of conversation were you having that you would send that to me by accident
?

Anger, humiliation, fear, it all swirled and burned in his chest. Dammit, he hated feeling like that, so out of control, and all over a few words on the screen. No wonder his parents wanted to dump him off somewhere.

SPENCER:
I was talking to someone online about sex, getting off while we talked. I never meant for you to see it. I don’t get a lot of action since people think I’m retarded. I have to take it where I can get it
.

Aaron didn’t go online much, and he certainly didn’t socialize when he did. He couldn’t even socialize with people standing in front of him, much less people all over the world. Though, maybe it would be easier to talk to someone he would never see. He had no idea. Everything had been so screwed up for such a long time, nothing seemed real anymore, nothing but the fear.

AARON:
Do you do that a lot? Maybe we shouldn’t talk over chat
.

SPENCER:
No, I don’t do it a lot. Just sometimes
.

AARON:
Why
?

SPENCER:
Why don’t I do it a lot, or why do I do it at all
?

AARON:
Both, I guess
.

SPENCER:
I do it because I am sick of being alone. It feels good to be wanted, even by someone I will never see. I don’t do it often because it just feels empty
.

Aaron didn’t know what to say to that, but he didn’t want Spencer to feel empty, and he didn’t want Spencer to feel guilty about screwing up the screens for his chat. Yes, it had shocked Aaron, and he hated the way it scared him, but Spencer hadn’t done it intentionally to hurt him or torture him. Somewhere deep inside, he knew Spencer wouldn’t. A quick but confusing image of Spencer lying back on a nondescript comforter jacking off flashed through Aaron’s mind, and he jerked his hand away from the keyboard as if he’d been burned. It was the first sexual thought he’d had in such a long time. Fear boiled up, bubbling from his stomach to his chest and filled him with such conflicting emotions that he had a hard time processing them.
Fear, attraction, guilt, lust… panic.

AARON:
I have to go. I’ll e-mail the code
.

Before Spencer could send another reply, Aaron slammed his laptop shut. He could almost hear the drugs from his parents’ medicine cabinet calling to him, offering him a way to forget the image of Spencer on his bed, of the men on top of him, and of Juliette—always of Juliette’s screams.

The pills were in his hand before he could change his mind.

“F
OR
this exam, you have the entire lab period of three hours, but I doubt it will take any of you that long. When you’re finished, you can leave,” Dr. Mayer told the students, and Aaron decided he would text his mom after he got out of the exam. While he didn’t think Dr. Mayer would think it was cheating if he texted her now, he didn’t want to have any problems with anyone else. He looked at Spencer, who gave him a smile, and he returned it tentatively. It was nice to have someone look at him and smile instead of cringe.

As he expected, the exam wasn’t even really a challenge for him. He missed having Intellisense to finish the code when he started typing so he didn’t have to remember all the methods and properties. For example, he knew the default event handler for the text box was
ontextchanged
, but it took a second to remember if the listbox was
activeitem
or
selecteditem
. He had no problems explaining the difference between
mousedown, mouseup
, and
click
.

Spencer turned to the next page on his exam, surprising Aaron, who had just started the last question of the first page. The competitive streak in him that reared its head shocked him. There had been nothing resembling ambition or the desire to win at something since his attack. With a grin, he finished up the question and sped on to the next page. When he flipped to the third page first, Spencer smirked and flipped his page seconds later. It seemed Spencer had caught on to his little game and decided to give him a challenge.

For the first time in a long time, Aaron felt good.

Spencer startled him by standing up suddenly and putting his backpack on. Aaron was on the last page of the exam, and he chuckled under his breath at his loss to his friend.
His friend
. He watched Spencer hand in his exam and wink at him as he walked out of the lab. Glancing back down at his exam, he found he only had the bonus question left.
Explain how to use a third-party application programming interface within the Visual Studio development environment.
He snorted quietly. That was exactly what he and Spencer were doing in their project. He wondered if Spencer skipped the question, and that’s how he’d beaten him. Making a mental note to text Spencer and ask him if he’d answered the bonus question, Aaron began to write, because he never knew when a few points would mean the difference between a pass and a fail. He had to do the best he could on his good days in order to make up for the bad.

Today was a good day.

Finishing up his answer, he grabbed his laptop bag and carried the exam down to Dr. Mayer, who was looking up at him, smiling.

“Not too difficult, I take it?” the instructor asked, and Aaron saw that Dr. Mayer was pleased he’d finished so quickly.

“No, not too hard at all,” Aaron said, handing him the exam paper.

“Good. I think your partner in crime is waiting for you, so I’ll see you in class next week,” Dr. Mayer said, tilting his head toward the door. Aaron looked over, and, sure enough, Spencer was standing in the doorway waiting for him. Rather than being upset or feeling cornered as he normally would if someone were waiting to talk to him, he was pleased.

“See you next week, Professor,” Aaron told his instructor and moved toward the door. They walked down the hall a bit so they wouldn’t disturb the other students taking the test.

“Lunch?” Spencer asked in his slow cadence. Aaron looked at his watch. If he didn’t text his mom, she wouldn’t be there for another two hours. Normally, he went straight to class and straight home afterward. With the exception of the bookstore, the dean’s office, and the library, Aaron hadn’t seen any other parts of the school. He wasn’t even sure he knew where the cafeteria was. He almost refused, not wanting to take the chance that something could happen to set him off. Someone could bump him in line for food or recognize him from high school like that girl from the bookstore. In the end, his desire to be close to Spencer won out.

When they reached the line for the hot food, Spencer allowed Aaron to go in front of him, and put himself between his friend and the people who had come behind. Very careful not to touch Aaron, he put an effective barrier between Aaron and the rest of the line behind them. Aaron was careful to stay a little away from the person in front of him, and he relaxed. Spencer had known almost instinctively what Aaron needed, and he’d done it without hesitation.