Thinking Straight (30 page)

She reads it, and despite what I believe are her best intentions to look calm, it's obvious she's upset. She doesn't say anything right away, just pulls out a couple of files, opens them, and studies something in each. She puts them away.

“It isn't Leland's handwriting, as far as I can tell. It might be Ray's, and it might not.”

Nate says, “There's more. We waited in the chapel yesterday to see if Charles came out of Reverend Bartle's office.”

“Why?”

“Well—he did come out. And he was obviously in emotional agony. Maybe physical pain as well. He didn't see us. I tried to talk to him last night, but he dug his heels in.”

“Charles? You think…
Charles?”

Nate and I look at each other, I look at his mom, and I nod. She puts her head in her hands.

Nate says, “What are we going to do about this?”

She takes a few seconds and then looks up at him. “I can't talk about that. It wouldn't be appropriate.”

Not
appropriate?
I say, “Look, Mrs. Harnett, if this is really happening, then he's raping Charles Courtney in the name of God.”

She's on her feet. “Taylor, I know this is very difficult for you. It's hard for me, too. Please understand that I will do everything I can to investigate this and take whatever steps are called for. But I cannot, at this time, talk to you about it.”

“But, Mom—”

“Nate, please. Don't press me. I assure you I am not taking this lightly. In fact, I am taking it very personally. But I cannot share with you the nature of my discussions with the center's board of directors or with the other staff leaders. You will just have to trust me.”

So we stand as well, though I'm gritting my teeth. Nate leans over and retrieves the note.

“Leave that here, Nate.”

“I can't. Leland wants it back. So unless you want him to know you're involved, I have to return it.”

She thinks for a second and then says, “I'll walk out with you and make a photocopy, then. By the way, Taylor, it doesn't look as though you've picked up your messages. You'll find one from John letting you know that you're assigned to kitchen detail this week. Breakfast is done by paid staff, so your hours are the same as they were for the laundry room.”

Kitchen? I throw a glance at Nate, who gets my drift and tells me, “I have special dispensation to stay in the laundry room. I keep an eye on the new kids.”

Well, this sucks. Not much I can do about it, though. Maybe I'll get a chance to test John's leadership potential.

At the copy machine outside her office, she keeps the copy she makes and hands Nate back the original. Then she turns to me. “See you at ten, Taylor.”

Crap. I'd nearly forgotten our appointment.

I grab the message from my mailbox, and Nate and I walk toward the dining hall. He keeps his voice low as he says, “I know that seemed rather less than satisfying. But believe me, she is really upset. She won't just sit back. She'll do something; I just don't know what.”

“Look, Nate, I don't doubt you, or her, or your intentions, but what will she be able to do other than confront the guy? We need to get rid of him, get him away from—”

“I know. Listen, you know how I've been coming back year after year?”

“I do. I think you're nuts.”

“When I get to college, I'm going to study psychology. And what I've been doing here, with my mom's support, is stuff like leading the circle, like talking one-on-one with kids like Ray and Leland and Charles, because both Mom and I want to understand what's driving kids to kill themselves. Especially gay kids, so we can stop adding to that by what goes on here. So we've collected a lot of information, including things Bartle has been saying in his own one-on-one meetings. We've been building a case against him. We just never knew he'd go as far as rape. Or murder.”

“So she'll put all this together?”

“Exactly. And go after him. And she'll take some steps to protect Charles.”

“But in the meantime…”

“In the meantime, Taylor, you stay the hell away from Bartle.”

“I was gonna collect a whole bunch of us villagers and hand out torches and clubs…”

“Hush.” He's trying not to laugh. But he knows it isn't funny.

We step into the dining hall and I do a quick scan. No roommate in sight. I say, “I'm going back to the room to get Charles.”

“Okay. If I hear anything, I'll let you know.”

Charles is not expecting me to walk into the room. He's at his desk, writing again, and when he sees me he jumps nearly out of his chair and frantically reaches for whatever he was writing to turn it over. When I've seen him do this in the past, I've just assumed he was writing home. He's always hidden his writing immediately. But he's never been so frightened. I just look at him, wracking my brains for some way this could be connected with Bartle.

I guess my silence disconcerts him even more. He has to clear his throat before he speaks, and then his voice is kind of squeaky and odd. “Taylor! I, uh, I thought you'd gone to breakfast.”

I watch his face for a few seconds. Then, “You didn't show up. I'm here to escort you.”

“That's not necessary. I'll just finish this up and be right there.” He gives me this big, fake smile.

“I'll wait.” I pull out my chair, sit, and watch him. I'd warned him already. I'm the hawk now.

He does not—I mean,
does not
—want to go back to whatever he was writing with me sitting there. “Taylor, you know, this is…well, it's kind of private.”

“Fine. I can't see it from over here.”

He makes a few attempts to write, but I can see his hand shaking. He sets the pen down. “Taylor, you're going to be late for breakfast.”

“I won't if you come with me now. If not, then we'll both miss it, won't we?”

His hands flutter in the air for a few seconds as he tries to decide what to do with them, and finally he gives up on whatever his writing project is. “All right, all right. Could you just wait outside the door for a second, please?”

I give him a heavy look. “Secrecy, brother? Do you need coaching?”

This makes him kind of shake all over. “Taylor, please. I really need you to do this for me.”

It's got to have something to do with Bartle. From just outside the door I hear drawers opening and closing, things shuffling around, and it sounds like Charles is moving around the room. I imagine he's looking for a good hiding place. Try the inner sole of your shoe, I want to tell him. That's where I'm still hiding the article Will brought me.

Danielle had begged me to tell Charles about it. But I don't think he can stand any more stress right now. It will have to wait.

 

Between breakfast and my ten o'clock meeting with Mrs. Harnett, I decide to take the time to write a scanty letter home, still not very pleased with my folks for forcing me to come here. Maybe they couldn't know there'd be someone like Bartle here, and I have to believe they never knew the whole truth about Strickland's attitude, but they still want me to be someone I'm not. Someone I can't be.

The letter doesn't take very long, so when I've finished I devote a little bandwidth to something that's been kind of nudging at me from the back of my brain since yesterday afternoon. It had gotten kind of smothered with all the stuff about Bartle, but it deserves some thought. And it concerns the person I'm to see at ten.

Mrs. Harnett is Nate Devlin's mother.

I struggle to recall some specifics of our past conversations. Times when I was sure she was just another mouthpiece for Straight to God's philosophy. Sure, I remember how angry I was that she'd put me back into SafeZone, but the only other unpleasantness I can come up with is in the conclusions I'd made about her. Conclusions based on the false assumption that she was on the other side of the gay issue from me.

So if she's on the same side of that can of worms, which is what it is around here, why haven't I been able to tell? Maybe because she couldn't afford to let me know?

What stands out the most in my memory are times like the day I'd told her how tough I thought her role was. How she couldn't teach something just by saying it, that she had to find a way to get me to learn it for myself. She had seemed—well, gratified. Hugely gratified. And she'd tried not to show that, either. She had seemed like a real person.

But now she's refusing to let on what steps she's taking about Bartle. The question is, should I trust her, as she's insisting? She hasn't proven herself to be untrustworthy, exactly, but can I just sit back and do nothing? Even God doesn't want us to do that.

By the time I show up at her office, she's recovered from her earlier distress and is her old calm self again. It's like nothing happened earlier this morning in this very room.

“Do you have any impressions you'd care to talk about, Taylor?”

I guess I'll have to play along. “Well, I've survived my first week; only five more to go. I suppose it's a good thing I'm not counting in days anymore.”

“Were you counting days?”

“I was counting minutes.”

“And now it's weeks?”

I consider this. “Actually, now it's minutes again. Because I'm worried about Charles in every one of them.”

“I appreciate that, Taylor, but I need to ask that for now we don't refer to that situation. I assure you I'm doing everything in my power to address it.”

The rest of the meeting is pretty meaningless. I ask if I can stay in the laundry room, and she says no, that I need to learn the other aspects of service. Fine. Whatever. By the time I leave, I don't know any more than before what she's going to do about Bartle. All I know is, I can't sit back and do nothing. I just have to decide what to do.

 

Every chance I get all day, I look for Charles. I even stop by the mailboxes as often as possible to see if he's got a summons from Bartle, but there's never anything in there. I see him at lunch, but he's already at a full table, so I can't sit with him. I'm so focused on him that it's hard to appreciate the fact that I'm eating lunch I helped make.

In the afternoon John has me breaking apart lettuce heads, which is about as mindless as filling detergent containers in the laundry room. You know where my mind goes. What the hell am I going to do about Charles? How the fuck can I help him? And what, if anything, is Mrs. Harnett going to do?

I can't help thinking about Bartle, about the smarmy things he did. I think back to last Sunday, the day I got here, and try to remember: had he done anything like that then? The comment from that kid in Kitchen last week comes to me, and then I'm nearly stunned by a mental image of poor Leland's dick rubbed raw. But as for me, I guess it's been just the neck squeeze when Charles turned me over to him, and of course that hug he gave me after tearing me apart.

What a bastard. Who would do such a thing?

And then I realize that I've done it myself. I did the exact same thing to Charles Saturday night. I hammered at him, just like Nate said, until he cried. And then I held him.

If I'm going to prove myself better than Bartle, I have to help Charles. I just
have
to.

One thing I can do is watch. After Prayer Meeting Charles goes to the library, not the chapel. It makes me wonder if Mrs. Harnett has said anything. I sit there for a while at another table, until I'm sure he's not leaving to go meet his tormentor.

Tuesday at lunch Dave finds me. He says, “Looking forward to seeing you later this evening, brother.” Which I know means there's a circle meeting. Then he adds, “By the way, there's something in your mailbox.”

“Thanks, brother. See you later, for sure.”

After lunch I head toward the offices, and the message is a summons from the famous Dr. Strickland to see him at three o'clock today. I haven't seen him in over a week, and he'd promised an audience when I was out of SafeZone. But I guess he didn't say how long out of it. Maybe John will give me onions to work on and I'll be really smelly by the time Strickland and I have our little consult.

No onions; too bad. As it turns out the whole thing with Strickland is pretty much a formality. All through it I get the sense he's just doing it so he can say he did. I'm sure he's had tales from Mrs. Harnett and Bartle about me, and he's probably trusting them to provide the necessary carrots and sticks to ensure my purification and humiliation. There's no mention of Charles. Or Bartle.

I distract myself every few minutes by wriggling my right foot and imagining I hear crinkling. And I need the distraction; without it I wouldn't be able to stop thinking that this is the man who'd rather see me kill myself than be gay. I'm struggling not to feel hatred, for him and for Bartle.