Chapter 23 #2
He squeezed her shoulders and studied her face like he was memorizing it.
“God, I’m glad to see you, kitten.”
“Me too, Dad.”
Joshua smiled quietly.
Trent finally stood and wrapped an arm around each of them, placing another kiss on Jeff’s cheek. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to get away.”
Jeff laughed and kissed him in return. “First off,” he said with a cheeky grin. “Sophie was on me morning, noon, and night that we had to go see dad.”
Trent smiled down at his daughter, his arm tight around her.
“Second,” Jeff continued, then leaned forward and nuzzled Trent’s cheek. “I missed the hell out of you! I told my boss that short of someone blowing up the Capitol building, nothing was going to keep me from taking this time off.”
Trent touched his cheek and kissed him tenderly.
Colin cleared his throat. “All right, family reunion’s over. Some of us are trying to run a highly professional outreach operation here.”
Jeff raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah? And who might that be?”
Joshua laughed. “Well, we take our best shot anyway,” he said, then stood and signaled Rebecca. “I’ve got something to give you.”
Trent indicated Jeff and Sophie. “Please allow me to introduce my husband, Jeff, and my daughter Sophie.” Jeff took a seat beside Trent, while Sophie plopped down next to Alex, grabbed a journal from Nate, and immediately joined in the Creative Journaling class.
Nate stood at the center of the circle, hands filled with sheets of writing prompts. “OK,” he said, grinning. “Next prompt. And remember that you can use these prompts or not use them. They’re ideas meant to inspire you, jolt you, embarrass you, whatever it takes.”
Rebecca stood near the doorway, flipping slowly through the binder Joshua had just handed her, The Outreach Playbook.
Her eyes moved across the tabs.
Guidelines.
Workshop plans.
Safety protocols.
Follow-up strategies.
“This is incredible,” she murmured.
Joshua shook his head.
“It’s a starting point.”
Rebecca looked up.
“It’s also one hell of a lot of thought, and hard work.”
Joshua smiled. “You’re going to make it worth it.”
“Damn right I am.”
The group took a break to enjoy lunch and snacks, then gathered again in their circle, most with cookies still in their hands.
Joshua moved to the circle’s center. “OK. I think Nate has one more activity for you, but before I turn the circle over to our resident rabble-rouser, I want to try one more thing.”
He passed around a stack of small blank cards.
“Write down one thing that helps when the day feels hard, nearly impossible. A song. A person. A dog. A funny meme. Anything. An activity. Then we’ll read them out loud so that they can help someone else get through a tough day.”
Pens scratched across the cards.
After a moment, Alex leaned forward. “Okay, I’m reading one.”
He cleared his throat dramatically.
“My cat sits on my chest and refuses to let me spiral.”
Laughter rippled around the circle.
Another card.
“Music in my headphones so loud that my dad yells.”
Micah raised a hand.
“I wrote running.”
Colin nodded.
“That’s a good one.”
Micah shrugged.
“Only time my brain shuts up.”
Joshua glanced around the room.
“See? You’ve already built your survival kit.”
“OK, OK,” Nate said, gently shoving Joshua back to his chair. “My turn!” He moved around the circle. “Take out your journals and write a note to yourself five years from now.”
Alex frowned.
“Five years?”
“Trust me,” Nate said. “Future you will appreciate it.”
Lila wrote slowly.
When she finished, she closed her journal and stared down at it.
“What did you write, Lila?” Micah asked.
She shrugged. “You made it.”
For a moment, the entire room seemed to draw in a long, quiet breath. “Lila,” Colin murmured, giving her a long, searching look. “That was breathtaking.
Joshua nodded. “The perfect thing to say to future you.” He let the quiet settle for a few seconds longer then introduced Nate who bounced to the center of the circle, writing prompts in hand.
His session unfolded in a quiet, focused rhythm—pens moving, heads bent, the room filling with the soft scratch of words finding their way onto the page. As always there were moments of astonishment, moments of laughter and even a few tear as the teens shared their journal entries.
“All right,” Joshua said softly, returning to the center of the circle. “Before we wrap this up, I want to try something we do sometimes at Camp Pride.”
Several of the kids looked up with interest.
“Nothing complicated,” he said. “Just one word.”
Micah blinked. “One word?”
“One word,” Joshua confirmed. “Something you’re leaving with tonight.”
He gestured around the circle.
“No speeches. No pressure. Just the first word that comes to mind.”
Alex pointed at himself. “Can mine be ‘cookies’?”
A few kids laughed.
Joshua smiled. “It can.”
Micah rubbed the back of his neck.
“Okay,” he said. “Uh… lighter.”
Judy spoke next.
“Seen.”
Another kid shrugged.
“Less weird.”
Rebecca’s hand lifted slightly from the edge of the circle.
“Hopeful,” she said quietly.
Joshua nodded, taking each word in.
When the circle came around to Lila, she hesitated for a moment.
Then she said simply,
“Possible.”
Joshua felt something tighten gently in his chest.
He looked around the circle one last time.
Nine kids.
Rebecca.
His friends.
A room that had been full of strangers five hours earlier.
“All right,” he said softly. “That’s a good place to stop, though I do believe we have one more activity to do before we head home.”
A few of the teens looked up.
Rebecca smiled toward the back of the room.
“Sophie, will you please present our grand prize?”
Trent and Jeff stood side by side, smiling as their daughter stepped forward, carrying a folded blanket.
The bus crew recognized it instantly, and Alex straightened in his chair, grinning. “OK! Here we go.”
Colin leaned back, folding his arms with a grin. “About time we got to the main event.”
Sophie walked carefully to the center of the circle and unfolded the blanket across two chairs.
The rainbow colors spilled outward, the Suzette stitch, a beautiful textured crochet stitch, catching the overhead light in small textured ridges.
A quiet murmur moved through the room.
“You made that?” one of the Springfield kids asked.
Sophie nodded.
“Yeah.”
“All of it?”
“Every inch.”
Jeff leaned against the wall.
“Months of work.”
Trent added, “And about twelve skeins of yarn we tripped over every night in the living room.”
Sophie smiled at her father. “Dad!”
Lila ran her fingers along one of the rows.
“Who taught you how to do that?”
Sophie pointed straight at Joshua.
“Him.”
Several heads turned at once.
Joshua groaned. “Oh no.” Then spun his head and gave his husband a fake glare as Colin chuckled.
Micah blinked.
“Wait. He crochets?”
“Oh, lord god,” Joshua muttered.
Sophie ignored him completely.
“Okay,” she said, grabbing a pen from the table and holding it like a crochet hook. “This is exactly how he taught me.”
Colin leaned back in his chair, grinning madly. “Oh, god, I love this!”
Sophie stabbed the pen dramatically into the air.
“First, he goes, ‘Stab it!’”
The kids burst out laughing.
Joshua covered his eyes.
“Sophie—”
Then she wrapped an imaginary strand of yarn around the pen.
“Then he says, ‘Strangle it!’”
Alex was losing it. “Oh my God, I forgot about that.”
Sophie mimed pulling something through.
“And then, ‘Scoop out its guts… and pull them through the hole!’”
The room exploded with laughter.
Micah nearly fell out of his chair.
Joshua groaned.
“In my own defense, she was refusing to pay attention.”
“You told me crochet was violent,” Sophie said.
Colin wiped his eyes.
“I’m never going to look at a blanket the same way again.”
Sophie grinned and lifted the blanket again.
“Anyway. After the stabbing, strangling, and gut-pulling… this is what you get.”
She pointed to the Pride Blanket. “And tonight,” she added proudly, “we’re raffling it off to some lucky winner.”
Rebecca stepped forward.
“For the past two weeks,” she said, “the kids in this group have been selling raffle tickets for this blanket.”
She lifted a large glass jar from the table beside her.
The jar was half full of folded slips.
“Parents, neighbors, grandparents… anyone who wanted to support Camp Pride.”
Joshua felt something warm settle in his chest.
This was exactly what he’d hoped would happen.
Rebecca shook the jar lightly.
“All the proceeds go toward Camp Pride scholarships.”
A boy near the snack table said quietly, “My grandma bought like six tickets.”
“Smart woman,” Colin said.
Rebecca looked around the room.
“Ready?”
A small ripple of anticipation moved through the group.
She held the jar out to Sophie.
“Sophie, would you please select our lucky winner?”
Sophie hesitated, then reached inside, stirred the slips, and pulled one out.
The room fell silent.
She unfolded the paper slowly.
“Connor Mitchell.”
“Wait… that’s me!” Connor said, rising.
The others turned toward him.
Connor walked forward cautiously and Sophie handed him the blanket.
For a moment, Connor just stood there holding it. Then he swallowed.
“I don’t even know what to say. I’ve never won anything.”
Colin smiled gently.
“‘Thank you’ usually works.”
Connor laughed softly.
“Yeah. Thank you.”
He folded the blanket carefully over his arm and returned to the circle.
Rebecca glanced around the room.
“Thanks to everyone who bought tickets. You helped send at least one camper to Camp Pride this year.”
A few of the teens smiled.
The moment wasn’t loud or dramatic. But it felt important.
Across the room, Colin caught Joshua’s eye.
Joshua gave the slightest nod.
The Outreach Tour had come to Springfield.
And Springfield had answered—in quiet voices, in ink, in raffle tickets sold, and in the courage to be heard.
Outside, the evening air had cooled.
The parking lot lights flickered on one by one as the group drifted out of the community center together. The last of the Springfield kids lingered near the entrance, still talking quietly with Rebecca.
Joshua stood beside the yellow bus, watching them.
The night felt strangely calm.
Not finished exactly.
But settled in a way it hadn’t felt before. Final.
David’s car chirped as he unlocked it, the soft blink of headlights answering from across the lot.
“Well,” he said quietly, slinging an arm around Nate’s shoulders, “this is where we abandon the tour.”
Nate snorted.
“‘Abandon’ is a strong word.”
“You know what I mean.”
He turned to Joshua.
“You built something great here.”
Joshua shook his head gently.
“We all did.”
Nate pulled him into a quick hug anyway.
“Still counts.”
Across the lot, Jeff was helping Sophie climb into the front seat of his car while Trent leaned against the door, talking with both of them.
Sophie suddenly popped her head back out the door.
“Wait!”
She jumped back out and dashed across the lot.
Joshua barely had time to react before she wrapped her arms around him.
“Thanks for teaching me how to crochet,” she said.
Joshua laughed softly.
“I’m not sure it was my finest teaching method.”
“It worked.”
She hugged him once more and then darted back toward Jeff’s car.
Alex watched her go.
“You know she’s going to tell that stabbing-and-guts story for the rest of her life.”
Colin folded his arms.
“I sincerely hope so.”
David and Nate climbed into their car and leaned out the window.
“Text us when you get back to Charlottesville,” Nate called out.
“Will do,” Joshua said.
The engine started.
Nate gave one last wave through the window.
Then their car pulled out of the lot and disappeared down the quiet street.
Jeff’s car followed a minute later, Sophie waving wildly through the window until the car turned the corner.
Trent stood in silence watching it drive away, then he blew out a long breath and turned away.
Silence settled over the lot.
Now only the yellow bus remained.
Trent climbed back into the driver’s seat.
“Well,” he said, glancing at the three of them. “Guess it’s just us.”
Alex stretched his arms overhead.
“Original tour crew.”
Joshua looked once more toward the darkened community center.
Somewhere inside, Rebecca still had the binder tucked under her arm—The Outreach Playbook—with its tabs, notes, and messy handwritten margins.
Maybe in a week or two, she’d pull it open at her kitchen table and plan the next meeting.
And the circle would happen again.
And again.
Maybe the same thing would happen in Farmville.
And Abingdon.
And Wise.
And Emporia.
And Onancock.
That was how you built something that lasted.
He felt Colin’s hand settle warmly against the small of his back.
“Ready?” Colin asked.
Joshua smiled.
“Yeah.”
They climbed aboard with Alex following close behind.
A moment later, the engine turned over, the headlights swept across the empty parking lot, and the yellow bus rolled quietly out into the Springfield night.
Four and a half hours down the road, home waited.