The Invisibles by Francis Gideon

Author:Francis Gideon [Gideon, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gay romance, Contemporary
Publisher: Less Than Three Press, LLC
Published: 2016-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

We kept skipping class. We were careful enough not to do it every day. Sometimes we got away with it. The times we didn't, we were able to cover for one another, and our parents didn't get too mad. We figured out the rules of the game—how often we could skip before we were expelled—and then we kept it to that limit. Sometimes we left during last period, just to have an hour more together before we had to go our separate homes.

I found myself talking to Johnny, even when we weren't hanging out together. He was the only one who had a computer other than me, and we'd often log onto AIM and keep talking until well into the night about anything that came to our minds. Other times, when we were too tired to talk online, we'd put our TVs on the same channel and laugh together at what was going on. If we were even more skilled with our VCRs, we managed to start movies at the same time so we could marathon whatever we wanted. With movies, we'd get so sucked into the stories we didn't actually talk that much, but knowing that he was there on the other side, watching the same film always made me feel better. Some nights, the blinking cursor of my mouse reminded me of his breathing when he was drawing, and I'd trace my fingers over the shapes he had taught me.

I learned two things about Johnny right away from those talks: one, he liked the Marvel universe more than the DC one, though the Marvel movies sucked ten times more than the DC films.

"Even if Batman & Robin is an abomination of a film," Johnny insisted one night over AIM. "It's still ten times better than the Hulk TV show and Lou Ferrigno's green-Grinch like skin. How is that supposed to be appealing? Believable?"

"Well, I don't necessarily think they're going for believability," I argued. "They are comics."

"They're not just comics. They're larger than that—they have to be. Marvel does that well on the page. There are so many versions of Earth in the comics now. They have to contain so much—their storylines literally split apart to whole separate universes."

"Isn't that confusing at all?" I asked, knowing I probably sounded amateurish. I liked comics—I really did—but it was so hard for me to keep up, especially when my parents were still hesitant about the idea of video games and anything, really, that I found fun.

"Not confusing," Johnny confirmed. "It's freeing. There are so many possibilities that way."

"Like..." I trailed off. I wondered if there had been comics in the Marvel Universe yet that had rewritten the history of New York. Maybe Superman—no wait, he was DC—maybe The Hulk could come in and fight off the planes. Maybe the towers were gone in this world, but this Earth was only one of many, many options.

"And even with all these possibilities," Johnny added, not noticing that I had gone quiet on my end of the screen, "they still choose to have Lou Ferrigno with terrible, terrible make-up.

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