A short story inspired by the song “Smalltown Boy” written and performed by Bronski Beat.

A single word on a school bus cleaves childhood in two. And what follows is a silence that won’t stop echoing.

***

It happened on a Tuesday.
Nothing big ever happened on Tuesdays.
But there it was—cracked across the school bus aisle like a whip.

“Faggot.”

The word hit me before I even knew who’d said it. The laugh came after, and then another—sharp, fast, a ripple of boys in varsity jackets who smelled like gym socks and Axe body spray.

I froze.
I didn’t turn around. Didn’t ask why.
Because I knew.
I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. Like a drop of ink in water, the word spread through me—staining everything.

***

That morning, I’d worn my new gray sweater. It was soft and loose, the kind my mom said made me look “handsome.”
I had been humming in the mirror while brushing my hair. Whitney Houston on the radio.

That was probably it. The sweater. The humming.
Maybe the way I’d answered a question in English too fast. Or how I crossed my legs in homeroom. Or how I’d drawn Prince’s face in my sketchbook during math.
Something gave me away.
I must have slipped.

I sat the rest of the bus ride pretending not to hear. I pressed my cheek to the cold window and counted telephone poles. Tried not to breathe too loud.

My stop was third to last.
Each second dragged like wet cement.

When the bus hissed to a stop at the corner of Brookridge and Emerson, I stood slowly.
Eyes burned the back of my neck, but I didn’t look back.

One of them coughed the word again as I passed—quieter this time. Just for me.

“Faggot.”
Like a secret.
Like a curse.

***

The moment I stepped off the bus, the air felt different.
Heavier.
As if I’d crossed into some new version of the world where I didn’t belong.

I didn’t run home. That would look guilty.
But I didn’t walk like myself, either.
I folded my arms across my chest and stared at the sidewalk.
As if good posture or silence might make me disappear.

***

Inside the house, my mom was peeling potatoes, soap opera buzzing behind her.

“Hey, baby,” she said. “You’re late.”

I shrugged. “Bus was slow.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

She looked up, eyes narrowing just slightly. “You sure?”

I nodded, already heading to the stairs. “Homework.”

***

In my room, I shut the door quietly.
I pulled off the gray sweater like it had betrayed me.
Threw it in the back of the closet.
Stared at myself in the mirror.

Did I look like one?
Is there a way not to?

I tried lowering my voice. Making it gravelly.
I practiced standing wider, shoulders square.
I tried scowling.

But I just looked like a scared kid trying to be someone else.

***

I didn’t cry.
Not yet.

Instead, I turned on the radio—static, then a clear signal.
And then I heard it:

“You run away, turn away, run away…”

Jimmy Somerville’s voice from Bronski Beat—high, aching, unmistakably queer.

I turned it off.
Too close.
Too much.
Too me.

***

The next morning, I picked the stiffest jeans I owned and a plain navy hoodie with no logos.
I walked like my shoulders were made of bricks.
Sat lower in my chair.
Spoke only when called on.

Nobody said the word again. Not out loud.
But I could feel it.
That tiny pause when someone looked at me.
The smirk in the corner of another kid’s mouth.
The way the gym teacher said “man up” during dodgeball, eyes brushing mine just a second longer than the others.
Like maybe he had heard, too.

***

In social studies, someone passed me a folded note with a drawing:
A stick figure with long eyelashes, a purse, and a word bubble that just said: “I like boys.”

I didn’t open it until class was over. Then I tore it into tiny squares and flushed it, piece by piece, in the bathroom stall.
But it still felt like it was in my pocket.

***

Lunch was worse.
No one told me I couldn’t sit at our usual table. But when I did, three people got up and moved.
No eye contact. No explanation.
Just the scrape of trays and a silence loud enough to choke on.

I couldn’t eat.
I kept staring at my milk carton, willing it to give me instructions.
Something simple like: Tilt here. Escape now.

I found an empty table by the vending machines and sat alone.

After a few minutes, I saw Brandon—this lanky kid from orchestra, sleeves always pushed to the elbows like he was half-ready to bolt—glance at me.
He hesitated, then came and sat down across from me.
He didn’t say anything. Just unwrapped his sandwich and started eating.
Like it was normal.
Like I was normal.

***

I didn’t know what to say.
We weren’t friends. Just people who sat two rows apart in Biology and once argued about which Ghostbuster was the best.
But now he was here.

I kept waiting for him to laugh, or say something cruel, or ask if it was true.

Instead, he handed me a granola bar and said, “My mom keeps buying these. They taste like cardboard, but they’re weirdly addictive.”

I took it. Nodded.

“I like the chocolate chip ones better,” I said.

He shrugged. “Yeah, me too.”

***

It wasn’t a big moment.
No music swelled. No lesson learned.

But for the rest of the day, I didn’t feel like I might throw up.
And that was something.

***

At home, my sister Becky was hogging the phone in the hallway, twirling the cord around her ankle while talking about boys.
When I walked past, she whispered into the receiver, “Ugh, my little brother is SO weird,” then turned and smiled like it was a joke.

I shut myself in my room and turned on the radio.

Smalltown Boy came on again.
I almost switched stations. Almost.
But this time, I didn’t.

I lay on my bed and let the words soak through me:

“Run away, turn away, run away…”

It wasn’t just a song.
—It was a warning. A mirror. A hymn.

It made me feel seen and hollowed out all at once.
Like someone, somewhere, had written it for me—and for every other boy who knew what it meant to be called something before you even knew who you were.

***

I didn’t talk to anyone about it.
Not my mom.
Not Becky.
Not even Brandon, who nodded at me in homeroom the next day like we shared some kind of pact.

What would I even say?

Hey, someone called me a word I’ve been afraid of since I first learned it existed—and now I can’t stop thinking about it.

It sounded ridiculous.
It sounded true.

***

In art class, I stopped drawing people for a while.
I switched to trees. Buildings. Anything with straight lines and no mouths.

Mr. Lang, our teacher, said he missed my portraits. “You see faces better than most kids your age.”

I wanted to say: Yeah, and now they see mine.
But I just nodded and went back to my sketch of a water tower.

***

That Friday, I went with my mom to Meijer Grocery.
“Don’t wander off too far, Jamie,” she said, tossing a can of tomatoes in the cart.

I nodded and made a beeline for the music section.
Rows of cassette tapes behind glass.

My fingers hovered above Whitney, The Police, Van Halen.
And then I saw it.

Bronski Beat.
One copy. Neon blue label.
$7.99.

I didn’t ask permission. Just grabbed it and added it to the cart when she wasn’t looking, sliding it under the frozen waffles.
She never noticed.
Or maybe she did, and just didn’t say anything.

That night, I played it on my Walkman with the door closed and the lights off.
The opening synth line pulsed through me like a heartbeat I hadn’t known was mine.

“Mother will never understand why you had to leave…”

My eyes burned.
I didn’t cry.
But I didn’t turn it off this time, either.

***

The following week, I wore the gray sweater again.
On purpose.

My hands shook when I pulled it over my head.
My stomach twisted when I walked down the hallway.

But no one said anything.
Maybe they’d moved on.
Maybe they forgot.
Maybe they were waiting.
Or maybe—just maybe—they saw that I wasn’t hiding anymore.
Not from them.
Not from myself.

***

That afternoon, I sat alone at the vending machine table again.
Brandon joined me.

He had two granola bars this time.

“I brought a backup,” he said, tossing one toward me. “Just in case you were hoping for cardboard again.”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

He looked at my sweater. “I like that color on you.”

I almost flinched. Almost froze.
But instead, I just said, “Me too.”

***

“Run away, turn away…”
That line would echo in my ears for years.

But not all running is fear.
Sometimes it’s just survival.
Sometimes it’s how you stay alive long enough to grow into who you were always going to be.