Читать книгу Thinking Straight - Robin Reardon - Страница 9

He strictly warned him, and immediately sent him out, and said to him, “See you say nothing to anybody, but go show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing the things which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them.”

—Mark 1:43

It’s the end of the second day. Almost. And there’s only…counting, counting…only forty more to go.

Only forty?

That’s going to seem as long to me as it must have to Noah. And for me it’ll be only forty if I’m lucky. If I behave.

I wish I knew the best approach to take. Should I play along and let them think I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, or are they smarter than I am? They’ve done this before. I haven’t. Would it be a better plan to do my damnedest—oops, not supposed to use words like that!—to get expelled, or whatever the term is?

Maybe I should look that section up again. Where the hell—more demerits—is that booklet? I mean, Booklet? Ha. It’s not like it’ll get lost in my other stuff. I mean, there ain’t no “other stuff.” I can’t have any of it here. My cell phone, my iPod, even a wire-bound notebook is forbidden. No keeping of journals here. I remember that one. But what about getting expelled?

Here’s the stupid thing. Let’s see…. Temperance. Cleanliness. Program Rules…. Ah—Violation Consequences. According to this—and I’m not making these capital letters up—my punishments can go up on a scale from Public Apologies for what I’d done wrong, to some number of SafeZone days when I can’t talk, to having to Write a Three Thousand Word Paper About My Offences, to Expulsion, to Isolation from the Group.

Isolation is worse than Expulsion? Is that what they think? Don’t they know I’m used to isolation?

Expulsion. I could do that.

But then what? Dad said it would be military school for me if I don’t finish here. I didn’t even know they still had places like that, but Dr. Strickland had all the info Dad could want.

Back to the forty days, then. And all because I was honest.

That part really kills me, you know? I mean, if I hadn’t told them they’d never have known. But they kept bugging me, and I had to keep lying. Jesus hates lies.

It was, “Taylor, why don’t you want to go to your own junior prom?”

And then when I did, it was, “Taylor, why don’t you ever ask that nice girl Rhonda out any more?”

Then when I told them Rhonda was nice but she wasn’t my type after all, it was, “Taylor, the Russells are bringing Angela when they come over for dinner tonight. Why don’t the two of you plan to go for a walk afterward?”

Then, when they’d about given up, “Taylor, isn’t there anyone you’re interested in?”

Yeah. There is. His name is Will.

So I told them. I’d tried so hard not to, ’cause I knew they’d freak. And I was still working my way through the Bible concordance, looking for all the references to homosexuality, and men lying with men, stuff like that, so none of it would surprise me. So I could arm myself.

The Bible is one thing I’m allowed to have in here, so I can continue my research. But I can’t take notes. And just reading some of those sexual references makes me think of Will.

My Will. Brown hair with spiky, bleached ends. And that impish grin, sliding up slowly from the left side of his mouth and making me wonder what he’s thinking. Leather thong around his neck, another on his wrist. Silver chain draped between front and back left pockets of his scuffed black jeans. Golden hairs on his forearms, catching sunlight. Sweet, smooth skin on the undersides of his arms. Sweeter, softer skin on his lips.

The first time I ever saw him I knew he was special. His family had moved from out-of-state just last summer, and I saw him at church first, the week before school started—my junior year. He was sitting on the other side of the center aisle, a little ahead of me, between his two younger sisters, keeping them from talking and whatever else girls do when they don’t care about causing a scene. Or when they actually want to attract everyone’s attention. They looked maybe eleven and ten, something like that, and he…well, he looked older than me, and so, so gorgeous.

I’d figured out at the end of sophomore year that I was gay. It hit me like a ton of bricks when my friend Jim and I decided to celebrate the end of school by skinny-dipping in his folks’ pool really late one night. I had stayed over, which I’d done a few times, sleeping in the other twin bed in his room. When the alarm went off a couple of hours after midnight, it was hard to get up, but he flicked on a small bedside light and swung his legs over the bed. He had nothing on. This was hardly the first time I’d seen him, but something about it being the dead of night, and the way the shadows were falling on his crotch, and maybe the fact that he’d been asleep—let’s just say I woke up pretty quick then.

We wrapped towels around our middles and tiptoed through the house, trying not to giggle and wanting to at the same time, bumping into each other with an elbow, a forearm, a shoulder. I remember being keenly aware of the terrycloth rubbing against my dick, which was getting harder by the nanosecond.

It deflated in the cold water, but then Jim and I started horsing around. And touching. And holding each other under the water. That sort of thing. Once I grabbed his dick by accident, and he laughed and pulled away. I think now that it was a nervous laugh, but not one that really meant anything. The next time I grabbed him there, it was no accident. And he didn’t laugh.

“Hey!” He tried to keep his voice a loud whisper, but he was upset. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You some kind of faggot or something?”

Think fast, Taylor…. “What’re you, crazy? It’s dark, in case you hadn’t noticed. You think I want to touch your freakin’ dick?”

It sure threw some, uh, cold water on the festivities for the night. Needless to say, I was not invited back for another overnight. And maybe needless to say—but I’ll say it anyway—what I’d felt, reaching out underwater for my friend’s penis, hoping against hope he’d reach for mine, praying against everything I’d ever been taught that we might even go on from there, stayed with me through the rest of that summer. It might not be too much to say I thought of it all the time. It was, to quote Mr. Dickens, the best of times and the worst of times. (Get it? Dickens? LOL!) A time I never want to live through again, and a time I wouldn’t give up for anything. Well, maybe for some things….

But as for my supposed friendship with Jim? Well, some friendship that turned out to be. He dropped me like I’d come down with leprosy. After that night, every time I saw him I felt like I’d put my shirt on over a sign that said UNCLEAN. Like I’d stuffed tissues into the little bell I was supposed to be ringing. You know the one? In the Bible, the bells warned the Godly when a leper was approaching. That’s what he made me feel like.

If I’m fair, though, I might have to admit that it would have been tough after that. I mean, just being friends. Imagining things from his side, it might be like he suddenly found out a person he thought he knew really well actually came from outer space. Or that I was a girl, and not a boy like him at all. Because, really, even though I’m not a girl, in one very important way I’m not a boy like him. And I wanted him the way a girl would. And since he’s not gay, that might have felt too weird to deal with.

I wish we could have gotten over that, though. I wish I hadn’t lost a friend by just being myself.

Anyway, back to that day in church. After noticing how gorgeous Will was, sitting in that pew between his two stupid sisters, what I noticed was how well he handled them. He never seemed to lose patience. Sometimes he held one sister’s hand in each of his, and sometimes he joined their hands and held them in both of his, and sometimes he wrapped an arm around each of their necks and kind of hugged them. Eventually it dawned on me that what the girls wanted wasn’t everyone’s attention. They wanted his.

And amazingly he also seemed to be paying attention to the service. Which was something I was trying to do, except he was so distracting. But it’s important to me, you know? I mean, church. God. Jesus. Sure, I swear more than I should. Sure, I do things I shouldn’t. But I love God. And I know God loves me. And seeing Will, gorgeous, a loving brother, taking God seriously—it stuck with me.

Once school started he turned up in my World History class, and I found out that he wasn’t older than me after all and that his last name was Martin. History isn’t one of my favorite subjects, but I do okay. But Will? He knew so much. He hardly ever volunteered, but one time the teacher called on him for something really obscure no one else knew, and he knew it. After that, kids started turning to him kind of facetiously whenever the teacher asked them something they didn’t know. He always kept his eyes to the front and wouldn’t say anything unless the teacher called his name, but when she did he always knew.

And then one day the question was if anyone knew something very interesting about the personal life of Richard the Lionheart of England. She called on me. I didn’t have a clue. So I turned in my seat and looked at Will. And he was looking at me. Not at the front of the room. At me.

“Taylor, are you admitting defeat?” the teacher asked, a kind of tongue-in-cheek sound to her voice. Eyes still on Will’s face, I nodded. She said, “Very well. Will, do you know this one as well?”

Still looking at me. He was still looking right at me. “He was gay.”

This brought a hoot of laughter from a few of the guys in the class. Ted, a bit of a bully who’d terrorized me in elementary school, shouted, “How do you know that, Mr. Genius? You one, too?” And he laughed louder.

In a way, this scared me. I mean, all a guy has to do is point out that some historical figure was gay, and all of a sudden the kid is, too? Would it be easy for bullies to pick me out as gay? But then I considered Ted. Socially, he was a total moron, with about as much sensitivity as a sloth, and about as smart. And he was probably looking for something—anything—to throw at Will, because Will was so obviously more interesting, and more appealing, and more intelligent than Ted. Plus, he was new. So any stone would have done, but “gay” was the one that came to his hand, and he threw it.

Will turned to look at Ted and waited patiently until the laughter subsided, waited through the teacher saying, “That’s enough, class.” He kept looking right at Ted until the room was quiet enough to hear him say, “Would you dare make fun of King Richard? He’d have carved you up with one hand tied behind his back and fed you to his dogs.”

Will turned back to the front and said nothing else, but what hung in the air unsaid was, “Don’t fuck with me. Gay or straight, don’t fuck with me.”

The teacher did what she could to smooth things over, and actually the perspective she gave on being gay so long ago was pretty cool. She went into a lot of less memorable stuff, like how Richard married to bring more land to England’s empire. But what I focused on was more personal.

She said, “Will is correct about King Richard, also known as Coeur de Lion, although the word Will used would not have been one the people of that time would have recognized. We’re talking about twelfth-century England. The word homosexual wasn’t even a word until the late nineteenth century, and the word gay came after that.

“You see, few people in the Middle Ages had the luxury of marrying for love, and most—even royalty—married out of sheer necessity. Richard himself married for his kingdom’s gain. But Richard spent almost no time with his queen, Berengaria of Navarre, and they had no children. Although he was rumored to have at least one illegitimate son, he was known to have multiple liaisons with men. Most of his time was spent fighting in the Crusades or leading battles over land in what is now France. He was the archetype of the medieval warrior king—noble and fierce—and he was known as the Lionheart because of his legendary courage.”

Take that, Ted, I was thinking. But as usual, he made a bad joke out of it. “Maybe he spent all that time fighting in battles ’cause he liked hanging out with the guys!”

Ted Tanner. Boy genius. More like AOB. Or, for anyone who doesn’t know IM lingo, Abuse Of Bandwidth. But I’m not supposed to be using that in here. In my incarceration. Another demerit, then.

After that I sometimes heard kids talk about Will and speculate, but no one—not even Ted—had the guts to say anything to him directly about it, and all of a sudden lots of girls were interested in him. Then the talk of him being gay dropped, ’cause he started spending time with these girls. So I figured he hadn’t really noticed me the way I’d hoped. But I also decided he was a terrific guy; he’d drawn the fire that day in class and had carved Ted up with one proverbial hand tied behind him.

Then one day in early November, right before a big exam in World History, I was on my way out of study hall when suddenly Will was walking next to me.

“Big test coming up. You ready for it?”

It seemed like more than a casual question, so I looked at his face. There was definitely something more there. I said, “Not sure. You?”

“Might help to study with someone. Might help both of us.” He waited.

“I suppose it might. Got something in mind?”

He came over to my house after dinner that night, and we went up to my room after I’d introduced him to my parents. They were all for studying, and they had no reason to think Will and I were all for anything other than studying.

We did study, actually. A little. Eventually. I’d never really made out with a girl before. Will, it seemed, had probably made out with lots of people. That night, for the first time, I made out with a boy. And unlike my old friend Jim, Will liked my hand on him.

And man, I wanted my hand on him. But I wasn’t gonna do anything right away, even if I’d had a real clue what to do. For one thing, I thought Will was a pretty special guy, and if he wasn’t gay, then I didn’t want to blow things the way I had with Jim. So I just walked into the room and started toward my desk. He came in behind me. And he shut the door.

I heard the click and turned, and he was just standing there with his hand still on the knob, looking at me, his head tilted a little like he was asking a question he already knew the answer to. I set down the notebook I’d just picked up, and I guess that was enough of a sign for him. He stepped right over to me, stopping when there was about an inch between us, and put his hands on my shoulders.

My arms went around him so fast, and so without any thought, that it was like some puppet master had yanked on them. It was everything I could do not to wrap my legs around him as well. There was this invisible cord pulling us together. Pulling on our mouths. Pulling on our hearts. Pulling on our…well, let’s just say we had matching lumps in our pants.

His hands came up to my face, his tongue went into my mouth, and when he started rubbing his lumpy pants crotch against mine, my knees went out from under me. He followed me to the floor, laughing softly, and then he was in my mouth again.

In romantic scenes you see, like in the movies, they often show the lovers taking each others’ clothes off, like that’s supposed to be making things more fun. But—hell, I didn’t want fun. And neither did Will. We took the short route and each unfastened our own jeans as quickly as we could. I don’t know if it comes from being a teenager, or being gay, or being a gay teenager, but I didn’t have time for a sexual tease. I just wanted sex. And, in particular, sex with Will.

Somehow he managed to reach for the box of tissues on my desk, and we needed them almost immediately. I came in his hand, and he came in mine.

I wish I could describe, better than I can, how I felt after that. All I can say is, there was some voice in the back of my head trying to tell me how evil I was, how much I was hurting my immortal soul and Will’s. It was trying to sneak in there with Bible verses about homosexuals not being able to enter the Kingdom of God. Or about how the law was made because of immoral people, like homosexuals and others who behave in ways contrary to nature. Or verses that put men lying with men in the same category as having sex with animals, or committing adultery, or sacrificing your children. But I could barely hear that voice, try as it might to break through, because of the one that was screaming, “Yes! Oh God oh God oh God. Yes!”

I think if the verses had been right, and some bolt of lightning had come down at that moment and killed both of us, the hell we’d have been sent to wouldn’t have been worse than living a life in which what we had just felt was wrong.

We lay there breathless for a few minutes, and my eyes were still closed when I felt Will sit up. At first I was sad; I didn’t want this to be over. When I opened my eyes he was only half sitting, leaning on an elbow, smiling at me.

He said, “You were a virgin, weren’t you?”

I could have lied, I suppose. I mean, on the one hand, that term can imply virtue, and strictly speaking it means that a girl is still intact, if you know what I mean. On the other, when you’re called a virgin, it can make you feel ignorant and maybe even undesirable; and girl or not, nobody had just been inside me. But there was nothing of any of that in Will’s voice. Just affection. So I grinned and nodded. And he kissed me. Softly this time. So, so sweet. And then more intensely. And then…Oh thanks be to God, it wasn’t over.

I could probably have stayed there for hours with him, just lying on the floor, taking turns massaging each other into ecstasies. But that night we limited ourselves to two ecstasies each.

Afterward, sitting up and leaning against the bed, and holding hands, I asked, “When did you first notice me?”

He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and grinned. “You kept staring at me in church one day last summer.”

I’m sure I blushed. “How did you know? You were closer to the front.”

“I knew.” The tone of his voice made it seem like it was something that was meant to be. Like fate.

Whether he intended that or not, I didn’t question him. I changed the subject to something related. “I loved it that day you put Ted Tanner in his place.”

“Ted? What did I do to Ted?”

“He laughed when you said Richard the Lionheart was gay. And you—”

“Ah, yes. Ted. WAI.” He turned his head and looked at me.

I knew this was a kind of test: did I know IM lingo as well as he did? I knew enough to respond to that. I said, “Yeah. What An Idiot. That’s for sure. PONA.” This was my test. Did he know this one? It means Person Of No Account.

Will laughed. “No account at all.”

Yes! This was going to be an amazing year. “How come you know so much about history?”

“It’s always been really interesting to me. I like seeing how little people have changed. You can go back one year, fifty, seven hundred—and people have the same reasons why they do things. It’s true the ways they go about getting what they want can change, and maybe society at one point in history makes us believe something is important that another society doesn’t even believe in, but people are predictable. It’s what’s underneath that’s interesting. The why. What drives us.”

He sat up a little. “You know what I’d really love to do? After college? Maybe after grad school, too. I want to write. I’m going to write historical fiction, about us. About guys like us, anyway. One book might be what it was like for Richard to be gay in twelfth-century England. Another could be about a gay man’s life in ancient Egypt. Or during the French Revolution. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

His face was almost shining, and I felt like he’d given me some special gift, telling me that. I got up and planted my knees on either side of his thighs. “That would be totally cool.” And I kissed him. And he kneaded my ass.

The feeling I had was like I’d been given another gift, too. Only this one was from God. Because only from God could there come a feeling as wonderful as this.

We spent some time, maybe half an hour, reviewing material for the test. But it was a history test, after all, and Will hardly needed to work. So really it was more like he was helping me study. But even though his perspective on things was more interesting than any I’d thought of, my mind was on other things. I couldn’t help asking him about the girls he’d been seeing.

He shrugged. “It’s just study sessions. And I don’t mean like the one you and I are having. I don’t ask them out on dates, though. I won’t lie. I just don’t feel the need to give anyone a direct response to personal questions unless I feel like it.” He kissed me. “With you, I feel like it.”

“Why?” It was out before I knew it.

“Why what?”

“Why me?” I’d been wondering this ever since study hall, ever since he’d asked about getting together with me for anything.

He cocked his head at me, a question in his eyes. “Why would you ask that? Don’t you know how sexy you are?” I just blinked. Well, I guess I must have shaken my head, too, because then he said, “You don’t worry about those other idiots.” He pushed me down onto the floor on my back, his hands propped on either side of my head. He kissed me again. “It’s just who you are, Ty. You’re your own person. It’s a kind of self-confidence.”

The funny thing was, that’s exactly what had attracted me to him. Other than the fact that he’s gorgeous. Self-confidence in someone is seductive, you know? Makes you want to be with that person. Makes you want that person to call you a special name. Like Ty. No one had ever called me that before. I decided not to call attention to it, just to cherish it.

What I said instead was, “But I’ve never thought of myself as self-confident. That’s you, not me.” And it’s true. If I seem not to care about whether I’m in a clique, or a group, it’s because I don’t want anyone to figure out what I really want. I don’t want to make the same mistake I made with Jim. It’s isolation more than self-confidence. But maybe the two have some things in common.

Will gave me another kiss, and I thought, I could get used to this. Then he said, “Truth is, self-confident people are attracted to self-confident people. We feel comfortable with each other. We understand each other.” He pulled away, but he was smiling.

I sat up again and said, “But wouldn’t it make more sense for someone who’s self-confident and someone who needs that in someone else to pair up?”

He shook his head. “That happens, sure. But usually it’s not really self-confidence. It’s more likely to be arrogance. And that person actually wants to be with someone who’s less confident, so they have the upper hand. They may not take unfair advantage, but they know they’ve got it.” He reached out a hand and lifted my chin just for a second. “And if there’s one thing you are not, Taylor Adams, it’s arrogant.”

“And are you?”

“Can’t be, if I’m attracted to you.”

I looked at him out of the corners of my eyes. “I think you might be, just a little.”

That’s the first time I remember him flashing that lopsided grin at me. That grin that makes me smile back, that pulls pleasantly on my dick. “Well, maybe just a little.”

I have to stop this. He’s not here now, is he, Ty? You’re trapped in this place, and he’s out there. Christ!

I have to stop thinking about Will kissing me, touching me, even just grinning at me, or I’ll have to report it in my MI.

Ha! Like I’m going to report anything important. Morality Inventory? How can anyone take an inventory of morality? It ought to be Immorality Inventory. That’s what they want to hear about.

It’s in this Booklet someplace. I’m supposed to be memorizing this stuff, but…here it is. I’m to write up any struggles, thoughts, or temptations that have to do with sex, drugs, violence, or disobedience. Step One clients must complete four MIs per week unless otherwise instructed.

That’s me. Step One. In the Program under four weeks. It goes all the way up to Step Three—in the Program eight or more weeks. Eight weeks! And I’m praying to get out in six. Hell, just to survive for six!

Demerit.

If only they’d freakin’ let me talk to someone! I feel like I’m going insane. They call this SafeZone, but it feels downright dangerous to me. My roommate, Charles, Step Two, has been here five weeks now. He can talk. I can talk after tomorrow, but not until then. I hate how sanctimonious Charles is. Seems. I’m not sure anyone is what they seem to be in here.

He was called to the office on Sunday, the day my folks brought me here, just after the program director, Dr. Strickland, read me the riot act. Strickland sat under that all-too-realistic crucifix on the wall behind his desk and kept looking at me over the tops of his eyeglasses, I guess to make sure I was listening. Or maybe to see if there was a devil whispering into my ear.

“We’re not going to talk about the reasons your parents have brought you here, Taylor.”

I tried to look into his piggy eyes so he’d think I was following him, but that crucifix kept screaming at me: Look! Look at me! You think you’re suffering?

My dad was listening, though. He boomed, “What do you mean, we won’t talk about that? It has to be addressed!” He sat forward on his chair, the last strings of hair still attached to the front of his scalp flopping around. He swiped at them distractedly with one hand.

I’ll give Strickland this: he spoke only to me. He didn’t try to calm Dad down, didn’t get defensive, didn’t even turn toward my folks. Looking at me still, he said, “You’ll meet other residents whose sins are the same as yours, and others whose sins are different. The important thing is not what the sin is. The important thing is that it is sin. Your entry into this Program represents a clean slate for you. It’s a chance to start over, to be born new into the Church, into God’s ways. When you leave this office, your roommate, Charles, will give you an orientation and then take you to the chapel, and Reverend Bartle will pray with you and cleanse you. You’ll stay there with him until your sins are forgiven. Only then will you be ready for the Program here at Straight to God.”

Dad sat back with a thud, arms crossed over his chest. He’d probably been hoping they’d give me thirty-nine lashes or something. You remember the thirty-nine lashes? The Old Testament says that you aren’t supposed to actually kill anyone with a whip, just hurt them really bad. They figured that for the average guy, forty should be the max. But the Jewish lawmakers wanted to be really sure they never overstepped the limits; after all, forty-one might kill somebody, right? Where forty wouldn’t? Sticklers. Anyway, to make sure they never went beyond merely getting the guy to wish he were dead, they always counted to thirty-nine and stopped. And I figured that would be my fate here. They’d only make me wish they’d go ahead and put me out of my misery, but they wouldn’t actually do it.

Strickland went over the Program Rules. All of them. My folks were following along in the Booklet (not to be confused with the Book, you understand), or at least my mom was, and we read through everything in painful detail. He told me that as soon as Reverend Bartle was done with me (not his words), I would be in SafeZone, which would mean I wasn’t allowed to speak. With anyone. For anything. For Three Fucking Days.

And then he reached into the file cabinet behind his desk and pulled out, of all things, a digital camera. I was clueless and just sat there, arms crossed on my chest, a look on my face that basically said, “Do your worst, all of you. And fuck off while you’re at it.” My nothing brown hair was falling in that stupid curl just a little left of center on my forehead, my eyes were clouded with repressed fury, and the crooked part of my nose—from when I fell out of a tree when I was ten, and the spot Will likes to lick—offset the curl. I know this because I’ve seen the photo. But more on that later.

I couldn’t wait for my folks to get out of there. But when they finally stood up to leave, I panicked. I felt like I couldn’t get enough air, and I wanted to scream. Mom hugged me and I leaned over so I could rest my head on her shoulder, wondering when she had gotten shorter, and I inhaled the smell of her perfume. When she let go, Dad just nodded at me and took her arm. She looked back at me as she went through the door, her sweet face so sad, and I had to hang onto the back of my chair to keep from running after them.

They were leaving me in this prison!

Strickland picked up his phone and spoke to someone about sending Charles in to get me. Then he said, “Do you have any questions, Taylor?”

I tried not to shake as I sat down again. There was one thing I was dying to ask: How many other kids here are in for the same thing as me? How many other queers do you have?

I took a deep breath and asked the only thing I could think of that he was likely to answer. “What’s SafeZone supposed to do for me?”

He could almost have closed his eyes and taken a nap, his response seemed that memorized. “SafeZone provides residents with an opportunity to maintain an internal focus while remaining physically present in an environment designed for their enlightenment.” He stopped there. I waited for him to go on, ’cause that didn’t really tell me anything, but he gave me this half-smile that didn’t affect any other part of his face, like he was done. Like I was expected to know what the hell that canned statement meant. Then he said, “Other questions?”

I shook my head. MWBRL. I mean, More Will Be Revealed Later. Isn’t that what the Bible says? Though I had my doubts about getting an answer to the SafeZone question.

We sat there in silence, him pretending to read something on his desk, me trying not to stare at the crucifix and clenching my hands so hard my knuckles were white, until someone knocked on the frame of the open office door.

“Ah, Charles. Come in. I want you to meet Taylor Adams, your new roommate. Taylor, this is Charles Courtney. Charles will show you around the facility, where the meeting rooms are, the dining hall, bathrooms, laundry room, library—everything. And then he’ll take you to the chapel, as I mentioned earlier. Are you ready?”

Was I ready? I was ready, but not for what he meant. I was ready to run screaming from the place. Bad enough I’d be trapped here for six weeks minimum, but to have to deal with Charles Courtney was adding insult to injury. He was maybe seventeen, a year older than me, tall, so clean-cut he looked artificial. Light brown hair at what was certainly the perfect length for this place, thin nose, pale brown eyes, and no lips. Oh, and his nose sat a little high in the air. Kind of an Aryan android.

He smiled, or did something he meant to pass as a smile, and his thin lips got even thinner. “Taylor. Welcome.” He held his hand out and I had little choice but to stand and shake it. Then he turned to Strickland. “Sir, if Taylor is ready, we’ll leave you now.”

“Taylor, I’ll see you in a few days—when you’re out of SafeZone—for our first talk. God bless you.”

Yeah. Gesundheit to you, too.

The first place Charles showed me was the laundry room, following a map of the place that he gave me.

“This will be your first work assignment,” he told me. “They’ll show you what to do. It’s the first one because it’s pretty straightforward work and there won’t be any need for you to speak. You’ll be here for a week.”

He looked like he expected me to say something, but I was practicing. Practicing not speaking. Wouldn’t do to fail at SafeZone, would it?

Dining hall was next. “If you’re lucky, Reverend Bartle will release you in time for you to get something to eat. You might need to get here as quickly as you can or you’ll miss dinner. I’ll keep an eye out for you.” To which I was dying to respond, Don’t do me any favors.

We went through the meeting rooms, starting with a really huge space that had nothing in it. “After dinner we’ll come to this room for Fellowship, for around half an hour, and then we’ll have an evening Prayer Meeting. We don’t always have one on Sundays, but this week we do.”

Fellowship? Well, I couldn’t participate in that; how can you have Fellowship with people you don’t even know if you can’t talk? Now, Fellowship with Will—that I could do with very little talking. But Charles didn’t give me time to dwell on any images.

The meeting rooms, where Charles said our evening Prayer Meetings would take place, all had names from the Old Testament. He stood proudly in front of the one named Isaiah.

“This one is ours. We meet here after Fellowship.”

Then he led the way past Ezekiel, Obadiah, Esther, Daniel, Ruth, and Malachi (I kind of liked that one) to the boys’ wing, pointing down the hall toward the girls’ rooms as we passed it. “We’re not to go into the girls’ wing under any circumstances.”

No worries.

Before going to the chapel, Charles took me to the bathroom. There were no urinals, just stalls with doors only halfway up so you could see the back of anyone standing in there, and probably the face of anyone sitting down.

“I don’t need to piss,” I told Charles, which was true, but mostly I didn’t want him standing there watching the back of my head while I took a leak.

“Maybe not now,” he said, a warning in his tone, “but you won’t get another chance for a while.”

I shrugged and went into a stall, unzipped, and let go of the little there was. What I was really feeling was like I needed to take a shit. My intestines were churning, and when that happens I usually get diarrhea. But I was damned if I would do that with him standing there.

I left the booth and headed toward the door, but Charles stopped me. “We always wash our hands here, Taylor.”

I looked at him like he had three heads, but he just gestured toward the sinks. I thought of flipping him the finger but decided it wasn’t worth it. There would be more important things to lock horns over.

The chapel was pretty spartan. White paint everywhere, and not much in the way of amenities. No cushions in sight. And there was this humongous cross that had to have been designed for a bigger space hanging in the middle of the room, suspended from the ceiling. Reverend Bartle was kneeling in front of the altar, head bowed over folded hands, and he didn’t look up when we came in. I expected Charles to say something, but he just stood at the back, hands folded in front of him (hiding an erection, Charles?), waiting. Finally Reverend Bartle stood up slowly and turned toward us.

“Ah, boys. Come forward, please.”

I’d met Reverend Bartle once before, when my folks had driven me up to see the place. It had been a grueling forty-minute trip, with me sulking in the backseat, terrified and frantically searching my brain for ways to convince my parents that this was a bad idea. When I met him, Reverend Bartle had seemed—well, fatherly, I guess, in a religious kind of way. Maybe patronizing is closer. Tall, with white hair and sharp eyes. They were probably blue, but they seemed almost metallic.

Things had happened pretty quickly once my dad decided it was going to be Straight to God for me. And here I’d been looking forward to the best summer of my life, spending as much time as possible with Will. We’d been a kind of secret item all through the school year. Sometimes it was super hard not to sit with him when we were in the same class, not to hold hands every chance we got, not to go out on real dates. Hell, I even wished we could have gone to junior prom together. Wouldn’t that have turned some heads? But we didn’t need dates. We just needed to be together.

So summer was going to be a special time for us as a couple. Until I was practically forced to confess my “sin.” To tell my folks I’m gay.

It was their own fault, actually. Pestering me about girls. I’d taken stupid Rhonda to the prom when they made it obvious they weren’t going to stop poking at me until I did, but that wasn’t enough for them. It was kind of like, now that I’d taken her out, all of a sudden they noticed I didn’t take any other girls out. So when they failed with Rhonda, they tried with Angela. The night she and her folks came over to dinner, my mom arranged things so we sat next to each other. That was bad enough, but then—true to their threat—they practically shoved us out the front door for our walk, while the four parents sat around drinking coffee and no doubt talking about how sweet it would be if these two kids “got together.” The Russells, Angela’s whole family, went to our church, too. So it would be that much more wonderful. YR. Sorry: Yeah Right.

So I went with Angela—who was actually a pretty nice girl—out for our forced march. It would have been awkward even if I’d been interested in her, because both of us knew our folks had set this up, and there were expectations. To her credit, and although it took about two minutes, she was the one who broke the ice.

“Feels pretty weird, getting shoved out the door like that, doesn’t it.” Not a question.

“Weird? How about retarded?”

She laughed. It was a pretty laugh, and I got a little worried. Was she interested in me and just trying to put me at ease so I’d feel like I could make a move? I risked looking at her.

She stopped walking. “You hate this, don’t you.” Also not a question. “I’m not happy about it, either. I mean, I like you, Taylor. You seem like a nice guy. And maybe that’s why I’m going to trust you with something. Is that okay?”

“Trust me?”

“With a secret. Because I think you deserve to know. Especially if you ever thought that we, you know, might come to something. So…is it okay?”

I shrugged. “I guess so.” I could floor her with a secret of my own, but I wasn’t sure she deserved to know mine. She turned and started walking again, and I fell into step.

“I have a boyfriend. Well, I can’t really call him that. Not in front of anyone. My parents don’t want me to see him. That’s why they want us—you and me—to get together. They think I’ll forget about him.”

Wow. We have something in common, Angela and I, besides meddling parents. “Why not?”

“He’s not saved. And he doesn’t want to be. His parents are freethinkers.”

It was my turn to stop dead in my tracks. “Atheists?” The idea that there were people who didn’t believe in God had always been a startling one to me. Sure, I knew they were out there, but I didn’t talk to them. I’d heard only terrible things about them.

“No, they’re not atheists, exactly. They would say they’re god-centered, but they wouldn’t capitalize god in writing. They believe in rational approach. To everything.” She kind of giggled. “Danny says—that’s my boyfriend—he says that when you don’t have to make sense, you can say anything at all!”

“What does that mean, not making sense?”

“Think about it, Taylor. How many times have you been told something that made no sense at all, but the church insists you take it on faith?”

I got the concept, all right—like, why would God make me gay and then tell me it’s a sin to be gay? But the freethinkers were confusing me. “I don’t get it. They have no religion, but they sort of believe in God, but they don’t believe in faith?”

“No, no, they have faith. It’s just much more—I don’t know, more free-form. So they don’t have a scripture they follow. And they don’t go to any church.”

“Wait. How can you have faith and not have a religion?”

“Well, Taylor, they aren’t the same thing. A religion is just a specific way of applying faith.”

This didn’t synch up with anything I’d ever heard before. I started shaking my head, sure she was just repeating pat phrases she’d heard from this Danny character.

Angela must have decided we’d gotten too far off the track she wanted to be on. “Anyway, what I’m saying is, I can’t be interested in you. And since you’re a nice boy, it seemed unfair to lead you on, in case…you know.”

“Okay. Thanks.” And I moved forward again.

For the next minute or so of our walk, I was going round and round in my head about whether I could tell her about me. In the end, I approached it a little sideways.

“So, Danny’s parents. What would they say about homosexuality?”

“Oh that. Such a fuss. There are so many things in the Bible that we ignore, and everybody seems to make their own decisions about what things those ought to be. Danny’s folks would just say, Who cares? As long as people aren’t hurting each other—and it doesn’t hurt you if someone else is gay, does it?—then leave the gays alone.” I guess I was quiet too long, and she said, “That upsets you, doesn’t it? I’m sorry. That must sound like sacrilege to you. I just get so into these discussions with Danny. His parents have always encouraged him to question everything—”

“No, that’s not it.” But that’s as far as I got before I froze.

“What is it, then?” She stopped walking. Again. I stopped and turned toward her. “Oh my God, you’re gay! Taylor, are you gay?”

Well, that got me moving again. “Will you be quiet? Is there anyone on the street who didn’t just hear you say that?”

“Taylor, I was practically whispering. You barely heard me. I’m right, aren’t I? This is so cool! I don’t think I know anybody who’s gay. Except you, of course.”

“Oh yes you do.”

“Who? Tell me!”

“No way. I’d never tell that about anyone else. Especially given how everyone in church feels about it.” Which reminded me I hadn’t extracted any promises. “So, you wouldn’t, like, tell anyone, would you?”

“Oh, Taylor, of course not. You’d be crucified. And besides, you have my secret, too.”

She took my hand. It was a weird moment. But she held it most of the way back to the house, and it felt a lot less weird by then and a lot more like friendship.

So it’s kind of ironic that it was Angela who outed me to my folks. Not directly; she didn’t do anything wrong. But after the Russells left that night, there was all this pressure from my folks to tell them how much I liked her.

“She’s great. A real sweet girl. We had a nice walk.”

Mom asked, “So do you think you’ll see her again? Will you ask her out on a date?”

I felt like there was a bat in the room. You know how they fly? Sort of all over the place, and it’s impossible to know how to duck to avoid them. All I could say was, “Maybe sometime.”

“Sometime?” Dad bellowed. “Sometime? Taylor, there’s nothing wrong with the girl, is there? She’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s Christian,” by which he meant our kind of Christian, “she’s polite, her parents are fine people—what more could you want in a girl?”

“Nothing, I guess.” I headed for the stairs, hoping to make it up to my room and bring this inquisition to an end. But no. Dad was right behind me, with Mom behind him; he had more to say, and he wasn’t letting me avoid it.

“Do you have any idea how rude that is? How inconsiderate? To make a girl think you like her and then leave her hanging like that?”

I wheeled, nearly ducking to avoid that bat in the air. “Look, I’m not the one who suggested this little get-together, so she doesn’t have any reason to think I’m interested in her that way. If anyone has led her on, it’s you.” I stood there, my back to the stairs and relative safety, my folks in front of me and looking about as sad and confused as I’d ever seen them. Into the silence, I said, “So I want both of you to stop pestering me about asking girls out. I have to do what’s right for me.”

Almost whining, my mom asked, “Taylor, isn’t there anyone you’re interested in?”

I took a breath. Then another. I clenched my hands into fists, balling up the fabric of my pants. I released the fabric. Gathered it again. I ground my teeth.

“Yeah. There is.”

Mom stepped forward, and maybe the look on my face was what made her afraid, but she was afraid. I contemplated telling her I was in love with a girl whose parents were freethinkers. That might actually be better than the truth, as far as they were concerned.

Mom said, “Who is she?”

I opened my mouth and closed it a few times, thinking it was really too bad Angela and I hadn’t been smart enough to set up a conspiracy. I would pretend to my folks that we were going out, and she could pretend to hers. But there’s that thing about lying. I bet even freethinkers believe that’s wrong. Time for the truth. So I said, “It’s not a she, Mom. I’m gay.”

They both stepped back, and then Dad lunged for me. He grabbed my arm before I could duck and dragged me into the living room, practically throwing me onto the sofa. I stood back up as he turned to start pacing around the room. Out of the corner of my eye—I didn’t dare not watch Dad—I saw Mom kind of sink into a wing chair.

Dad wheeled on me, and I nearly fell back onto the sofa. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again! Do you hear me? You’re talking Satan. You’re talking Hell. You’re talking about your immortal soul. And I won’t have you disgracing this family!”

Maybe if he hadn’t said that last bit, about the family, I would have just let him rant and rave. But it was too much for me. “Oh, we can’t have that, can we? Family disgrace. You know, God made me who I am. It’s between me and God.”

Dad’s voice got quiet. Hard. “I’ll tell you what’s between you and God. Satan is between you and God right now. So don’t pretend you know what you’re talking about, because right now you’re just Satan’s mouthpiece.”

“I do so know what I’m talking about!” My voice was nowhere near as calm as his. But I had more to lose. “I’ve spent a lot of time this year thinking about this, praying about this, and reading the Bible about this. I know where Satan is. And he’s not standing between me and God.”

Dad marched around the living room, kicking aside a small table that got in his way. He’s got a bit of a temper, so despite the comical look of the wispy hair strings on top of his head when he moves around, it’s a bad idea to get him riled.

Too late to avoid that, though.

“You’ve done it already, haven’t you? You’ve been active. You’ve committed sodomy.”

My mind went two different places when he said that. One was to Will. Not that I pictured the act, but that I didn’t want my parents to do that. If I said yes now, they’d want to know who was with me. I didn’t want to give Will to them. Plus I didn’t want them to say I couldn’t see him again.

The other place was the word itself. Sodomy. If you read the Bible carefully, the people of Sodom committed all kinds of sin. It wasn’t just a matter of men having sex with men. They were greedy, and they proved frequently that they were without mercy. And Abram’s nephew, Lot, lived there; why? And when two angels—who were always men, of course—came as guests to Lot’s house and some local guys wanted to have sex with them, do you know what Lot did? He offered instead his two virgin daughters! Talk about abomination. But my point is, sodomy means just one thing today, but the original meaning was more than that. So had I committed sodomy? Not biblically. Not in all its aspects.

So for at least two very different reasons, I said, “No. You’re wrong.”

He stopped and stared at me, looking triumphant. “Then you really don’t know anything about it.” He walked over to where Mom was still sitting in the chair and put his hand on her shoulder, I guess to set up something like a wall of intervention. Solidarity against me. “Then I know what to do. We’ll all go, the three of us, and talk with Reverend Douglas. He’ll know what steps to take. In the meantime, young man, you should consider yourself grounded. We can’t take any chances.”

And as if that settled it, he nodded in my general direction and said to Mom, “I’m going to read the last section of the paper.” And he plunked himself down into his recliner.

I stood there feeling like the spaceship I’d arrived on had taken off toward home without me. Mom got up kind of suddenly and disappeared, and I skulked off to my bedroom, fighting the urge to call Will, terrified that if either of them found out I was talking to him they’d figure out who he was to me.

So Dad made the decision of what was gonna happen next, like he was the only one who needed to be consulted, and Mom disappeared. Which left me—where? Sometimes the weirdest part of a confrontation is what happens right afterward. It’s like no one’s on the same terms they were on with anyone before it happened, and there’s all this psychological dancing that goes on as everyone tries to find out what the new boundaries are. I was feeling a powerful need to set some new boundaries, starting with my mom.

Practically tiptoeing so my dad wouldn’t know I was anywhere near, I moved through the house toward the laundry room. I figured that’s where Mom would be; it’s where she goes when she’s upset.

And sure enough, the door was shut, and I could hear her quietly crying in there. I knocked once and opened it, and she was standing in front of the ironing board ripping an old pair of my pajamas into rags. Therapeutic, I suppose. She dropped all of it when she saw me and wrapped herself around me, crying harder, calling my name between sobs.

“It’s okay, Mom. Really. I’m fine.”

“Oh, Taylor!” was all she said for a while, until she let me go so she could blow her nose. Then, “Your father is so upset. I don’t know what he’ll do. Why does it have to be like this? Why do you…” She kind of fizzled out and blew her nose again.

“Mom, I don’t know what else I can tell you. This is who I am. It’s not something I chose, just like being who you are isn’t something you chose.”

“But Taylor, it’s a sin!”

“We’re all sinners, Mom.”

“But you’re choosing to sin!”

“No. You aren’t listening. I didn’t choose this, any more than I chose brown hair or what day I was born on. I can’t change my birthday, and I can’t change the color of my hair—not really, and I can’t change this.”

“But…you’re our only child.” She raised her arms into the air and let them flop down again, helpless.

“And that means what, exactly? That you don’t get another chance to do it right?”

I must have shouted. I probably sounded like Dad. She sort of squeaked, “It means we won’t have grandchildren.”

I let out a tired breath. “Mom, I don’t know why I’m gay. I don’t know if God made me like this to test me, or to test you and Dad, or if there’s some other reason, but it’s who God made me. Do you think I haven’t prayed about this? Do you think I haven’t asked God why?”

She perked up a little. “Have you talked to Reverend Douglas already? Why didn’t you tell your father? What did the reverend say?”

Well, no, I told her, I hadn’t talked to Reverend Douglas.

He’d been our pastor for my whole life, and even before my dad dragged us in to see him, I already knew where he stood on this issue so near and dear to my heart.

Mom and I talked a little longer, but just so we could both calm down some. We didn’t really get anywhere.

The meeting with Reverend Douglas went about like you’d expect. He came out of his office all smiles and sweetness and light.

“What a pleasure! I’m delighted to see all of you.” He turned to me. “Taylor, your father tells me you’re feeling troubled. Why don’t you and I go into my office and talk about it?”

I could give him about seventeen reasons why not. But at least we were leaving my folks out here. I followed him in and sat in the chair across from his desk. I guess this is my year for sitting across desks from sanctimonious homophobes.

“So, Taylor, what seems to be the trouble?”

“Actually, I’m not having any trouble. It’s my dad who has a problem.”

“What problem is that?”

“He thinks I’m confused.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I’m gay. I’m not confused.”

Just a slight twinge. But then, I was watching for it, so maybe I imagined it. “There’s not much difference between the two at this stage. Your father tells me you haven’t yet engaged in fornication, so we’re catching things early. Confusion can be cleared more easily if sin has not yet occurred.” When I didn’t reply to his last volley, he said, “Is what your father told me correct? You haven’t yet fornicated?”

I ground my teeth. He could mean almost anything. “I’m not sure I know what you’re asking me. What do you mean by fornicated?”

“Fornication, strictly speaking, is sex outside of marriage. For our purposes, it indicates sexual intercourse that has not been blessed by God.”

“If I had fornicated with a girl, would that be okay?”

“Of course not, as you know very well. You’re no stranger to God’s laws. But because you’re saying that you’re homosexual, the most likely fornication would have been with another boy, or a man. Has that happened?”

I took a breath and tried to think while I let it out. He was being very patient, which meant I wasn’t likely to get out of this quickly. And I didn’t. I won’t go into all the back and forth with scriptural references, and me clenching my hands into fists to stop myself from trying to argue with him, because arguing would mean making this take even longer. It’s enough to say that he got more out of me than my dad had managed.

“There’s a program that’s designed for teenagers with problems. It’s called Straight to God. Have you heard of it?”

Oh God. Oh God. Please stop him. Please let the heavens open and—well, the guy doesn’t have to die or anything, but can’t you stop him from saying any more?

“They’re associated with our church only loosely, but they hold similar views when it comes to the importance of right behavior and how to reinforce it in troubled youth. The program can be especially helpful for boys like you, who are already trying their best to abide by God’s laws in every other respect. I’m going to recommend that you spend some time there this summer, Taylor.”

Trying to keep my voice calm, I asked, “So what do you expect them to do? Pray part of who I am out of me?”

“The confusion I mentioned earlier is causing you to think you’re something you’re not. Homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and there’s no way he would have made you that way. Satan is responsible for this, but you are responsible for casting him out. Straight to God will help you do that.”

“Wait. So you’re telling me God let Satan plant something in me that God didn’t want there? I thought God was all-powerful. Is Satan stronger? Is that what you’re saying?” I knew this would get me nowhere, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“Taylor, God gave man free will. Something in your heart became weakened, perhaps by the godless influences around us all the time, and Satan took advantage of that. He tempted you, and through your free will you accepted what he offered. Because this can happen only when you’re weak, you need the power of specialists to help you. Straight to God is where you will find them. It’s where you will find the path back from sin.” He handed me a pamphlet, and I took it with a shaky hand.

My head felt like it was going to explode. Christ! Am I really this helpless? Is there really nothing I can do? My only hope was that my folks wouldn’t agree. And that’s where my next prayer went, since the heavens-opening idea had been rejected.

During dinner that night I said absolutely nothing. I didn’t trust myself. But afterward Dad dragged me into the living room. To talk about what he was going to do to me. Or, what Straight to God was going to do.

“Your mother and I have decided to take Reverend Douglas’s recommendation, Taylor. This Saturday, we will all drive up to look at the place and enroll you, and a week after that you’ll start the program.”

I’d had enough of helplessness. I exploded. “You’ve got to be kidding! You’re out of your mind! I won’t go. You can’t make me. And you can’t make me straight, you know.”

“You will go. And I don’t have to make you straight, because you aren’t crooked. What you need is God’s help so you can understand that you’re confused.”

Confused was one thing I was not. “That’s bullshit!”

“Taylor!”

“I mean it, Dad. That’s crap. I know exactly who I am.”

“You don’t know anything. You’re still a child.” I opened my mouth to yell again, but he took a step toward me. “Don’t you talk back to me or this will be worse. How do you think you’d enjoy attending a military academy?” I stepped back, dumbstruck. WTF? “So you have a choice to make, young man. Six weeks, minimum, depending on how well you do, at Straight to God. Or it’s military school in the fall.” He started to turn away from me like that was the end, but then he turned back and added, “And in either case, young man, you’re to consider yourself grounded until further notice.”

I felt nearly hysterical. Ridiculously, what flashed through my head was a series of images of King Richard on a crusade, sent to the Holy Land to fight the infidels and, while he was at it, to purge the devil that made him want men, and all the time he was surrounded by men. Made that idiot Ted Tanner’s comment a little less idiotic. I came so close to pointing out to my father that he’d be sending me to a place where all feminine wiles would be missing and I’d have lots of boys to choose from, but something stopped me—probably the fear that he’d be so furious he’d send me there anyway, out of spite. And if I couldn’t be with Will all summer, then I sure as hell wasn’t gonna let him be out of reach all next year on top of that.

I needed to kick something. Desperately. Maybe I was grounded, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t go into the backyard. So I headed for this big old maple tree that grows near the house, the one I’d broken my nose falling out of. I can see it from my bedroom window, and I’d always felt like it knew everything that was going on. So I knew it would understand. I kicked it till my feet hurt.

When I got up to my room, things looked different on my desk. Like someone had been here, searching. But—for what? Gay porn?

Then it hit me. If I was grounded, I couldn’t use my cell phone. I dived for where I’d left it. Gone.

I pounded on anything that wouldn’t make too much noise. I screamed into my pillow. Eventually I calmed down and sank onto the floor, right where Will and I had sat that first night we kissed. Touched. Loved. Fighting tears, I relived my interview with Reverend Douglas, trying to come up with arguments that countered his insistence that this wasn’t real. That I wasn’t real. I kept hearing Angela’s words, quoting her freethinking boyfriend: if you don’t have to make sense, you can say anything you want. The problem was twofold. Angela was quoting people who didn’t even capitalize the word God. And what Reverend Douglas had said made a certain amount of sense. He almost had me wondering if maybe I had allowed Satan in.

But then I thought of Will. And Will was no Satan, and this love was from God. It had to be. Reverend Douglas was wrong. After all, he wasn’t infallible. God did make me who I am, and he made Will who he is. Just thinking of Will, though, made me cry.

The worst thing in the short term was that I was, like, totally grounded. Which meant I could spend my time reading only the things they approved of. No phone calls, no computer time, no visits from friends—my folks would be suspicious of everyone male, maybe because I hadn’t told them about Will specifically—so I was losing my mind trying to figure out how to let Will know what was happening to me. I cried myself to sleep that night, and just before I fell asleep it came to me.

That Sunday, in church, I slipped a note for Will to one of his sisters. I watched as he read it, and when he looked over at me from way too far away, the look on his face nearly made me burst into tears on the spot.

And now I was here for real. My sentence had begun. The reverend was waiting.

Charles moved forward, and I followed. Wasn’t much else I could do. Reverend Bartle looked right at me, but he said, “Thank you, Charles. You can leave your charge with me now.” He held an arm toward me, and I tried to avoid his open hand as I moved forward. I didn’t want him to touch me. But he grabbed my neck, squeezed it until it almost hurt, and then stroked the back of my head once.

“Come, Taylor. Come and shed your sin.”

Christ.

He made me kneel beside where he’d been earlier, and then he knelt as well. I didn’t look at him, and I don’t think he looked at me. Nothing happened for maybe five minutes. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, so I figured I was supposed to pray.

I prayed, all right. Jesus, I begged, get me through this. Don’t let them turn me into a Charles. Don’t let me forget Will. Don’t let me forget who I am.

Please.

Finally Reverend Bartle spoke. “Tell me about it, Taylor. Tell me why you’re here.”

I looked at him, but he was facing forward, eyes closed. What the hell did he want me to say? I’m here because it was either this for the summer or military school in the fall. I’m here because my parents can’t handle that I’m gay. I’m here because they think God can make me “normal” again. Like I’d ever been anyone other than who I am. Like God would create abomination in the first place.

All I said was, “I don’t know.”

Maybe thirty seconds of silence passed, in which I assumed I was supposed to be growing more and more anxious. I wanted to make him wrong about that, but I failed.

Then he said, “I think you do know. I think you’re very well aware of how ungodly your feelings and actions have become, how you’ve allowed your baser needs to overrule your true spirit.” He paused again, but I didn’t say anything. So he said, “Tell me about them.”

“About what?”

“Tell me about how you’ve given in to your ungodly feelings to satisfy your baser needs. Tell me what you’ve done.” His voice was calm, no impatience in it.

Okay, I could have gone one of two ways here. I could have just told him about some of the things Will and I have done, the ways we’ve come to know each other, the way he makes me feel when he’s holding me, teasing my hair, kissing my neck. I could have described those “baser” needs, how the energy would move through me like lightning bolts seeking the ground of Will’s body, and how it felt afterward like heaven and hell had met and clashed and canceled each other out so that we floated in a sea of total calm. I could have said that I love Will so much that it seems like a window into the love God offers, as though I could follow this path to the source of all Love.

I could have. But I didn’t. I took the other road. I took rebellion. It may have been a mistake. Guess I’ll never know. But at least I didn’t give Will to him.

“I haven’t done anything ungodly.”

“You and I both know that’s not true, Taylor. We’re in God’s house. Don’t dishonor it by lying. Do you love God, Taylor?”

“Yes.” That was true; I do love God. I even love Jesus. He wasn’t the one who called my love for Will a sin.

“Then tell the truth.”

“I did. It is the truth.”

His voice grew so loud so suddenly, I jumped. “For their women changed the natural function into that which is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural function of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men doing what is inappropriate with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.”

Then, quietly, “Do you recognize that text, Taylor?”

“It’s from Romans.”

“That’s right. Do you know what it’s saying?”

“It’s talking about lust. Not love. And it’s not Jesus speaking.”

I should have known better. I should never have tried to fight back, to counter his approach. Should never have revealed my own thinking. He went into this rant, quoting chapter and verse from all over the Bible, stopping in between to paint these horrid pictures of all kinds of sex as evil. Especially sex between men. It was like he knew everything I’d ever felt for Will, every tingle, every touch, every longing. Like he knew how it felt when Will’s fingers caressed the inside of my thigh. Like he knew what went through my mind when I wanted to be with Will and couldn’t. And he made it sound like everything that had ever been between us, between Will and me, made Satan laugh. Made Jesus cry.

I didn’t argue with him. For one thing, he wasn’t giving me time to say anything. For another, pretty soon I was in tears anyway and couldn’t exactly debate the issue.

He kept me in there for almost three hours. It was torture. And it got worse when he dragged my parents into it, using scripture to show how much pain I was putting them through. Especially my mother. I can’t remember everything, but I think I managed not to actually say that what Will and I have is sinful. But I can’t be sure that I didn’t say yes or something else that sounded like a confession to Reverend Bartle. All I do know is that I was sobbing like a baby, lying on the floor in fetal position, holding onto my ribs, and feeling like my chest was going to burst open.

I guess he must have thought I’d confessed my sins, or maybe he figured I’d die if he kept at me any longer. That’s what I thought.

He pulled me up from where I lay sobbing and walked me out of the chapel, an arm around my shoulders. As we walked he said, “The pain you’re feeling is the tearing out of sin. The ripping out of evil. It’s good pain, Taylor.”

I tried to shake my head, but since every part of me was shaking I’m not sure he noticed.

“I’ll walk you to your room now. I’m afraid you’ve missed dinner, but it’s my guess you don’t feel much like eating.”

By the time we stopped at the doorway to the room I would share with Charles, I’d stopped crying, but I was in some kind of emotional haze. Reverend Bartle let go of me and flipped on the light. I kind of slumped against the door frame and watched from some far-off place as he picked something up from the desk on the left. It looked like a yellow piece of paper, but when he peeled off a rectangle about two inches by three, I saw it was from a sheet of labels. He pressed the piece in his hand against the left side of my chest and held it there.

“You’re in SafeZone now, Taylor. This yellow warning will let the other residents and staff know that you can’t speak to them, so you need to wear one of these until you’re out of SafeZone or else you might violate this part of your residency. That would have serious consequences.” Now the hand dropped. “Your staff leader, Mrs. Harnett, will let you know when you can stop wearing these. Then you may speak again.”

He set the sheet back down on the desk and looked around the room.

“Is this your luggage beside the bed over there? Just nod or shake your head.”

I nodded. It was mine. Full of clothing that Mom had had to buy especially for this incarceration, complete with name tags that read T. ADAMS. Not much of my own stuff met the standards of this place.

“And here’s the map Charles left for you.” He leaned over to the other side of the desk and picked it up. “Did he show you what room your Prayer Meeting would be in this evening?”

Nod.

“Good. Now, you might want to take a few minutes to collect yourself before you go there.”

A few minutes? How about a few days? How about a few years?

“God loves you, Taylor. God wants you to learn how to love him. We’ll show you how.”

Before I knew what was happening he moved forward and took me into his arms. We stood there like that, him totally wrapped around me, my arms hanging limp. And he just held me.

I don’t know why, and I don’t even know if I had a choice, but I reached around and hugged him back. I wanted to cry again. This was the man who had torn me apart, and yet his embrace felt so tender, so loving. I wished he could hold me forever.

He pushed me away rather abruptly, cleared his throat, said, “Don’t close the door,” and left me there.

Limp, wrung out, I sat on the side of the bed where my luggage was for some amount of time that isn’t clear to me now. Finally I decided I may as well unpack. Everything on the left side of the room seemed to be mine, so I opened my bags, took things out, and stuffed them into drawers. Then I found the bathroom and took a long time, mind empty as I sat there. Then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be in a bathroom for more than five minutes for “elimination” or fifteen for “cleansing and grooming.” I’d already exceeded both.

But who would know? Nevertheless, I got up, washed my hands and face, and went back to my room.

Standing in the middle of the room, not seeing anything, I wondered how in hell I was going to just show up at an in-progress Prayer Meeting, wearing my warning label, eyes puffy and face blotchy from crying, and sit there silently in a room full of strangers I would be living with for weeks.

I couldn’t do it. Plus I felt completely drained. So I stripped, threw my clothes in a corner, found my pajama bottoms and put them on, and crawled into bed. Didn’t even turn the light out.

I must have been in some other universe, some other dimension. At any rate I was deeply asleep, face to the wall, so that when Charles called my name, I heard it being repeated, louder and louder, before I realized I had to respond to it.

I turned over and half sat up.

“Taylor, this is not what you were supposed to do. You were supposed to go to Prayer Meeting. Believe me, your absence was noticed.” Something about his voice, some edge, seemed like an overreaction to this misdeed of mine. Like he took it personally somehow. SOHF. Oops. Should I give up counting demerits yet? Translation: Sense Of Humor Failure.

A number of retorts came to mind, and I think I even opened my mouth.

“Don’t speak!”

Oh yeah.

“Are you wearing pajama pants?”

Nod.

Charles moved over to my bureau and started pawing through things. He found what he was looking for—my pajama top—and brought it over to me.

He held it out. “Here. You have to wear the full set. You know that. It’s in the Booklet.”

I tried to glare at him, but I doubt it came across quite as fierce as I wanted. I snatched the top from him and put it on while he watched.

Before I could throw myself back onto the bed and dive under the sheets, he said, “Pray with me.”

“What?”

His hand shot into the air so quickly that I thought he was going to strike me, but he just held it up, palm out, and gave me this hard stare—reminding me, by not speaking, not to speak.

Then he said, “Pray with me. You missed Prayer Meeting. But you need God now more than you ever have before, and praying is the best way to acknowledge his presence. It’s how we open our hearts so he can heal us.”

I just stared at him, but he wasn’t backing down. I heaved a shaky sigh and got out of bed.

Charles went to the desks and pulled first my chair out and then his. He knelt in front of his, elbows on the wooden seat, and looked at me. I sighed again and went to my own chair. He closed his eyes, so I figured it was safe to close mine. Maybe I could fall asleep again.

But no. He prayed aloud.

“Almighty Father, thank you for bringing Taylor to us. Thank you for loving him enough to bring him here, and thank you for giving me the chance to show him the power your love has. To show him the miracles it can bring. To reaffirm in my own heart the steps I have taken toward you.

“Open Taylor’s heart the way you have opened mine. Let him see the light so he will know the right path to take. Let all of us here be examples for him, to support his faith and give meaning to his longing. He longs for you, Father. Help him to understand that, to use this time fully and well, to cross the bridge we are all on, to reach the other side in joy and rapture and fulfillment. Amen.”

He didn’t get up right away, so I didn’t either. I guessed that he was giving me time to speak silently and say my own prayer. So I did.

God, I know you love me. And you know I love you. I don’t know why you’ve brought me here, unless it’s some kind of test. Can I live with these people and still be the person you made me? Can I believe, despite everything I’ll go through here, that you don’t make mistakes? Is this like what happened to Job? Do I have to prove that my love for you is more important than anything they can do to me here?

I waited. If this was a Job test, I knew better than to expect any kind of sign. But I focused my mind hard on loving God. And I felt a warm glow. More tender than Reverend Bartle’s hug. Deeper even than the sweet peace of being with Will. I smiled.

And then I stood and went back to bed, leaving Charles there worshiping at the altar of his desk chair. God and I had an understanding. And the gift he’d given me was that since I wasn’t allowed to speak, I didn’t even have to tell Charles about it. He couldn’t even ask. It was between me and God.

Charles had thanked God for me, and he was right to do that. He just didn’t understand the reason. I was going to show him another path.