Tom hugged his mother with a beautiful smile on his lips. She was leaving them for a month, to some rehabilitation station across the country, and he and his ten younger twin brother would be spending a whole month with their stepfather Gordon.

The fair and lovely woman praised them with optimism and exciting promises of bags full of candy and toys when she came back. Her problem with her back didn’t seem to worry the 9 year olds as they almost waited for the Christmas Eve all over again; and it was just 2 weeks ago at present.

Simone gave her boys a last hug and a kiss on the cheek before her brother, or sister, transsexual brother in fact; came to pick her up.

“Take care boys, be nice to your father and listen to him and go to bed when he tells you too…” she spoke in a soft tone and kissed her husband goodbye before she left them to themselves with ‘I call you when I’m there’.

Gordon smiled at them and ruffled their hair and they started to laugh.

“Daddy, stop!” Bill laughed hysterically and tried keep his short and spiky hair spiky. “You’re ruining my hair!” he explained and their guardian only snorted playfully and shoved the youngest boy who did the same back and jumped up and down on his small feet.

“Do I?” Gordon grinned and chuckled, “what do you guys want for dinner tomorrow?”

The boys thought for a moment and almost shouted at the same time ‘Lasagna!’

The man with shoulder long brown hair and ring in his ear scratched the back of his head, “Ok then, lasagna it is!” He padded into the living room with the boys in tow.

This was going to be so fun! Tom thought and jumped onto the sofa and sat beside his cool stepfather who tried to teach the young boy everything he could about guitars and playing. Of course Tom would absorb everything his stepfather said, the boys more or less hailed him, as well as he had a great influence on them which formed them, either they liked it or not.

Bill snuggled against the safe warmth of Gordon’s torso and Tom did the same thing on the other side of the man as they watched Sesamstraße on NDR.

It was so idyllic.

--

Three days later things started to get stressful and Bill got whiny in the mornings, not wanting to go to school, eating or anything in particular. This was starting to get on Gordon’s nerves Tom watched from the other side of the room their beloved stepfather yell at his little brother who did nothing wrong. Yes, he was being troublesome, but Bill always had his reasons for doing exactly what he did.

Tom could hear Gordon shout and curse furiously at Bill in the other room, and he couldn’t help but feel afraid and extremely worried for his brother. He had this feeling in his stomach that the outcome of all this won’t be any good and not just one time did it come to him that Gordon may actually hurt him. Tom didn’t want that. He loved Bill; he was his brother, his own flesh and blood.
    Tom was the older one, he was supposed to protect him and go forehand and be a good example, something Bill could and can be proud of, but instead Tom felt shitty for not knowing what to do, and he hated to feel helpless!

“I don’t know what to do Andreas…” Tom said quietly and rocked slowly back and forth on the swing. It was recess and he thought about what happened that morning, like every other mornings this past week.

The blond boy on the other swing shrugged with a grimace, and tried to get his heavy bangs out of his eyes, but failing miserably.

“I dunno Tom…” He honestly didn’t know what to do. Something told him they should tell a grown up what happened in the Kaulitz-Trümper household, but it wasn’t that easy.

“I knew I shouldn’t indoctrinate you with this…” With a soft thud Tom landed on the ball of his feet easily and looked at his friend, trying to read his best friend’s face.

Andreas gaped, “Yeah, uhm, well… Yes, of course, uhm, do you want to come home with me after school? I know mom won’t mind and you live 10 meters away from me, it won’t be much of a problem.”

Tom sighed in relief, “Yeah, I was going to ask you anyway if I could stay over.” He mused and swung his legs higher up in the air.

He’d been staying at Andreas’ every day since Simone’s departure. Not wanting to go home in the evening, but got thrown out of the house when Andreas was going to bed.

With a light nod his blond friend continued to hum on a random song and excuse himself before running to toilets, leaving Tom on the swing alone.

“Hey girl!” a boy with a broad, fat and toady face grinned. He stood right before Tom with his notorious clique of boys. Another twin couple and two others, along with a jock, with a purpose of mob and serious ravaging.

Tom cringed on the swing, placing his long legs under the tire and didn’t respond.

“Hey! I was talking to you, you know!” The boy whined and shook the swing, but Tom clung himself to it for his dear life. The others only watched emotionless, unaffected.

The skinny twin with mouse brown hair chirped, “He’s so skinny his clothes wont’ hang on him.”

The other twin smirked, “Yeah, what other boy wears long hair?” The boys laughed maniacally and hugged themselves, even shed some tears, Günther, the fat boy obviously laughing most.

“He’s not a boy, he’s a girl –and an ugly one too!” he bellowed.

Tom crouched some more and a sob escaped his rosy lips and the boys, his classmates started pull on his shoulder long honey colored hair and he cried out in pain and fought them off, but only for a moment before they found something else to victimize him with.

Tom felt small, vulnerable, shattered and lost. Broken to pieces and crumbled up inside and out. It’d been like this since they’d moved here from Leipzig. Where was Bill? Not by Tom’s side, but Tom didn’t blame him, he would rather take the shit then see his always so happy brother cry from this pain which Tom could not describe.

Everyone knew about this, the teachers, adults, even his parents, but no one seemed to care enough to help him out of it. They choose to ignore it from the very first moment Tom came home from school with a black eye in 2th grade.

He bit his lip and prayed for the bell to ring.

Protect, protect, protect, protect, you’re protecting your little brother; the mantra went on in Tom’s head. Over and over again.

It was the matter of survival.

Only the strongest lives; as Charles Darwin once said, and Tom might be only 9, but he knew that.

Tom opened his eyes when he didn’t feel any more pain from small fits and pulling on his hair. They were gone, and so were everyone else.

“The bell must have rung…” he muttered and plumped down on the ground, dirtying his jeans. He ran as fast as he could over the empty schoolyard, almost falling on the icy ground and swung open the front door and stumbled inside, gasping for air. He’d swallowed so much cold air his lungs almost collapsed, his chest felt heavy. A raspy sound found its way out of his mouth as he inhaled and exhaled.
        Tom’s legs didn’t function properly as he ran again, up the stairs and down the long corridor to he saw the familiar door to his classroom and slipped himself in unnoticed as he sat down at his desk and tried to make himself invisible. –Bill stared at him.

“Where were you…?” Bill whispered to him, the old and senile man of a teacher continued to babble about math problems.

Tom leaned in and wet his lips with his tongue.

“I-I… I uhm…”

Bill knew, but he couldn’t force himself to spill it or even think about it.

“Yeah…” was his reply, along with an assuring smile.

The teacher with the half-moon glasses down on his long nose wrote something down on the blackboard and Tom didn’t even care to take notes. He just wanted this to get over with.

“So, if we multiply 8 with 8, what do we get then?” he asked, but no one answered. After a moment or two when no one reached up their hand he sighed, “No one?”

A tiny hand found its way up in the air and waved enthusiastically.

“64! It’s 64, Mr. Schutz!” Bill replied happily and the old man beamed, jumping up and down on his toes and wrote it down on the black surface. Clearly satisfied with himself Bill rearranged everything on his desk and chewed on his pencil before taking notes and work on the exercises.

It didn’t occur to Tom how Bill could still be smiling and just pretend nothing had happened. Did he have some kind of superpowers Tom weren’t blessed with? How could this not be eating him up alive like it’d done to Tom for years now, -slowly, very slowly, but only more painful.

Günther smirked and watched Tom from afar and turned to his partners in crime. Jörgen, the football freak, came up with the brilliant idea about throwing rubber and paper at Tom with offensive words inside the crushed piece of paper.

Joachim, the oldest of the twins giggled, “You’re the smartest Jörgen!” He lent forward and pretended to be doing his work, but instead their little working team was cooking some evil plans on what to do with their favorite dummy project.

“I know, but seriously, stop giggling Jo; you’re sounding like the girl.” Jörgen snapped and wrote all of the answers down for them to copy.

Alexander nodded, “It’s true Jo; I want a bro not a sis.”

Joachim held back the urge to roll his eyes. Why did the gang have to be so incompetent?

The boss had taken Jörgen’s advice and was throwing torn paper from his book and rubber at Tom. Old Mr. Schutz was too busy helping Anika with her math problem; he didn’t seem to notice the insulting boys.

Out of 30 pupils, no one spoke up for Tom. Not even Bill who was sitting there, totally oblivious to everything happening around him.

Tom felt sick and didn’t want to be there. He wanted to disappear, yeah, that was it. He wanted to disappear from the earth or soak into a black hole in the ground, something but he didn’t want to be there –at all.
     But lately, even how much he despised school more then everything in the world, he actually preferred to be there instead of home. He almost looked forward to go to school every day and get himself beaten up and bullied until he had a mental breakdown. But that was a pain he deal with, what happening at home was a situation and a kind of pain that was new to him and worse than anything he’d experienced before. It hurt too much.

He wanted to die…

Tom shook his head, getting rid of the thought and tried to focus on the math again, but his brain didn’t seem to cooperating with him at all. It had shut itself down. He rubbed his face up and down and massaged his eyes and temples just to try to get something to do.

“Tom? Can I get the sharpener please?” Bill asked lightly and Tom did as he was told.

“Sure, you can just keep it. It’s not like have any use for it now anyway…”

Tom got another rubber in his head and he just closed his eyes.

The bell rang.

Just two hours to go and then he’ll free for 4 hours…