I Don't Do Sadness // Jyrus

When his step-mother got home, Cyrus refused to talk to her. She asked if he was alright and he plastered on a smile and said, "I'm fine." 

Then he turned and went to do his homework, but all he was able to do was stare at his open math book. His mind was just swarming with what he had learned about Jonah. He had already scrolled through Jonah's Facepage and stared at every picture he had and he had stared at his text message conversation with him, thinking about whether or not to text him about it. He decided against it, knowing that they would have to not only talk about Jonah's anxiety, but Cyrus' depression, and Cyrus was not ready to go down that rabbit hole. 

His parents didn't think twice when he didn't come down for dinner, and they just left him alone that night, allowing him to stay up late and go to bed on his own. The next day, he woke up to the screeching sound of his alarm clock. His eyelids felt crusty and he couldn't keep them open as he pulled himself out of bed, long past the time he was supposed to get up. He patted his mess of hair down with his hand with water on it, not bothering to style it in any way. He didn't feel like wearing anything special, so he pulled out yet another sweatshirt from the back of his closet.

The Cyrus known to everyone had changed so much that no one even questioned it anymore. He had always put so much into what he wore, and into what he looked like. Now, his hair was never done, he wore sweatshirts that he wouldn't have been seen dead in before, and his picture perfect shoes were now covered in dirt. 

He quickly slipped out the front door and hurried off to Buffy's house. The daily routine of walking to school was usual, Cyrus staying silent while Buffy and Andi talked. He debated about telling them about Jonah, but he knew that they were a group that sucked at keeping secrets and Buffy would want to poke at it and Andi would want to talk to him about it.

Once they got to school, things were different. The people that would normally not look twice at Cyrus were now staring at him as he walked by. He could feel all of the vibrations from their whispers against his skin and in his ears as he went through his day. TJ's basketball friends still continued to taunt him, while TJ went along with it. At one point when they met in the empty hallway, TJ attempted to wave to Cyrus, who kept his head down.

Cyrus was the first gay person to come out at their school, that he knew of, and having been publicly humiliated had traveled well throughout the school. Some people were proud of him while some were weirded out. Some of the girls in his class were extra nice to him, while one tried to give him the address of her church, to which he had to tell her that he was Jewish. One group of girls let him go in front of him in the lunch line, which all he was getting was a vitamin water, and once he stepped out of the line, two guys went in the spot the girls were offering and pushed Cyrus. The girls were still nice and let him stand with them, even offering to pay for his drink.

Even after another torturous day of school, when Cyrus was walking down the street to his house, he wished he could go back. The nice black pavement of his mother's nice and fancy neighborhood made him feel weird. When he walked into the house that he grew up in, he felt weird. Even though it was always one of the safest places for him, it wasn't after the course of a month. After cutting for the first time in the kitchen, the kitchen made his head hurt. As he walked throughout the empty hallways, the hairs stood up on the back of his neck and he felt his skin crawl. He went into his bedroom and sat on his bed, pulling out his phone and spending endless hours on it doing nothing.

When his mother slammed the front door shut and he heard his name echo throughout the house, he sprang up from his bed and flew down the stairs. "Can you do the dishes?" She asked him while she put away the few groceries she had. "I won't have anything to make dinner with since you didn't do it when you got home, so you'll have to clean the pot by hand."

Cyrus merely nodded and got started putting the clean dishes away and loading the dishwasher. He scrubbed away at the pot while his mother started chopping vegetables at the counter. When he had set the pot down on the counter after drying it, she immediately snatched it from his hands before moving past him to fill it with water, allowing him to move out of her way.

He was done with the dishes and had swept the floors by the time the water was boiling. His mother placed a box of pasta on the the counter by the sink and was horrified when it had absorbed the puddle of water on the counter.

"Cyrus!" She yelled.

He came out from putting the broom away and she yelled, "You left a puddle of water on the table!"

He looked down at his feet and squared out, "Sorry."

The second his voice was finished coming out of his mouth, she yelled, "Sorry?" She walked right over to him and pushed him to the side as she said to him, "Stop being lazy."

His feet stumbled behind him and he stopped moving once his back hit the side of the island. "Go to your room," she said, which he did, scrambling up the stairs.

The second he closed the door of his room, he doubled over in pain. He lifted up the back of his shirt and looked at the red mark it had made in the mirror, slowly turning into another bruise. He was like an apple, bruising very easily everywhere. He eventually retreated to his bed, slowly drifting to sleep. 

It was until he heard his name being yelled from downstairs, followed by, "Dinner time!"

Cyrus sat at the table silently, moving the Alfredo along on his plate. "Eat your food," his mother snapped.

He quickly scooped some pasta into his mouth and forced it down his throat. "I'm not that hungry," he mumbled, putting his fork down on the table.

"Well I made that for you, it's rude to just sit there and stare at it," she said, not looking at him. 

His step-father spoke up and said, "You need to eat if you actually want to grow up to be a man, and not this pansy crap."

Slowly but surely, Cyrus chocked down his plate. Once he was excused from the table, he went straight to the bathroom. He could feel the food inside of his stomach and soon, he puked it all into the toilet. He made sure that it was silent so that his parents wouldn't hear and he was emptying everything until he was dry heaving into the toilet, and his weak body fell asleep on the bathroom floor.