by Laura Preble
I’m just like them.
She sighs, puts her arm around me, and we watch the river for a few minutes. Then she pulls an envelope from her back pocket. “You got a letter.”
I take it from her wordlessly. Return address: Elizondo State Prison. “Who do we know in prison?”
“You know it’s from him.” She eases up from the swing and stretches. “I’m going to get ready. After therapy, I was thinking we could go down to the Pub to watch the voting results. It’d be good to be around other people for a change.”
I don’t answer, just stare at the letter.
“Okay, then. See you inside,” she says, overly cheerful. The screen door slaps against the wood frame and I’m left with the letter and the sound of rushing water.
He’s written three times before. I’ve never opened them.
But today, I do.
It’s full of apologies. It’s full of pleading, and explanations, and how he tried to do the right thing, how he tried to be a good father. It’s full of declarations of love. I tuck it into my shirt pocket, grab my braces, strap my legs into them. I painfully drag my body down to the edge of the water, just at the furthest end of the salt-and-pepper granite boulders jutting over the whitewater foam. I plant the braces so I can lean on them.
I tear the letter into snowy bits, let them fly into the rapids and flow on home, south, where they belong.
Maybe we will go to the Pub.
THE END
Thanks and Acknowledgements
OUT would never have been born without a lot of support.
Thanks to Natalie Fischer Lakosil and the Bradford Literary Agency for believing in this book.
Thanks to all my Kickstarter supporters: Cameron A. Allander, Kim Austin, Laura Brewster, Dave Burgess, JR Busby, Jo Hollingsworth, Jasmine Starr Stedt, Shaun L. Davis (my most meticulous reader), Anneke Doty, Mary Evans, Jennifer Green, Connie Henry, Sarah Jones, Michelle Liddell, Sian Lloyd-Wiggins, Danielle LoPresti, Geneva Mae, Patrick Mayuyu, Dan McDowell, Kym Pappas, Darla Peterson, Gil Quintana, blackgoat, Andrea Radmilovich, Jeremy Reppy, K. Royce, Eric Sanford, Jon Schwaiger, Jon Stern, Sarah Suvilla Young, Alissa Zeljeznjak, Marilyn Zeljeznjak, Jenna Y.
Thanks to Arthur Salm, Barrie Summy, Catherine Ryan-Hyde, David Jefferson, and Jincy Willett for writerly support and blurbage. Thanks to Benedict Cumberbatch for being.
Thanks to all my students, current and former, who inspire me, and especially the Gay-Straight Alliance members I’ve met over the years. I hope that someday we won’t even need to have a Gay-Straight Alliance because whom you love will be between you and the person you love and no one else.
Thanks to the staff at West Hills High School, my band of brothers, we who take to the field every day to do the good, impossible work we do.
Thanks to my husband, Chris Klich, who supports me and props me up when I want to fall down. Thanks to my two wonderful sons, Austin and Noel. I love you to the stars and the moon and back. Thanks also to my mom and dad, Richard and Therese Preble, and Manny Klich. I miss you every day. Thanks to Helen Klich, my California mom.
About the Author
Laura Preble is the award-winning author of the young adult series Queen Geek Social Club (Penguin/Berkley Jam), which includes the novels Queen Geeks in Love and Prom Queen Geeks. She has also won a Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize, and has been published in North American Review, Hysteria, and NEA Today. Visit Laura’s website at http://www.preblebooks.com/ and follow her on twitter @LauraPreble.