by Lisa Henry
Pride.
He thought of Nate, and how, in his world, that was something to be ashamed of.
“I saw you at the turnoff to the camp,” he said at last.
“Take a seat.” She turned, wiping her hands on her skirt, and sat opposite him. “Yeah, I’ve been there a few weeks now.”
“Why?” Jason opened his waffles.
She regarded him with a slight frown for a moment. “You know, I went there. My parents sent me there when I was sixteen.” She snorted. “Anyway, you don’t need a rundown of the multitude of ways it fucked me up for years, I’m sure. I’m in a good place now.” Her gaze flicked to the corkboard. “I have good friends, and people who love me. But something about that place just won’t let go. And if just one parent reads my sign and turns around, then it’ll be worth it.”
“Has it happened yet?”
“No. If their kids crying and begging doesn’t sow a seed of doubt, I don’t really like my chances.”
“But you do it anyway.”
She nodded. “Somebody has to.”
They both dug into the waffles.
“I’m Molly, by the way,” she said after a few minutes. “Molly Jenkins.”
“Good to meet you.”
“I always liked your article.” She sawed at a piece of waffle with her plastic fork. “It was good to see someone as angry as I was.”
Jason pressed his mouth into a line. A bitter taste rose in the back of his throat as he thought about what he'd done to Nate, but at the same time he missed the passion he'd had in those days, the ruthlessness with which he'd pursued his goal. He'd thought, back then, the only way to make things change was for people to get their hands dirty. And now...now he didn't know what he believed. “I was pretty angry.”
Molly raised her brows. “Was?”
“I still am,” he admitted. He spent several seconds dunking a bite of waffle in syrup without eating it. “You don’t think I’m a piece of shit? For what I did to Nate Tull?”
She didn’t answer right away. “I dunno. Sometimes I think the people who don’t feel it’s their responsibility to come out, who think they have a right to hide… That’s just...not fair to the rest of us.”
Jason gripped his fork tighter. Wasn’t that what he’d believed, on some level? That Nate was being foolish, selfish. That he had a responsibility, as a gay man, to be out and proud? To fight?
And somewhere, deep inside, in the part of him that was dark and bitter and cruel, didn’t he still believe it?
If you were part of the rainbow, you didn’t get to fucking sit this one out. Didn’t get to cower in the shadows while other people risked their lives to score you some civil rights.
What did you do with a belief like that? That was ugly and flawed but still very much a part of you?
Molly glanced at the ceiling and shook her head. “It’s almost enough to make me believe in God. You showing up here.”
“Why?” Jason asked cautiously.
She looked back at him. “Because you can help.”
“Help?”
Molly offered a hesitant smile. “You could write a new story. And you don’t have to do, like, any undercover journalism. You could interview me, if you wanted.”
“I…” Jason didn’t know what to say. “I don’t really write anymore.”
“What do you do?”
No fucking idea.
He pictured himself at UW Tacoma. The whole world open to him. Typing furiously on his laptop as though it were a direct line to people’s minds and spirits.
He thought of the soldiers he’d met in Afghanistan. Fighting a war in a country that seemed impossible to put back together. But many of them hadn’t seemed to care about the long-term consequences of the war. They were ready to fight now and die now for ideals that Jason had privately considered too simplistic. “For freedom.” “To keep America safe.” “To send a message to terrorists.” Sure. And what about oil? What about a bankrupt government funding a war it could never win? What about the fact that the U.S. had spent the 80s and 90s creating the very enemies it was now fighting?
And who decided what was “broken” anyway? Who decided how to put a nation “back together”?
Jason had respected the troops, absolutely. They were doing something he never could, and they were brave as hell. But he had never understood them. His whole life, he’d assumed he knew the best course of action, that he understood the complexities of every person and situation he encountered.
He knew nothing at all.
“I’m trying to be...better.” He struggled for the words. “I’m trying to just...see what the world is, instead of making it into what I want it to be.”
Molly nodded. “But some things need to change.” She gulped her coffee, then put the cup down slowly. “Moving Forward wasn’t the only camp I went to.”
Jason waited.
“I tried others. Even when my parents weren’t forcing me, I still tried. Did one of those electrotherapy things.” She smiled bitterly. “You know, where they make you watch gay porn and zap you if you start getting turned on?”
Jason went cold. He stared at the soggy corner of his waffle, sitting in a pile of syrup.
“It was kind of funny, in a way. The ‘lesbian’ porn they picked...it was just the girl on girl stuff made for men. Wasn’t doing much for me at all. I thought about telling them where they could find real lesbian porn. But…” She stood. Tossed her coffee cup into a small, overflowing wastebasket.
“I’m sorry.” Jason didn’t know what else to offer.
Molly, still facing away, shrugged.
“If I write anything else about the camp,” Jason said, “I want it to be…”
Fair?
How could you be fair about something that ruined lives? Something that was so fundamentally wrong?
Non-antagonistic?
Then what was the point of writing it at all?
Jason shook his head. “I don’t think I’m the best person to do this. My credibility is shot.”
Molly shrugged again. Turned to him. “So why’d you come by?”
“Just curious, I guess.” He stood too. “I should probably get going. Thanks for, uh, for talking to me.”
“Thanks for the waffles.” She sounded stilted.
What did she want from him? Surely he wasn’t the only journalist out there who could write about Moving Forward. He didn’t want anything to do with Reverend Tull anymore. With Pinehurst.
He just wanted to be with Nate.
Couldn’t he want that? Couldn’t he be done with hate, and just have love? For a second, he was irrationally angry with this woman for making him feel guilty. For wanting him to be the man he was trying to leave behind.
Just let me have a future.
He wasn’t sure who he was asking. Molly? Nate? Nate’s God?
A future that’s love.
He left, slowly shutting the trailer’s squeaky door, unable or unwilling to say goodbye.
Chapter Thirteen
The kids were going tubing on the lake this morning. Leanne, who had a motorboat license, had rented the boat. Every time Nate had come down to the cabins the last few days, someone was talking about it.
The campers had been here three weeks now, and bonds had formed. Mary Ann, Steven, and Tyler had some kind of thing going where they all pretended to be English royalty, treating every meal as though it were tea time at Buckingham Palace. The other kids cracked up when they did it, except for John, Bethany, Becky, and Luke, who’d formed their own quiet clique and held themselves apart from the others. But even they opened up during group sessions in the evenings.
Nate had always divided the kids into two groups: those who wanted to overcome their phantoms, who turned their progress into a sort of friendly competition—“I never think about boys anymore.” “Last night I felt God all around me, telling me He loved me, that I’d be okay.”—and those who seemed wary of the camp, wary of the very idea behind it. Who, even if they h
ad fun and made friends and got caught up in group prayer, never fully embraced the idea that they could change.
Most campers in the latter group at least made some progress. They might not leave the camp completely straight, but they left with the resources they needed to continue their journeys and help themselves. In a way, those were the cases Nate had always found most satisfying. He was happy for the campers who enthusiastically banished their undesirable thoughts and reframed their identities swiftly and with apparent ease—but he worried there was something superficial about their evolution. Not the campers’ fault, but in the same way some kids adopted their parents’ politics or convinced themselves they liked the same music their friends did, Nate knew these campers were still growing, still figuring out who they were. There was no such thing as a quick fix.
Nate’s own journey had been rooted in struggle. At every possible turn, there was some new demon he had to fight. He felt the most kinship with the kids who knew they weren’t cured. Who could see how difficult the path ahead would be, but who accepted Moving Forward’s love and support. Who left the camp knowing they weren’t at the end of their journey, but somewhere right in the middle.
No camper’s progress was more satisfying to the other counselors and to Nate’s father than Isaac's.
Isaac was still aloof, still wary, but in the last few days, Nate had seen him talking to John and Bethany. Had seen him smile and laugh. Last night, Isaac had even volunteered to lead group prayer. When Nate had asked if Isaac felt any different now from when he’d arrived at the camp, Isaac had looked right at him and said, “Definitely.”
Nate hadn’t known how to feel about that. He knew he should be elated. Isaac had arrived unhappy and scared, but now he seemed relaxed. Joyful, even.
And yet some stubborn, selfish part of Nate didn’t want Isaac to change.
He was almost relieved when he went down to the cabins and found everyone getting ready for tubing except Isaac. Maybe Isaac was still the same kid who’d come here, resistant to Moving Forward’s promises of love and acceptance and healing. Isaac was staring pensively across the hills, and Nate was startled to see an expression he recognized from his father. A serenity that made Isaac look older than he was, that made Nate feel a little shut out, a little frightened.
Why don’t I feel that?
Would I feel it, with Jason, if I let myself?
His inner conflict was, in some ways, worse now than it ever had been. His guilt over failing Marissa seemed to increase every day. He hadn’t had a real conversation with his dad since the dinner with Marissa three nights ago.
And he couldn’t stop thinking about Jason. Wicked, detailed fantasy that made his skin hot, that seemed to burn away his guilt and leave him someone new, unrecognizable. Someone who craved sex, who craved Jason’s cock, and didn’t give a fuck what God or anyone thought about that. The man Nate was in his fantasies spread his legs, dropped to his knees, took Jason any way Jason wanted to give it to him. This Nate swallowed cum and moaned as Jason opened him. He begged for more.
The worst part was, Fantasy Nate was the one Nate wanted to be.
“Isaac?” Nate approached him slowly.
Isaac turned. Blinked for a few seconds, as though he wasn’t sure who Nate was. Then he smiled. “Hi, Nathan.”
Nate started at the use of his full name.
“Nathan Tull.” Isaac said it softly, almost reverently. He stepped toward Nate, and Nate took an involuntary step back, afraid Isaac might try to kiss him again.
Isaac glanced down at Nate’s feet. Nate felt himself flush. “Aren’t you going to get ready for the lake?”’
Isaac looked up. Nate thought he saw something like pity in Isaac’s smile. “I’m not going to the lake today.” He stared out over the hills. “I want to go to the chapel to pray.”
“Oh.” Nate felt suddenly hopeless. They’d done it. They’d brainwashed Isaac.
“Leanne said I could. The reverend will join me after his meeting.”
There was something a little creepy about that soft, inflectionless tone. “You’ve been doing so well,” Nate said. “The counselors say you’ve been working hard. Maybe you deserve a reward.”
Unless Nate imagined it, Isaac’s smile turned bitter for a second. “A reward.”
“Yeah. Go to the lake and relax. You can pray later.” Or never again, if that’s what you want. You should be who you want to be. A truly loving God won’t care, as long as you don’t hurt anybody.
“No.” Isaac shook his head. “I’ve made up my mind.”
“Well. If you change it…”
“I’m spending today with God.” He looked at Nate, expression suddenly desperate, imploring. “You had days like that, didn’t you? When you needed to pray?”
Nate nodded slowly. “Yes.”
Isaac nodded too, relaxing again. “I thought so.” He rubbed his forehead. “I can’t be on my own anymore.”
“You don’t have to be,” Nate told him. “Not anymore.” But the words sounded hollow.
“Nate. Can you come in here, please?” His dad’s face was drawn.
Nate followed him into the office, stomach twisting. On the wall, kids in Moving Forward T-shirts grinned out of framed photographs. Nate had once wondered how his father could put a name to every face, even years later, but it was because he cared. Everything Reverend Timothy Tull did came from a place of love. People like Jason didn’t understand that.
“Sit down.”
Nate wanted to ask why. Wanted to ask if anything was wrong. But he was afraid he knew exactly what this was—it was his moment of truth—and even this nauseating anticipation, as much as it made him want to vomit, was better than being on the other side of the revelation. The other side, where maybe he discovered his father’s love wouldn’t stretch as far for him as it did for all the kids on his wall. Not again. He kept his mouth shut, and sat.
His dad sat across the desk from him and sighed. “We have a problem, Nate.”
Nate closed his stinging eyes briefly, and wondered how he knew.
Stupid. His guilt was written all over his face.
Sin boldly.
He had. But confessing his sins boldly was another matter.
He balled his hands in his lap. “Dad, I—”
His father turned his laptop around so that the screen faced Nate. “Read that.”
For a moment Nate, his heart pounding, couldn’t make any sense of what he was looking at. A Facebook page? Then the words suddenly jumped out at him: Lost my ass virginity at conversion camp. Fuck yeah!
“Oh God.” Nate scanned the screen. “Tyler posted this?”
Impossible. He wasn’t supposed to have a phone.
He wasn’t supposed to have sex!
His father nodded solemnly.
“I took his phone from him.” Nate’s neck prickled as he remembered that humiliating encounter. “I…God, who carries two phones?”
“It might have been an iPod,” his father suggested. There was no blame in his gentle tone. “It happens, Nate. Sometimes kids sneak things past us. But obviously it’s not just the Facebook post that’s the problem.”
Nate stared at the screen again. The post was less than a day old and had over six hundred Likes, two hundred Shares, and hundreds more comments.
“I should have…” His tongue felt swollen, his throat dry. “Tyler and Steven. I thought they were…close. Thought it was inappropriate. I should have spoken to them.”
“Why didn’t you?” his father asked softly.
Nate’s eyes stung again. He blinked rapidly.
Too embarrassed, maybe. Bad enough to talk to them about it when he’d heard them commenting on the video: “Fuck. He’s getting plowed!”
Embarrassment, yes. But it would be so much worse though, to be a hypocrite.
Do as I say, kids, not as I do.
He fought dizziness. Fought to meet his father’s worried gaze. “I don’t know.”
Liar.
You were so busy getting fucked by Jason Banning that you neglected your work here.
And jealous. You were jealous. Tyler and Steven are so fucking unafraid of what they are. Why couldn’t you be like that? Why’d you have to wear a hair shirt instead?
“I’m sorry,” he said numbly.
You coward. You absolute coward.
The room pressed in on him. He almost wished he were sick again, that there was some explanation for why he felt this way, besides the fact that he didn’t have the guts to be himself around the person he supposedly loved more than anyone in the world.
“—to the lake and look for them,” his father said. “Nate?”
He looked up. “I’m not sorry.” His voice still sounded weak, but it was louder, at least.
His father tilted his head. “What?”
“I’m not…” Nate took a breath. “I’m not sorry I didn’t talk to them.”
His father didn’t look mad—just concerned. What would it take to make him angry? What would it take to make him never want to look at Nate again?
A simple confession?
He went on. “I mean, I’m sorry they had sex while they were under our watch. They’re—they’re too young, and God, if it’s true, then I hope they were safe. But when I—when I just thought they liked each other, I didn’t say anything because I don’t really think it’s wrong.” Every muscle in his body went rigid, and he stared at his father.
The reverend stared back, and Nate could tell he was shocked, even if he kept his tone carefully neutral. “We’ll talk later. Right now we need to find Steven and Tyler. They’re probably with the group at the lake, but I’ll call Leanne to check. If you want to head down there, that would be good.”
Nate stood. Left the office without another word. Once he was outside, he grabbed a few deep breaths. What had he just done? Was this thing with Jason worth destroying his relationship with his father? What if it was just a phantom?
It’s not just this thing with Jason. It’s bigger than that.
He hurried on toward the lake.