Operation Sal | Sally Face x Travis Phelps

24

   As the rest of the evening waned on, the funny feeling in Travis's chest, the one that Sal had put there, had nestled into a comfortable, buzzing sensation within him, much like a purring cat, rolled into a tight ball.

    Travis did not go back to class that Tuesday. He was too afraid, or maybe too overwhelmed to entertain the idea at all. Instead, he wandered about the school as if he was lost, and maybe he was, for once, relishing the feeling of his humming, soft heartbeat. After all, Sally Face, the boy that he'd been watching for so long, the boy he'd yearned for since the beginning of freshman year liked him back, and Travis felt more peaceful than he had in a long, long time, even though his life was in shambles.

When he got home, his dad was sitting alone in the kitchen, as usual, a plain white mug of cold coffee sitting to the right of him, and lying flat on the table were various envelopes and pamphlets.

He had that same cold, callous look in his eyes, that look that made Travis want to shrivel up into a ball and disappear forever. Instead, out of common courtesy, he took a few small steps onto the linoleum kitchen floor, in his socks, "I'm home," he said, announcing it is if he thought it'd be of any importance to his father.

Kenneth's grey eyes flickered up to him in a passing glance and his brows wrinkled in horror at the sight of Travis's wrecked, flushed appearance, "For God's sake, son," he clicked his tongue, immediately turning his attention back to the tremendous stack of mail laid out before him, "you look like a mess."

Travis figured that the stress of the day hadn't quite faded from his face. He couldn't imagine how helpless and dismal he must have looked when he had been talking to Sal.

He opened his mouth to speak and then hesitated when one of the longer, pale envelopes caught his attention, laying diagonally on the table and facing toward him.

"Iowa Reverence Academy For Boys"

Travis's stomach twisted and a coiled into knots. The air in the room felt thicker than usual. Surely, Kenneth wasn't actually considering sending him off to a boarding school, was he?

Travis would be eighteen in less than two months. Could a parent still enroll a legal adult in a character-building program across the country without that person's consent? Would Kenneth's power override any rule that told him otherwise?

He tore his eyes away from the letter before his father could catch him staring at it, "I'll wash up," he said softly, stepping back. His phone felt heavy in his pocket and his heart beat harder in his chest upon his recollection of the fact that he was supposed to call Sally Face.

Kenneth gave some sort of meaningless grunt as a reply and didn't look up from the table, his rectangular reading glasses sitting low on his nose bridge.

Travis stepped into the living room and quietly grabbed the cordless home phone from the cream base it had been resting on, walking up the stairs with it.

The steps creaked under him and he purposefully tried to shift his weight onto them slowly so that they wouldn't be noisy enough to make his father angry.

Travis took a few unguided steps into his bedroom and set his backpack down haphazardly beside the doorway.

   His room was just as comfortably gloomy and grey as always, the walls and floors having a thin and distinct dust coloration overtop of them despite being clean.

   He stumbled over to the long mirror leaning against the wall, opposite where his bed stood, and he took in the sight of himself, momentarily shocked at how absolutely disheveled he looked.