Read End of the Innocence for Free Online Page A

“There was no blood on it when he gave it to you? Because I chucked that thing at him pretty hard.”
    It shouldn’t have been funny, but it was. It was part imagining cock-of-the-walk Brad Greymark getting dowsed with a Coke and then hit in the head with a ring by a girl, and part having someone else to talk to about this stuff. Sitting there in her car, it became painfully obvious to me that I had no other friends, period, much less ones I could talk to about being gay.
    How sad was that?
    “God, it’s nice to be able to laugh about that with someone,” she said once we could talk and breathe again. “All my friends just start trash-talking Brad every time he comes up, and that gets old fast.”
    The most popular girl in the school doesn’t have anyone to talk to? She had more friends on Facebook than I had ever even seen in real life. It was surreal to think someone with that many people wanting to be near her would have trouble finding someone to talk to. I couldn’t put it into words, but I felt the world shift beneath me when my horizons widened just a bit. I realized things were tough all over.
    “Okay, enough of that,” she said, dispelling the mood instantly. “Come on.” She gestured for me to follow her as she got out of the car.
    Again, I had no idea what we were doing.
    I guess the store would be considered more consignment than thrift, but it was all the same in my mind. It was a place where you bought other people’s shit. I honestly had never once thought about shopping at a place like this, no matter how financially challenged I was. I followed her, but I was concerned why someone like her would be in a place like this. The store was called Twice Upon a Time. A small bell rang in the back when we walked in.
    I will admit, I expected it to smell like a thrift store, that weird stale smell that made walking into them as unappealing as possible. Instead, it smelled just like any other store downtown.
    Well, downtown in a real town.
    A skinny guy stood behind the counter. He wasn’t that much older than we were, maybe twenty-four or so at the most. His dark hair was gelled up to make his bangs look spiky. I know that doesn’t sound too exciting, but in Foster he had cutting-edge style. Every guy I knew wore his hair cut short and off the neck. He knew Jennifer, since he called out to her across the store. “Girl! You did not cut that hair!” He didn’t exactly shriek, but from the inflection in his voice, he’d obviously decided to warn us he was gay.
    Jennifer cupped the back of her hair as she struck a pose like a model. “You like?”
    He eased around the end of the counter, and I saw he was wearing the skinniest pair of black jeans I had ever seen on a person before. He wore a pair of steel-toed boots made of black leather that just screamed “I am not from Foster!” I don’t mean this in a mean way, seriously, but he was the gayest guy I had ever seen in the city limits.
    “You bitch!” he said, walking around her in a circle to see the whole haircut at once. “I would kill for locks like this.”
    “You would look horrible as a blond!” she said, swatting his hands playfully.
    “I hate you,” he replied, laughing. “So what brings you into my domain of your own free will?”
    “Dracula,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. They both looked over at me, and it felt like a spotlight was thrown down on me from on high. “That’s from Bram Stoker’s Dracula ,” I said, trying to explain myself.
    “Oh, and you brought me an offering,” he said with a smirk on his face.
    I felt myself begin to sink into the floor slowly.
    “Hands off,” Jennifer warned. She might have sounded as if she was joking, but there was an edge of seriousness in her voice. “He’s taken,” she added walking over to me. Putting her arm around my shoulder, she said, “Robbie, this is Kyle. Kyle, this is an old drag queen.”
    “Fuck off, Mean Girls Barbie.” He moved over to me with a