Disclaimer: This story is completely fictional. None of the names in the story are real people, at least ones that this author knows. This is gay fiction about high school romance, therefore if you are UNDER 18, GET OUT, it is illegal for you to view this AND YOU KNOW THAT. ________________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER 1
The Prince and the Pauper
Oh God, its 2 AM, and I still haven't done the laundry, my parents will kill me, Mom says she has nothing to wear, and if I have to hear the travesties of my father with his stupid sock crop failure one more time I'll loose it. I decided to get off the computer, my only salvation from this pigsty, falling apart laughable joke of a house and or family, and go downstairs to the basement to move the laundry forward. I opened up the top of the washer to find the clothes for some reason still really wet, weird. So, I put half of them in the dryer and put the rest in for another rinse cycle. As I dodge various shit piled on the basement floor and packed along shelves from forever and a day ago, I leave and go upstairs. My mother, working for an advertising firm that deals with cable, was able to get us free digital cable, another escape from our plight filled lives. An hour goes by, nothing is on television anyway, and the songs on my MP3 player, and the shows without digital tiling problems are getting old, the weather has been shit lately, eh oh well, so I decide to go back downstairs to see what's with the washer/ dryer issue, the clothes in the dryer are still wet, ugh, and the stuff in the washer is done, eh what the hell I'll put it down for one more rinse cycle. For some reason I didn't leave the basement this time, call it intuition, who knows.
Cheerfully dancing to the soundtrack of Evita on my MP3, in three months I'll be playing the role as Ché in the school's benefit concert for ALS, I started to smell the smell of a motor dying, that horrible burn. This scent, not unknown to me, just last week at work the damn milkshake machine burnt up just like this in my face. I give up, I turned off the wash and went upstairs, later the stuff in the dryer will be done, I'll just try and have the other stuff dry again, great, let Mom do laundry later and find this out on her own, I'm sick and tired of doing everybody's laundry anyway! I went upstairs and back to my computer, there was an e-mail and from the one person I'd never expect one from. Tom Tyler, this kid in school who annoyed me always, calling me faggot and shit like that. What can I say, I am one, but he doesn't have to know, nobody does, that's my little secret, okay my major secret, but who cares.
So, who am I? I am your average teenager in beautiful Northern New Jersey, whatever. I am from Ridgewood, one of the nations most exclusive communities, fifteen minutes to Manhattan by train, twenty to a half an hour by car, and filled with giant Victorian manors, in Bergen County, the third richest region in the United States. I am not obsessed with this really, my family is, we are the poor branch of very wealthy families, oh and everybody else in this quaint professionals' enclave is, they also seem to be obsessed with the fact that I'm like part of this tiny minority in the town, PWT, I live on the outskirts of town, on Goffle Rd, a highly trafficked road en route to Rt. 208, the way into New York on the Hawthorne/ Ridgewood border, and they all wish that I just was re-districted to Hawthorne and never seen again because I don't fit in with their H3, Mercedes Benz, Lexus paradise lives. Poor my family is not, evidently broke, yeah that's us. My mother is one of the head editors for an advertising firm based out of Morristown, New Jersey and Manhattan, and my father is the store manager of an auto repair shop in Ramsey, New Jersey. Our house from the outside is a split level very nicely kept up, but while I grew up my parents hit financial and physical crisis and they started overworking themselves at work to keep up, and by the time the two came home, it was dinner, a little TV, and then bed. Chores were given to the kids, and let's face it how many young kids will do everything there is to keep up a house, and the inside of our home fell into deep disrepair, but not the outside, we got a landscaper, nobody could mow the lawn because I'm allergic to grass pollen and if we wanted any cut grass from April to May that wasn't happening and new siding. Our little Harlem within the confines of New Jersey's Greenwich, Connecticut, was kept hidden and out of view. As I grew up, I made many friends, but never got too close to any of them because they could never come over like normal people because please, their parents would call the cops on the shittyness of my home.
My name is Teodoro Goldbladt, yes laugh all you want; I'm half Cuban and half Argentinean-Jewish. (We're Episcopalian, live in the WASP land that I do, it just comes with the territory I guess) So, yes I can still be called poor white trash because I'm white and not Puerto Rican trash like everybody at Ridgewood High School thinks, really, name me a Puerto Rican family filled with blonde hair and blue eyes, well except my mother and I. My father and two older sisters have blonde hair and blue eyes, my Mom and I have light brown hair and light brown eyes. I was born in Elmont, Long Island, New York. We moved to New Jersey when I was five, right when my sisters started middle school, they are twins, I'm now sixteen and they're almost in their senior years of college, they're both very bright girls Raquel is at Cornell, and Claudia is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I'm not as bright as they are, but what I lack in academics I more than make up for in musical and athletic talent. I am an all-state and all-eastern singer and clarinetist, captain of Ridgewood High's swimming and diving team, and an all-county lacrosse goalie. Generally I'm very likable, I'm not normally as blue as I seemed in this introduction, it is just I am going through something difficult.
There is a boy from school, Tommy Tyler who has made this year hell for me, he ended up in every one of my classes and did nothing but make fun of my appearance and the fact that I was the resident pauper among the incredibly pretentious nobility that is our student body at Ridgewood High School. He also consistently criticized me for being gay, even though nobody knew this, I still have no idea how he found this out, now nobody believed him of course, not our school's star lacrosse goalie! He and his stupid color guard friends made fun of me, and every slip of my dialect to effeminacy became material for them to torture me in class for months. The ugly truth of it all was even though I hated Tommy with an undying passion, I also had the hugest crush on him, and it was terrible. While I'm 6ft flat, slender and slightly muscular I guess like 130Ibs, Tommy is 6'7", slender, not very muscular at all but incredibly cute, his fair skin, ocean blue eyes, and longish curly blonde hair. He is the quintessential rich boy with his fancy clothes, an H3, and watches. When he walks down the halls people look at his tall cut body and beautiful face in awe, including me and I think he realized this and that is why he bothered me so much.
I was lucky when the summer came along because that meant no more Tommy until marching band camp in late August. I was enjoying my summer; I have a job as a fountain worker at the Friendly's in Midland Park on Godwin Avenue, was making really nice, not anywhere as pretentious friends as the people from Ridgewood from Midland Park and Friendly's, and then I got this e-mail.
Dear Teodora hahaha Teodoro, Teddy, w/e,
I am having a pool party on the 30th, why don't you come it will be fun, I can pick you up at your house, you live on Goffle by the Saab dealership right? Call me back at my cell (201)-555-6891. Bring your girl if you have one.
~Tommy~
Oh shit, I really actually want to go. This summer has been really hot and I haven't gotten a chance to swim at all because of work, whom should I take? That girl Katie from Friendly's always flirts with me, maybe she would want to come, but no, I'm not lying to anybody about having a girlfriend. I looked at the time at which I received the e-mail and it was like 2 something, so I figured I could call Tommy now and say I would come.
"Hello?"
"Hi Tommy its Teddy."
"Oh hey Teddy, you able to come to my pool party?"
"Yeah, I can come!"
"Great! How's your summer so far Teodora?"
"Shut up Tommy, it's fine, I've been working over at the Friendly's in Midland Park. Were you on Bellaire Rd the other day? I think I saw you in the morning while I was jogging."
"Probably, I live on Katherine Rd, which is off of Bellaire, so I could have been, you were jogging, oh you were the guy in those short shorts and nothing else! Didn't anybody tell you that's indecent exposure?"
"It was like 100 degrees and I jog everyday so I had to anyway."
"What are you doing tomorrow?"
"Working from 5-midnight."
"Cool, I'll go over for a milkshake."
"Hold up on the milkshakes, I umm, the machine is broken."
"That place is so ghetto!"
"Shut up, no it isn't, I love it there."
"Whatever, I'll pick you up around noon on Sunday? What number are you?"
"Oh, um, the house is number 177."
"Are you bringing your girl?"
"I uhh, don't have a girl."
"What happened to Christina from Glen Rock, you broke up?"
"Yeah, ok, just pick me up then, k?"
"Calm down Teodora, want your Midol?"
"Why am I even going to your stupid party?"
"Because I want you too, please Teddy?"
"Fine."
"See you the..." I hung up the phone by accident, eh whatever.
I spent the rest of the week cleaning up the house just in case if Tommy barged in, fixed the washer machine so that I could go there smelling good, and Friendly's. On Saturday night, Mom and Dad were very thankful for me cleaning the house so well.
" I might have somebody over for a little bit before I go over there house, so now the house looks like people actually live here. "
"Oh who?" Mom questioned.
"Nobody really, just Tom, he's having a party and is picking me up first."
"When?" Mom and Dad asked.
"Tomorrow after church, it's a pool party and I haven't gone swimming all summer please Mommy?"
"Terry, let him go, he's sixteen."
"Paulo, then my parents starting hissing with each other in Spanish."
"Hijo, puedes ir al partido. No preocuparte."
"Gracias Papi!"
I kissed my parents and then went upstairs, who knows why I actually want to go to this party, Tommy was somewhat nice to me on the phone the other night though, maybe he won't be so terrible during the party. After church the next morning, I put my suit on a hanger, and started to change into my bathing trunks, I wanted to change into the Speedo I have from the Ridgewood swim team, but then figured that with that giant crush on Tommy, if I wore the Speedo, I'd surely tent in front of him. I heard the doorbell as I was still in room, my mother must have let him in because I heard Tommy coming up the stairs.
"Teddy, you almost ready?"
"Tommy, what are you doing in here?"
I was a little hesitant, still changing and having Tommy see so much of my house.
"What so your house is sort of messy, ours' is to when the cleaning lady goes on vacation. So this is Teodora's bedroom, aww look at all the trophies on your wall, and these musical pins, what are you the model child?"
"No, notice that there are no academic ones on that wall, half of those awards are for breaking track event records from back in middle school, whoopdy-doo, the kid can run!"
"You are too hard on yourself Teddy, nobody's perfect, look at all the things you've achieved." After Tommy finished speaking he pushed me onto my bed and ended up falling next to me, and we just stared at each other for a few minutes as we fake hit each other on our chests with our lightly clenched fists. What a moment this was, I don't think I've ever had a friend this close to me that we were fooling around in my room, not sexually I think, not that anybody ever fooled with me sexually, sad enough. It was so odd though because normally Tommy and I do nothing but make fun of each other with really mean hurtful remarks. Why was he being nice to me, and why had we just been staring at each other with goofy smiles eye to eye on my bed playing stupid games? He's got to stop this soon because I'm not going to hold out much longer, I really like Tommy, I might do something stupid!
"Are you two going soon?" we heard my mother ask from downstairs. Tommy and I got up, and he said to my mother that we were leaving in just a minute.
"Is there anything else you are going to take Teddy, I don't know like a shirt, a change of clothes?"
"Oh yeah"
I gathered up some clothes and packed them in my bookbag we were off, as we walked out the front door I heard my mother say, "Oh my God Paulo, did you see the size of that kid, he dwarfed Teodorito! He must have been close to seven feet tall!" I ignored it hoping that Tommy didn't hear them. The drive to his house was quiet I was in awe of the H3, I had always wanted one, and being in one was almost a dream come true for me. He had his I-pod hooked up to the stereo in there, ugh Tommy likes rap, but I don't have too much of an issue with Chamillionaire I guess.
"So Teddy, ready to go swimming?"
"Yup! I've wanted to go all summer!"
"You know, you can come over and swim anytime really. How come you never talk to me online or comment on myspace?"
"Because normally we are at each other's throats, and truthfully I was enjoying time away from your tormenting this summer."
"Well sorryeee Teddy."
"Tom, that was bitter I know, but think about how we normally are to one another in school, it was a real surprise to me that you wanted to be friendly to me."
"Oh"
We pulled up to a beautiful Tudor home, and Tommy took me to the back.
"Hey Tommy, where is everybody? We are the only one's here!"
So, did you like the start to The Prince and the Pauper? Comment me, don't hold back criticism if you have any @ Punkincognito313@AOL.com