Because You Suck: Chapter 19: Part 21

For the first time in a long time, Gentry thought.
Admittedly, he didn’t spend as much time thinking as he spent feeling. But today, he was thinking. Really thinking. Perhaps at the wrong time, but it was something.
T h i n k i n g.
Thoughts which set his heart racing, which turned the dreary climpering of the keys in his mind to a wild melody which resonated through every part of him— even through stubborn silence. His lips were slightly curved from quiet daydreams he would never tell anyone, trying to remember how good it felt to touch and be touched. And to be able to rest his head on Zach’s shoulders, breathing him in.
It felt good.
Sometimes, he toyed with the fantasy of, one day, unapologetically taking Zach's hand in public. He would walk through the blue-brick schoolyard without having to say anything to anyone; not as some attention whore, not as the “gay guy,” and without the intention of playing politics. He would just walk with him because he wanted to, and if people didn’t like it, too bad. Their looks wouldn’t matter anymore, and their voices wouldn’t reach him.
It was a stupid fantasy; one which Gentry always dismissed right after bathing in its warm glow.

“What is rape to you?”

Gentry suddenly glanced up; blankly.

“Four letters.”

The question had come from nowhere, and hit suddenly like cold shower.
Where was he? Who had said that?
Kylie was sitting there at the lunch table, and she had asked him a question. She was interviewing him. Right. She was doing an interview. For the school paper. About what? About rape.
“That’s it?” Kylie drummed her pencil on her notepad, “Four letters?”
“Well... Rape… is not a good thing... It’s definitely against the law.” He replied, because he really didn’t know what else to say. Words didn’t mean much. Words were combinations of grunts and symbols, sounds which could manipulate as easily as they could be manipulated. He knew how to use them, but gut instinct always told him what he really needed to know. Words were ornamental, and had failed where his gut instinct hadn’t.

Four letters did not describe rape.
He wanted her to get fucked bloody on the way home. Then she would know better than to talk about it so easily. She could write her own article… maybe even a compelling survivor story. That would get you into Vassar.