I had my wardrobe, desk with chair, and twin-sized bed. I guess, since they never planned on sharing my bed with me, there was no need to get me a bigger one, like they did for their other children. Other than that, there were only my fridge and two shelf boards with my fantasy novels left.
The pictures that previously stood in those shelves had moved into a drawer, when the friends they showed distanced themselves from me. The posters and small rubbish went to the trash, when I lost interest in most of my hobbies. Now, the most prominent item in the room was my desk, which held my computer and all of my paperwork, like the invoices I wrote and the tax-crap I couldn’t figure out. It looked more like an office that someone had put a guest bed in. So, not seeing what Ava’s problem could be, I looked back at her and waited for her to gather her thoughts.
“What?” I asked impatiently, when she still couldn’t get a hold of herself after a minute.
“I was just ... I’m...” she stuttered but stopped again.
“ ... a bitch. I know, Princess. But do me a favor and stop wasting my time. Some people have stuff to do that doesn’t involve you.”
Now she looked hurt. The bitch looked hurt! After all the rumors she spread, all the badmouthing she subjected me to, all the insults she threw in my face whenever she found an opportunity to, she got hurt by that.
“Don’t call me a bitch, Tiny Tim! Don’t dump your frustration on me, it’s not my fault you can’t attract any girls.”
“Actually, it is. You were the one who started spreading those fucking rumors around school. You were also the one who roped the other fucking cheerleaders into making fun of me and started this shit I’m buried in!”
“I didn’t...” for just a second, she looked rattled, but she quickly caught herself. “They’re not rumors if they’re true!”
“Sure, Princess, tell yourself that. Now do yourself a favor and fuck off, before my ‘frustrations’ make me do something you’d surely regret.”
And with that, I slammed the door in her face.
Did that bitch seriously believe I still had a small dick!? Yes, back then the thing was barely three inches long. Probably even less if I’m being honest. Turns out, though, as a boy grows up, so does his dick! And the damn thing grows rather rapidly until a boy reaches sixteen years of age. It even keeps growing after he reaches sixteen, if only marginally, until the age of eighteen to twenty. Trust me, I read up on it every time my family had caused my insecurities to be off the charts again. So, I read about it a lot.
Now, I’ll never be a porn star with one of those eight-inch bats between their legs, but my penis should be absolutely adequate for sex, and thick enough to certainly be felt by a woman! After all, I can’t even stick my index finger into my mouth without gagging, which is merely three inches long. So, I figure there should be fun times ahead of me. If only those rumors Ava spread, and the bullying Logan encouraged, hadn’t effectively killed any chance I ever had to test that theory with any female my age.
Apart from that little clash with Golden Boy and the Princess, my suspension was highly uneventful and went largely unnoticed by my older cohabitors. I knew that Aaron and Claire were informed of my suspension the moment they set foot into the house. And I was willing to bet Logan talked to them about my outburst, trying to get me punished, but neither one of my parents bothered to come to my room. That was fine with me ... although, despite what I kept telling myself, somewhere in the back of my head, I was still holding up that small sliver of hope that at least one of them would start acting like a parent.
When I became the IT-Guy in a security firm, I thought it would be wise to expand my horizon and start looking into IT-Security. One of the very first things I learned was how to place a hidden tracker on phones. And yes, I did that with all of their phones, simply to test it out. A quick check revealed why nobody bothered to talk with me about what happened. They were at Uncle John’s house, undoubtedly having more orgies over there, like they did regularly since Ava’s sweet sixteen. They had more important things to do than to check in with me. At least Uncle John and Aunt Danielle could fill them in. Those two had seen me quite a few times during the training sessions, when they came in to meet up with Bill. Maybe they should have warned Golden Boy of what he had coming.
Although nobody dared lay a hand on me in school anymore, a couple of them did try outside of school a few times over the following months. Luckily, it ended much the same way as the first confrontation. The last attempt happened right after the football season started, and, after word got around exactly why the poor guys would have to sit out the first few games, I found myself being actually left alone. The verbal attacks kept coming, but I was long past giving a shit about those. As long as they would stop trying to physically assault me, this was progress.
I showed the guys at work the video of the fight, and was complimented for a job well done. They especially appreciated the part where I showed enough self control to put Jack into the recovery position, though Bill was not too happy about the part where I knee’d the guy in the face. Their opinion mattered more to me than the family’s.
I had used my suspension time to get my Learner’s Permit. With that, I went to register for the driver’s ed course in school as soon as I was allowed back in, but ran into a problem. The teacher for that class was Coach Jenkins, and, since I had put a number of his players off the field, he simply refused to get into a car with me. I was stuck without that course. I could hardly ask Aaron or Claire to give me lessons.
I bided my time over the next few months, though I held up my familial obligations. While I liked to claim it was solely to avoid yet another confrontation like on Ava’s birthday, I admit that it was actually my last desperate attempt to make the family acknowledge me.
When Mother’s Day came around in May, I got flowers, wrote a card, and left both on the kitchen table for Claire to find when she woke up in the morning. I found the card crumbled up together with the gift wrapping from her presents in the trash, so I wasn’t surprised when Claire never said anything about it. Since Logan could suck a dick for all I cared, my next attempt was Aaron’s birthday, which fell on Father’s Day that year. Knowing his obsession with football, I got him a wallet made from actual NFL uniforms worn by famous players. It cost me 280 dollars, but while I saw him use the damn thing, he never thanked me for it. And in August, when Claire’s birthday came around, I got her a Nest Egg Necklace made of sterling silver from an artist in California, with three “eggs” in the pendant representing her three children. I never learned if it had the desired effect.
While Claire never addressed my gift and I never saw her wear it, over the next few weeks she did behave like she was gathering the courage to talk about something. At dinner on the very next day after her birthday, she kept fixing me with a look before taking a deep breath as if preparing for a long talk. Whenever she did, everyone was looking at her expectantly because it was so obvious she had something to say. It never came out, though. She just stopped, breathed out again, and took another bite of her food.
She kept throwing me concerned glances every few minutes, though. She also stopped by my bedroom on a few evenings, but the result was just the same as when she tried at the dinner table. When I finally lost my patience one Saturday morning and asked what she wanted in an irritated voice, she, again, simply excused herself and walked away. She never tried again after that.
I dove into work, mentally kicking myself for getting my hopes up in the first place. Even if the Nest Egg Necklace had worked, what would it have gotten me? I would have learned that I needed to buy their consideration. So, maybe it was even better that it didn’t lead to anything. When the guys at work asked me about my license though, since I’d turn sixteen only a few months later, I told them about Coach Jenkins. They once again helped me out. I had just come out of the shower after one of our training sessions, when Bill walked into the dressing room and handed me a set of car keys, saying “I’ll wait for you in the parking lot.”, before leaving without waiting for an answer.