New Year’s resolutions were always something that Blaine had felt a small comfort in. It was silly, feeling like those little things you swore to do when the new year rolled around but almost no one actually did had any true meaning, but to Blaine they did.

Each year when they wrote them in English class, he wrote something down that he actually intended to do.

In second grade it was learn how to play piano.

In fourth it was to learn how to play football.

In seventh it was to learn how to play guitar.

And now in eighth, he knew what he wanted to write but wasn’t really sure if he had the courage to. It wasn’t because he was unsure of himself still, he had sorted that out ages ago, a long journey including lots of realizations in locker rooms, awkward conversations with his very straight best friend Nick about “Wow, so-and-so’s ass looks really good in those shorts,” and a few dreams with broad hands and hard lined bodies, unlike the soft curves and slender fingers his classmates would talk about, that left him with a sticky mess in his boxers and the job of not letting Cooper notice exactly why he had taken to doing his own sheets lately.

"No one but Ms. Abers would see," he thought, and made his decision. He trusted Ms. Abers, she had always been kind to him, and seemed like a rather accepting woman, so he felt like he could do it.

He carefully lifted his pen, and carefully wrote the five words on his paper, before writing his name and period in the upper right hand corner.

His New Years' resolution for eighth grade read 'Come out of the closet.'

~O~O~O~

Ms. Abers had them fold up their papers and she was about to walk around to collect them when she got called out of the classroom for a second, so she had Nick do it instead.

Nick walked around the classroom, collecting the papera, and occasionally opening one up and then making commentary on the goal, or saying an obnoxious comment like "I highly doubt the Marisa actually likes you Joseph," or "Really Carter, a piccolo?" when he finally made his way around to Blaine, Blaine's palms were sweating, and he was hoping profusely that Nick wouldn't read his.

Karma wasn't really working for him that day. As Nick unfolded the paper, he held it in front of him with a flourish, the way he had for all the other he had read previously, but after he read the five words, unlike laughing, grinning and his eyes crinkling at the corners like they always did when he laughed or teased someone, they became cold and a sneer appeared on his face and he turned to Blaine coldly.

"You're a fag Anderson?" he asked, and the class silenced instantly, and Blaine was given a wide variety of looks, from a look of disappointment on Julie's face, to looks of shock on a few of the other guys in his class, to other looks of disgust on others.

"Well are you Anderson?" Nick prompted again, and a few tear welled at the corners of Blaine's eyes, but he blinked them again hastily, but before he could respond, another guy stood, Patrick, who was sneering at Blaine with a look of disgust rivaling Nick's.

"Do you know what we do to fags Anderson?" he asked, stepping closer and taking Blaine's resolution from Nick and reading it aloud.

"My New Years' Resolution is," he began in a falsetto, "To come out of the closet," he read, and stepped closer to Blaine once again.

Luckily for Blaine Ms. Abers chose that minute to return, and as she walked into the classroom, she took in the scene going on in front of her. Two of Blaine's supposed friends standing in front of him with their hands balled in fists, a sheet of lined paper clenched in one of Patrick's and the class just staring at the scene unfolding in front of them, their expressions all in various looks of shock, and then Blaine, with tears welling in his eyes and an expression on his face that was the perfect combination of fear and horror.

"What's going on here?" she asked, and one of the girls in the back of the class, Jessica something-or-other spoke up when none of the others did, Blaine for fear of bursting into tears, and the others not sure how to respond.

"Nick just outed Blaine ma'am," she said calmly, and Ms. Abers looked around the room in shock.

"Is this true Blaine?" she asked, and Blaine nodded slowly, "Hitcherson and Grey, detention for both of you," everyone else, write down your homework," she said, not sparing a glance at Blaine.

Not a word of comfort for the boy who had just been forced out of the closet by his supposed best friend.

The same boy who would be beaten up so severely by the two boys who she had just gave a detention to the next year when he went with a boy to the dance, he was in the hospital long enough to make him repeat a year.

The same boy who would have to transfer from Thurston to Dalton so he wouldn't be scared to walk from Biology to Government.

The same boy who would be giving encouragement to another boy who would be outed  by his supposed "best friend" Nick Gray, and tried to commit suicide.

The same boy who stopped making New Years' Resolutions until he had graduated high school and was living in New York with the boy of his dreams.