Chapter 2
Two
Eight Months Ago
The day everything changes is a beautiful day. There’s no reason for me to feel like my whole life is about to blow up. But
I’m sure everyone feels like that before the moment their lives go off the rails.
The first shock comes when I see Dad’s car in the driveway behind Mom’s.
They’re both home? At three thirty in the afternoon?
Maybe someone at church died. The last time this happened was my grandmother’s funeral, but the thought causes an ache in
my chest and little needle pricks at my eyes, so I ignore it and open the front door, putting my bag on the floor.
There’s a stranger in our living room.
He’s a broad-shouldered white man with dark blond hair and a thin beard that makes him look more creepy than handsome. He’s
wearing a baggy blue polo shirt with a gold-stitched cross and matching lettering below that says “Holy Re-Beginnings,” which
I fucking hate.
My mom and dad are sitting on opposite sides of the couch, and he’s in a chair across from them. Neither of them look at me, but the creep-o gives me a smile. His teeth look yellow against his pale skin and blond beard.
“Hi,” I say.
“Nice to meet you,” the man says. “Why don’t you have a seat?” He gestures to the space between my parents and immediately,
warning bells start going off.
Who the hell is this man? And why am I supposed to sit between my parents, who won’t even look at me, when I don’t think we’ve
ever sat down on that couch together at the same time once in my entire life?
Then it hits me. My parents look ashamed.
Divorce.
It’s my first and immediate thought because my parents are not in love. They’ve never said it explicitly, but I know what subtext is. They don’t love each other, like they don’t love me.
I learned that last part in fifth grade. I won a prize for a short story competition at school. My story was about us finding
a hidden treasure chest filled with pirates’ gold in the local state park. When I came home and showed them the story and
the twenty-five-dollar gift card to a local restaurant, my dad skimmed the story quickly.
Then he ripped it up and held it in front of me like a cartoon dad would brandish a rolled-up newspaper at the family dog
that piddled on the floor.
“This is about greed,” he scolded. “Greed is a sin.” Then he snatched the gift card out of my hand and proceeded to cut it
into pieces before throwing it and my story in the trash.
The whole time, my mother stood silently by.
If my dad had read the whole five-page, double-spaced manuscript, he would have found that at the end we decided not to spend
the gold and donated it to a hospital to help people.
But now they’re getting a divorce and, honestly, I feel a little giddy.
I have so many questions. What made them finally decide to do it? Whose idea was it? Who am I going to live with? Mom, obviously,
because according to devout Christians, raising kids is women’s work. Am I going to have a stepparent? Holy shit, is this
creep in the polo and shitty beard my new step-Chad—er, dad?
I sit down, eager to see where this is going.
“My name is Garrett,” Step-Chad says—Step-Garrett doesn’t have the same ring. “I’m from Holy Re-Beginnings.”
“What is a re-beginning?” I ask.
“A fresh start.”
Yep, definitely divorce. Also, why not call it Holy Fresh Starts? Probably because that sounds like something Robin would
say to Batman. Noted, Step-Chad. Please continue.
“A fresh start for who?” I ask. But again, I know it’s my dad, because my mom would never stand up to him.
“For you,” Step-Chad says.
Some dipshit on the imagination highway in my brain slams on the brakes and causes a million-thought pileup that quickly reaches
a standstill because what does he mean, for me? I turn to look at my mother, then my father. But they both avoid my gaze.
“Sorry, is this some kind of . . . after-school program?” My brain won’t say the words my heart knows.
“A camp!” Garrett says it like I’m supposed to be excited.
My first thought is conversion therapy—but that’s not possible because I’m not out. My parents don’t know I’m gay; not even
my friends at school know I’m gay. But then my stomach seizes. Because one person does know.
“We’ve helped a lot of kids in your situation,” he continues. He says situation like I’m stuck up to my neck in drying concrete, not attracted to other guys. “I was once in your place, too.”
And he thinks he’s cured. When I was eleven and I realized I was in love with Travis Lincoln because he talked to me in fourth-period
science, I looked up camps like this. I was still worried about going to hell back then because I thought hell was real.
But thankfully I also found the Reddit threads that talked about people’s experiences at those camps. And most important,
how it didn’t work. Regardless of what torture these people signed up for—or were sent to against their will—it didn’t change
who they were.
So I came out to the one person I trusted because I knew she was gay, too. It was a secret language we used to communicate
through six years of church events and after-school Bible study.
There’s no way she would out me, though. Even if we’re not as close as we used to be.
Garrett seems to read my mind because he grins and says, “We’ve even helped one of your friends.”
Oh, Frankie. No.
She came back from summer break refusing to talk to me. I thought she was pissed at me for not reaching out to her more after
she told me she was going to her aunt’s house in Maine for the summer.
She told me over a DM in June. It was the first time she’d mentioned going to her aunt’s, and I was kind of pissed because we had so many plans.
She had gotten her driver’s license and she and her older sister were sharing a car.
We were going to drive to DC and check out the queer bookstore and go to the Pride parade.
The realization hits that the DM may not have come from her. Especially if her parents sent her to this place. They must have
taken her phone and seen the messages we shared, then sent me the aunt excuse.
We thought we were being so careful. Our fake social media profiles that we didn’t use real names on, not even in our messages.
We had code names, so how did her parents know it was me?
“Did she tell you?” I ask him, my voice shaking. I can’t say the rest aloud because maybe I can still come back from this.
So I clear my throat and try again. “What did she tell you?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Garrett says with his righteous smile. Because he thinks he’s better than me. He’s been lying
to himself for so long he thinks he’s managed to find a way to change who he is by torturing it out of other people.
He continues, “She didn’t rat you out. Frankie wants to save you. Save your immortal soul.”
By torturing my earthly body.
I can’t be mad at her. As much as I want to be, I know it’s not her fault. She was brainwashed. But I thought she was stronger.
She seemed so much stronger than me. More knowledgeable and filled with pride. The good pride, not the twisted, sinful, religious idea
of pride.
I feel sick.
I can’t let this happen. I’m not going with him. I have to get out of here.
But I can’t run. I’ve read all about this online. It starts with him, Garrett, here alone in the house—he’s the friendly,
charismatic face who wants to take me without any fight or argument. But if I do fight, they have more people waiting in the van parked outside that I didn’t notice because I was too distracted by my mom’s
and dad’s cars in the driveway.
So I have to play along.
“Okay,” I say. And it’s not hard to cry because I’m terrified and so fucking angry. I turn to my parents, but neither of them
will look at me. That shame on their faces is because of me. Because Frankie told this camp I was gay, too, and they told
her parents, who told mine.
They’re ashamed that I ruined their good Christian name.
My eyes burn and I choke back a sob. “I’ll go with you. I’ve struggled with this for so long.”
I’m not talking about being gay. It’s them I’ve struggled with. This feeling that I’m supposed to love the people who are supposed to love me. But they don’t. For so long I made excuses; I thought, eventually, if I didn’t
piss them off—if I pretended to agree with their unhinged thoughts on politics and humanity—they might be proud of me.
But they’ll never be proud of me. Even if it were possible to fundamentally change who I am, they’ll never love me. They didn’t
love me before—my creativity, my imagination, my soul—so why would they love the kid they had to pay thousands of dollars to cure of his queerness?
Garrett eases up and nods. “I’m so happy to hear you say that. And I know your parents are, too.”
I nod and stand up. “So we go now, right?” I’m hoping the answer is no, but my eagerness throws him off. If he says yes, I
have to run, as fast as I can. Leave everything and go.
But he doesn’t say yes. Instead he holds up his hands, laughing. “Gosh, I just love your enthusiasm! You might want to pack
a bag first. Just enough for a day or two of travel. We have a uniform while you’re with us.”
Without saying another word, I go back to the front door and grab my backpack. I make a show of unpacking my books and setting
them on the floor, then head to my room.
Locking the door behind me, I fall to the ground. Now the sobs really hit and I bury my face in my elbow, trying to stifle
them. But then I laugh. It’s the hysterical laughter of absurdity and it catches me completely off guard.
Because I realize that if my parents had confronted me—if they had looked at me, said one thing out there while Garrett was trying to pitch this to me—I actually might have believed they love me.
That they’re making this choice because they think it’s best for me. But they just sat there, looking ashamed.
Ashamed and embarrassed by their queer son. They’re scared this is a ding on their heavenly scorecard. Like people who raise
gay kids don’t go to heaven.
Fuck that.
I can run.
So I wipe the tears from my cheeks and pack as many of my clothes as will fit in my backpack. Then I go to my secret stash of money that I’d been planning to use doing fun gay stuff over the summer with Frankie.
There’s only a hundred and seventeen bucks, but it’s enough to get me to a city. I’ll take a cheap train or a bus and go to
DC or Baltimore. They have shelters for kids like me who have to run from home.
There’s still enough suspicion in my mind to look out the window for people waiting before I open it. I turn back one more
time to look at my bedroom.
It feels like something I’m required to do. Like I’m taking a snapshot to remember it by. But I don’t want to remember it.
I don’t need to. If Garrett brought a gun with him and put it to my head, demanding I tell him one good memory about this
place, about my family, I don’t know that I’d be able to.
“This,” I whisper to myself. Leaving is the good memory I’ll have.
I push out the screen. And I run.