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Birthday: April 29th
Born in: Philadelphia
Sexuality: Gay
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[Sara speaking]
I’ve known Blaine for nearly four years. For him, that’s a long time to be acquainted with the same person if they aren’t related to him somehow. His family moves around a lot because his dad is in the military. According to Blaine, he’s lived in 13 different states, two other countries, and has met all sorts of people, but I’m the best person he’s ever befriended.
I met Blaine through a peer tutoring program that went on after school. He was best at math and English, both of which I was terrible at. I started the peer tutoring program in my freshman year. My mom suggested it, saying that if I opened up and let other people help me, I might be able to get help working out my difficulty with reading and comprehending things, and possibly get over my shyness as well.
When I first started out the program, I will admit I was a bit reluctant to let my guard down. There is a wall I built up around myself, a wall that I have never, ever let fall, and allowing other people to help me is something I often have problems with. The only person I don’t fight with is my brother, because I know that I mean a lot to him and that I wouldn’t be able to stop him from defending and protecting me if I tried.
When I started the peer tutoring program, I went through a few other people before I got to Blaine. He was the third person I ever let help me. The first was my mother, but she doesn’t really count anymore, I guess… Seeing as she died a few years back, not long after I started the program.
Blaine was sweet. He had charisma. He had attitude. He was good at what he did, and he was proud of that. One day, that boy is going to go on to be a mathematician of sorts, or maybe a scientist or a writer, and I will be more than happy to have known him when he rises to his full potential. The most important thing to know about Blaine is that, despite his cool demeanor and the way he acts and looks on the outside, he is actually just one big softie. He wouldn’t harm a fly. He doesn’t hit or yell at people and he is very nice and sweet and calm. He’s the type of guy that could break down even the most stubborn of people. He’s the life of the party, but he’s not perfect. I know this for a fact.
You see, even though Blaine seems so great on the outside, he has a lot of secrets that he locks up inside himself and refuses to tell. I know this boy like the back of my hand, and despite all of his faults, I love him still--as a friend, of course. I used to like him as more than that, but then I found out he was gay. I was shocked when I first found out. It’s not the kind of thing that you can see coming from him, especially since he has a bunch of female friends that he constantly hangs around, some that he even flirts with--he say he does it just for fun, nothing serious.
He really is the sweetest thing ever. He’s really corny, too. He’s the type that would buy his boyfriend flowers and stuff on Valentine’s Day, or he would plan something special and cliché with roses and quiet music. He likes to dance. I never would have guessed that, either, if I hadn’t gotten to know him better. But he doesn’t like the kind of dance that most teens do nowadays--no, he’s really simple. Slow dancing is his favorite. He likes romantic movies and quiet nights spent together.
You know what the only problem of being such a nice guy is, though?
He gets his heart broken real easy.
Birthday: December 21st
Born in: Kansas
Sexuality: Bisexual
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[Blaine speaking]
For someone so small and vulnerable, Sara is a pretty tough kid. Not physically, per se, but more… well, emotionally, you know? I’ve never met someone so stubborn, so unwilling to open up to other people as Sara Desrosiers. The first time I saw this girl was in my sophomore year. I had just started working with the peer tutoring program at my new school, and she was the first person I ever worked with that really had a lot of trouble with what they needed tutoring on. This wasn’t because she was stupid or anything, because she’s not; she’s actually a pretty smart kid, she just had trouble with some things. But she was dyslexic. That was her problem.
[Sara speaking]
That wasn’t the only problem after a while…
[Blaine speaking]
It took a long time, but I eventually broke Sara down. I got her to open up to me, and I figured out a few things that were, to say the least, quite shocking. First of all, there was the fact that she liked me. I had to let her down on that one, because I'm about as gay as they come. She handled that well. She said she was bisexual and her brother was gay, so she didn’t have a problem with homosexuality. What a relief. Another thing I found out was that her mother had recently died of breast cancer. (This was at least a year after she had started the program, so it was around that time.) Sara had always been supportive of all the cancer stuff, but after her mom died, she and her older brother Johnny really started raising awareness of it.
[Sara speaking]
And what else did you learn, come on.
[Blaine speaking]
Another thing I learned is that after her mom died, her father kind of went crazy.
[Sara speaking]
That’s it. Now keep going.
[Blaine speaking]
Not like ‘lost his marbles’ crazy. Not the schizophrenic or psychopathic type of crazy, either. I guess he was just really in love with their mom, you know? It's like when he died, something in him died too. He locked up all his frustrations and his hurt, until it boiled over and he eventually just exploded.
[Sara speaking]
My dad met my mom in high school. She got pregnant with my older brother when she was eighteen and my dad was nineteen. They’d been together ever since. They were true high school sweethearts. My dad was okay before my mom died. He used to act really weird sometimes, though. He messed around with Johnny because he was afraid of the dark, and some of the things he did were pretty cruel… Mom made it better for the most part, but after she died, it got worse. Back then, he didn’t care about my dyslexia either. Mom always helped me with it. After she died, Johnny took over that responsibility, like he did with everything else as well.
But dad started paying attention to it then. When we got my report card in the mail and I had a lot of bad grades, I paid the price for it. He always said this stuff like, ‘this is the last time. If you don’t improve your grades, I’m going to…’ He’d never finish the sentence, though. He just shook his head and gave me this warning glare, and it was enough to make me scared for my life. Blaine was a big help.
[Blaine speaking]
I helped, but she still had trouble with her classes. Her grades were mostly C’s and D’s, except for a few good ones in subjects that she could handle on her own. Sara was good at science and computer-related classes. She just couldn’t figure out how to work with math and English. In those classes especially she had trouble and her grades for those were usually lingering around D’s, closer to F’s. Her dad didn’t like this.
[Sara speaking]
My dad was good at math, see. He didn’t understand my problem, didn’t know a whole lot about my dyslexia. He thought I was just stupid, and he voiced this often. One night, my brother and I were looking over my grades and trying to do some homework I had left over. My dad walked in, snatched my grades out of my hand, and threatened me as he always did. He called me stupid and said I needed to get these up or I'd regret it. Johnny jumped in then. He pushed dad and told him to leave me alone. After that, he took me away from the house, somewhere safer. Dad followed. He and Johnny got into a fight, and it was pretty bad. Johnny said some stuff that dad didn’t like. Something about how mom should have left him or they should have gotten a divorce. Dad hit him and Johnny hit him back. They went at it for a little bit, and then stopped…
It was scary, it really was. I was right there the entire time, screaming at them to stop. I didn’t like having to watch my brother get beat up like that. He left with a lot of bruises, but so did dad. I don’t know where he went that night, but we went back home and gathered our stuff, and we left.
[Blaine speaking]
I stuck around. I was there for Sara through all the stuff her dad put them through, and I helped her a lot, I know I did. She really is tough, way tougher than she seems. She could handle a lot of stuff that most people probably think she wouldn’t be able to.