Saving Scott

Chapter Two: Bags of Sin

"Ms. Alvarez always seems to think you're starving," my mother said as she shifted through the fridge to make room for the tamales. She had some kind of a system in there and I always managed to mess it up. "Do you tell her that I don't feed you or something?"

"Sure," I replied, hardly paying attention. Mom had a weird thing about me bringing home food from other places. I didn't let it bother me. I had tamales.

"There." She nodded, pleased with her new arrangement, and closed the fridge before wiping her hands on her apron. She turned to me and shook her head as she realized I was eating another plate. "You're going to ruin your appetite for dinner."

"What did you make?" I asked.

"Meatloaf," she said.

"Then my apatite was already ruined."

She chastised me with what I liked to call her 'Momster Look', where her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed and she shook her head to let me know I was disappointing her. I grinned around another mouthful of tamale.

"How is Matt?" she asked. We were good at the small talk thing. It kept us from having to actually talk.

"Good," I said. "He's not failing Spanish anymore."

"Honestly. I don't understand why he is struggling. He does speak Spanish."

I shrugged. "I told him the same thing and he said I could talk to him when I had perfect marks in English."

Mom didn't have a reply to that, she just hummed and went back to setting the table, purposefully skipping my spot even though she gave me another Momster Look. She was spooning large chunks of meatloaf onto the plates when the front door opened, signaling my fathers return from work.

He set his stuff aside before joining us in the dining room. I could always tell what kind of day my father had based on how he greeted us. Ruffling my hair and kissing Mom's cheek was good, grunts and ignoring us in favor of a beer was bad, anything else in between meant something had happened to agitate him.

He came in loosening his tie and surveying the food. No hair ruffles, no cheek kisses. I tried not to let that affect my mood. "Ah, good," Dad said. "I'm very hungry."

"How was your day?" Mom asked.

Dad huffed, sitting down in his chair. He let my mother continue to serve him dinner while he answered. "It was fine until I got to the school board meeting. We had to discuss the possibility of starting a club with the normal kids and the fags. I swear, once Obama said they could start serving in the military without shame, it was like they all decided they could spread their sin."

My stomach did an awful thing and suddenly the tamales didn't taste good anymore. I lowered my fork as I forced the bite that I had in my mouth down my throat and prayed that it wouldn't come back up.

"At the school?" Mom asked. "That's absurd. How would a child even know they're like that."

My father shook his head. "A lack of Godliness in the home, I suppose."

"And the school," Mom said. "The government should have never taken God out of schools."

"Well," I said softly. "There are multiple religions. I mean, isn't that what America is about? Freedom of religion?"

"Sure, darling," my mother agreed. "That's why there are churches. But school is another thing."

"Anyway," my father said, pulling the conversation back to him. "No one is ridiculous enough to let that pass. If the queers want to have their own club they're going to have to do it outside of Bridgewood."