"We've sent each other pictures," Seven rebutted, somewhat defensively, "And it's not the looks that matter. He's funny and he's smart and he's sweet and... I think I'm in love with him."
Karen had never before wanted to hit her brother more than she did at that moment, "You idiot, he could be some old guy that's trying to rape you or something! You don't know who he really is, Seven!"
"Be quiet," Seven hissed, "You're going to wake up everyone!" He stood up, pushing himself out of her lap and away from her, "And I do too know who he is. He's sent me little video clips and stuff like that. We've even talked on the phone a few times. Don't tell me I don't know him. It's you that doesn't know me."
She pinched the bridge of her nose, "But you've never met him in person, Seven. What if he's totally different from the person you think he is?"
"It doesn't matter," he was suddenly quiet and sad again, "It's not like I'll ever meet him in person anyway. He's my 'little internet friend' and that's all he's ever going to be."
He was about to cry again. Nothing ever went his way. It had always been that way. Things just never seemed to work out for him. It was always like he drew the short straw.
Karen stood up, but Seven had left before she could say anything else. She sighed heavily. Why did she have to get stuck with a bunch of stupid brothers? Would one sister have been too much to ask?
~%~
"Karen, what's wrong with Seven?" Sandy Owens asked her daughter, "He's been moping around all day."
"It's probably because his friend won't be on line for a while," said Evan as he and Chad entered the house from the back door that lead to the patio by their in-ground pool. They were dripping on the floor, much to the dismay of their mother.
"Doesn't he have other friends he could hang out with?" asked Chad, taking the towel his mother handed him and drying his hair.
"No," said Karen, getting things out of the fridge for lunch, "Seven doesn't have any other friends.”
The three other occupants of the room stared at her.
"What do you mean he doesn't have any other friends?" asked Evan, taking a soda off of the counter, "Everyone has friends. What makes you think he only has one friend?" He popped the top and took as swig of the fizzing soda.
Shrugging, Karen replied, "We were talking last night and he said that he didn't have any other friends."
"He must be so lonely," said Sandy, "There are no other kids in the neighborhood his age and the kids at school are so judgmental of him."
"Maybe he'd have some friends if he stopped dressing like a freak," Evan said nonchalantly. He cried out when a towel hit his rear. Chad grinned.
"Don't say that about him. Just because he doesn't dress like everyone else doesn't mean he's a freak," Chad said haughtily.
Evan grumbled, "I didn't call him a freak, I said he dresses like one." Then he stopped, "Since when are you on the scrawny little brat's side?!"
"No name calling," Sandy scolded and handed him a plate of uncooked burger patties, "Take these out to your father. There are four veggie burgers on the side for Seven and Karen. Be sure to point that out."
"Vegetarian losers," Evan grumbled. Chad laughed at him. While Evan obeyed his mother and took the burgers out his father who was standing by the grill, Chad ran over to where Seven was sitting on the edge of the pool and pushed him in. He jumped in after him and started dunking him and splashing him.
Evan quickly joined in and it became a big, huge "Pick-On-Seven" frenzy. It took them a minute to realize that Seven had gotten out of the pool and gone inside, causing them to stop splashing.
"What's with that boy today?" their father asked. They shrugged in unison then got out of the pool and went into the house, heading straight up the stairs to Seven's room.
"Ok, what's wrong with you?" Evan asked as he and Chad barged into the room and threw their selves, despite the fact that they were wet, onto Seven's bed.
Seven angrily shouted, "Get out!" from where he was sitting on the floor. His eyes were slightly bloodshot and his eyelashes were stuck together in clumps while shimmering trails shone on his cheeks.
Chad frowned and instantly started questioning him, "Have you been crying?"
"No!" Seven exclaimed, but started rubbing his hands on his cheeks, "I said get out. This is my room and I don't want you in it."
"Why were you crying?" Chad continued, "Were you crying because of us?"
"I wasn't crying!" shouted Seven, "And it wasn't because of you, you stupid, arrogant egomaniacs so get out of my room NOW!"
"Why are you sitting on the floor?" Evan asked as he got off of the bed and sat down on the floor next to Seven.
"Because it is my floor and I can sit on it if I want to," Seven said with his voice small and his lower lip sticking out in a pout. "Since when do you care, anyway? What is this; pretend-to-like-someone-you-don't week?"
Chad gave Evan a surprised, questioning look as if to say 'what the heck is he talking about?' while Evan just shrugged. Seven noticed the interaction and rolled his red eyes.
"What was my best friend's name when I was a kid?" asked Seven, slightly exasperated.
"Dennis Connelly," answered Chad. Evan turned to Seven and nodded confidently. Chad continued with, "What was the purpose of the question anyway?”
Standing up, Seven sighed and headed to the door of his room. He turned to them and said, "Dennis Connelly was the guy that forced me to eat dirt. I had no friends when I was a kid. None. I had no one to play with. Ever. The closest thing I ever had to a playmate was the two of you and you would tie me up in a tree and pretend I was a piñata. You've never known. You've never even liked me or acknowledged me as a human being. So now when you try to act like you care about me just because I feel bad, I don't really want to tell you anything. Sorry."
With that he left the room, leaving the twins to gape and mull over his words. It had never really occurred to them that their actions as children had affected Seven. He was the younger brother. They were twins. They had always had each other and never really wanted to allow anyone else in their two-person circle until they had hit middle school and then they had never wanted to hang out with their brother that was three whole years younger than them. In fact, when they were seniors in high school and Seven was a freshman, they had been right there with their peers wrapping him in duct tape, sticking his head in a toilet then flushing it, and sticking him in a trashcan head-first. It was a ritual, a tradition. It was a rite of passage of sorts. They thought he would be better off in the long run.
~%~
Seven was the short one in the family. He was 5'8" while Karen and his mother were 5'10", his father was 6 foot even, and the twins were both 6'2". It always bothered him before, but now it meant that he was the only one that could fit into the small hole in the insulation in the unfinished attic. They had planned on putting drywall in there eventually, but had not gotten around to it. He was content in hiding there for a few days.
He wondered how long it would be until they started looking for him, until they got worried. Would they think that he had run away? Would they think that he had killed himself? Who knew what they would think? Who cared? Seven most certainly didn't. He was so sick of their 'happy, loving family' act that he always seemed to get excluded from. It wasn't really their fault, though. Maybe if he had been normal they wouldn't be so opposed to spending time with him.
Travis was different though. Travis thought he was special, important. Travis had once said that his entire day had sucked until he had gotten online and found that Seven was on. They had started talking about 7pm that day and neither had gotten any sleep that night. In fact, they were still talking when Seven's mother had come in to make sure he was getting out of bed. She had yelled A LOT that morning. She had even tried to take away his internet privileges until he had covered his ears and started screaming for two hours. They had tried to make him see a psychiatrist then, but he said he didn’t have any major problems and didn't need therapy.
Everything was ok when Travis was around. He always fixed everything, even when all he did was ask Seven what he had done that day. Seven would do anything to be with Travis, even if only for an hour. He would chew off his own leg if it meant he get to be with Travis.
That was the way he had felt for... since Travis had started sending him pictures. At first Seven would imagine it was a black silhouette that touched him in his dreams, but then Travis had started sending him pictures and little by little the light behind the strange silhouette moved and revealed Travis above, touching him and loving him in ways that only existed inside of Seven's mind because situations such as those could never possibly exist in reality.
It scared Seven to death, the emotions and sensations that were brought on by thoughts of a boy he had never met. This wasn't the way things were supposed to go. Life wasn't supposed to happen this way. It wasn't like a video game though. He couldn't just hit 'new game' and delete the old file. The only way out was a game over and Seven wasn't entirely sure if that was what he wanted or not. He knew what he wanted for the most part, though; Travis.
~%~
"You lost him?!" Sandy shouted, fluttering around the kitchen like a moth on crack.
"We were messing with him in the pool and he ran off so we went after him," explained Chad from his seat at the table, "He was up in his room and we kind of had an argument. He left and we decided to let him cool off for a while before we went after him. Now we can't find him."
"Where could he have gone?!" It was obvious that Sandy was not in the most stable of mental states. It wasn't a secret to anyone in the family that Seven was just a little… out there, so when he gets upset and disappears, its justified that the mother gets a bit frantic.
"Relax, Sandy," Paul said, "He's a teenage boy. They're bound to get upset every now and then. He'll show up eventually. There's no reason to get worked up over this."
Sandy glared at her husband, "This is Seven we're talking about. Has he ever expressed any normal behavior? Ever? He's the kid that got picked on because he wrote poetry about drawing on the walls and suicide in third grade. He's the kid that called the guy that pushed him in the lunch-line a soul-sucking necrophilia-obsessed psych-ward escapee. He's the one that told his teacher to stop calling him "Sevvy" or he would go to his house and castrate him in his sleep. He's never been normal and he never will be."
"He's gotten a lot better," argued Paul, "He's stopped telling people that it doesn't matter if the world is ending or not because their lives are worthless anyway."
"He's stopped telling them," Sandy said, nodding, "but he's started handing out little pamphlets on why they have no purpose and existing is a joke."
Karen sighed, "Stop bickering. It's not going to help us find him any sooner."
"I'm right here," a bored voice said, deadpan.
His mother placed her hands on her hips and glared as he made his way over to the fridge, "Just where on earth have you been, young man?"
"It's none of your business," Seven said as he opened the refrigerator, "I was in the house safe and sound. I wasn't drinking, doing drugs, or having sex so there's really no reason for you to know."
"We were all worried sick so don't use that lip with me."
"It's not lip," Seven sighed as he pulled out a coke and something in a Styrofoam box. He put the coke on the counter and sniffed the contents of the container, "That's simply stating a fact. My whereabouts were none of you business at that point in time."
"You're very close to getting grounded, young man," his father said angrily, rising to stand next to Sandy.
Seven put the container back and closed the fridge, opening the fridge and pulling out an ice cream bar, "I don't go anywhere so it doesn't really matter, does it? Nothing really matters right now."
"Don't you have anything you want to say to us?" Sandy asked Seven started heading to the stairs with the ice cream bar in one hand and the coke in the other.
Seven stopped for a minute and seemed to be thoroughly thinking about his reply to that question. He frowned in a cute way for a second before sliding his lower lip to the side and making an odd face down at the wood floor of the entry way. He nodded shortly and looked up at them, "I think I'm gay." With that he hurried out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his room.