Thinking Straight (3 page)

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.