Because You Suck: Chapter 12: Part 3

“Are you sorry?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I can’t force you to.”
“You know, Gentry,” his father stalled, sternly shuffling the papers against the desk, “Anger is a form of control. If you allow people to make you angry, you are letting them control you.”
“If they have to let you do anything, they aren’t really in control.”
Mr.Johnson frowned, then slowly creeped a grin past his lips.
“That was smart. You’re a smart boy--- got that from my side of the family.”
Gentry stared at him, coldly noting the the irony that Nilla was replaced by a real sex offender. Instead of replying, Gentry looked away. He stared at a pencil on the desk, then shifted it into a parallel angle with the table.
“It’s regrettable that you acted out the way you did.”
Gentry noticed the table was placed crookedly on the carpet, since the angle of the room different from the angle of the pencil. Yet the room wasn’t straight, either, as the distinctintion in carpet fibers revealed. What good was it to straighten out a pencil when the room was crooked.
“You know what, Dad?”
“What?”
“I don’t regret it.”

With that said, he stood up and left the room.

That was how he ended up aimlessly sitting against his locker, staring at the stump of a tree.
He needed to think. Needed to get his priorities in order. Just a moment alone, just one moment for himself...
“Gentry.” Casey stopped dead in tracks, almost dropping his pile of important looking papers, “I heard you beat up Mikey.”
“Mmhm.”
“How could you…”
“Someone had to.”
“How could you say that! I can’t believe I ever considered you a friend!”
“Gentry!” Sydney grinned and slapped Gentry’s shoulder, “I heard you beat up Mikey. Props!”
Casey put his hands to his hips, his mouth falling open in a neat ‘o’.
“How could you say that, Sydney!”
“I just did, that’s how.”
“That’s homophobic!”
“Yeah well you’re a homo!”
Gentry wormed out from between them, making his escape.
“I’m a homo, but at least I’m not a homophobe! Homophobia is gay!”
“So are you!”
Casey stalled, then blubbered, “I am certainly not a homophobe. The two aren’t equivilant. Homophobia is gay, but gays aren’t homophobic.”
“Why? If homophobia equals gay, then gay equals homohphobia.”
“If that’s so… that proves most homophobes are secretly gay.”
“Fuck you, faggot!”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you!”