I felt so vulnerable. First of all, I couldn't believe what had just happened. I had had my first kiss with a guy, and it was wonderful. I really did care about Sam, no matter how much I failed to admit it to him. And for the first time, a guy that I liked actually liked me back. I had been ecstatic.

But then these arrogant jerks had to come walking in to ruin everything. Sam let go of me and began to walk away, but all I wanted was for him to come back and protect me. I felt my heartbeat slowly start to increase more and more until it felt like a drum on the inside of my chest. I looked from Sam to the boys and back. Sam looked terrified, his small eyes staring at the group, his chest lifting and falling with every second that passed. The group looked hungry, their mouths turning up slightly at the corners, as if they were tigers that had just come across food in the jungle. They began to walk towards us, and I felt my uncontrollably shaky body back up a few feet.

The silence was driving me insane.

"So, what do we have here?" Karofsky asked.

"Nothing," Sam quickly spit out. For some reason, I felt hurt by that. Why couldn't people just let us be who we wanted to be? I didn't hide, I knew how much it sucked to pretend. Why did Sam have to do this? I wanted to speak up, I wanted to defend myself like I usually did. I wanted to tell these losers that we can't control who we like, and they just have to deal with that.

But for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to talk. I looked over at Sam, nearly shaking out of his skin, and I kept quiet. I just nodded in agreement to what he had said, but that didn't the football players from scoffing at us. "Yeah, right. Since when is lip lock considered "nothing"?"

"Well, I guess when you're fags, it is." I twitched at the word, still shaking with fear and now anger as well. "Never thought we'd have two of those on the football team." They took a few more steps towards us, and we took a few more steps backwards. They started getting closer to Sam, and farther away from me, however. Soon, they were completely surrounding him.

"No, don't," were the first words out of my mouth. Almost automatically, some jock that I didn't even know the name of spun around and slapped me hard against the mouth. He hit me with such force that I nearly fell to the floor, holding my face. The silence returned. I felt myself about to burst.

The boy who slapped me turned back to face Sam. "Let's go," he commanded. And before I knew it, they were on top of him like the rabid beasts that they were. It was almost exact to what had happened to me a few days ago. I moved around the circle, trying to stop them, but it didn't work. They just pushed me back and constantly threw me against the wall. Tears rolled down my face as they continued.

Finally, they stopped. I thought they were done. "This punk is annoying," another jock said turning to face me. I continued to stare at him with a look of disgust. "Come on," and with that, they dragged Sam into the storage room. My heart raced up into my throat and I tried to follow them in. I grabbed the door handle as the last guy in closed it. I tried to open it, but of course, I was nothing against all of them combined. My feet quickly swept across the floor as I was thrown away from the now locked door. Through the small window, I saw a horrific thing. They continued to step on him, but then one boy began removing his pants, then his boxers. The tears fell heavier down my face as I desperately tried to plow through the door.

It was no use, for nothing that I could do would stop the beasts. I plunged myself into the floor in defeat, hating myself for allowing all of this to happen to him. From inside the room, I heard Sam screaming, crying for help, as the boys just laughed. I couldn't even muster up enough strength to stand up anymore. I weakly held onto the handle as some sort of false hope as the terrible sounds continued to filter into my ears.

After several more terrible minutes, I finally heard a click, signaling the end of their rampage. I moved myself over to the side, trying to hide, as the five football players walked, satisfied, out of the storage room, through the main locker room, and back out into the hallway without saying a word to me or to each other. They just filed out of the room as if their job was done. When I was sure that they were gone, I darted through the door.

What I saw was terrifying. I had to do a double take to just make sure that it had really happened. His entire body was covered with spots ranging from bright red to dark purple. The worst was on his lower thigh. It was about four inches in diameter and a shade of the darkest purple that I had ever seen, so dark that it was almost black. He had scuff marks from shoes and small red holes from the boys who had on metal spikes. His mouth was bleeding a dark red color. The part that sent a chill down my spine was his lower half. His pants were wrapped around his knees, and over his boxers was a large red stain. I cringed and made my way over to him. He coughed and his head went up a little. I put my hands under it.

I couldn't even think of anything to say to him. I just held his head as he cried into my shoulder. This had to stop, I thought to myself. I had to do something about this, I wouldn't let anybody get hurt because of these imbeciles any longer.