Prologue

“Elizabeth Swanson”

Moving up the line, I ignore the leering eyes of my fellow graduates. Here I am, graduating from my podunk high school in the middle of nowhere South Dakota, hoping to escape these fuckers once and for all. Today should be a day of celebration, but I just want to leave. If I could have skipped today, I would have.

“Steven Taylor”

My parents don’t know the hell that my life has been ever since I broke my leg at hockey camp in sixth grade. Unlike my younger siblings, I never had any interest in playing the game. Middle school was when the sport became less about playing with friends and more about winning games. My attitude apparently didn’t measure up to my teammates’ expectations and things went a bit too far.

My family didn’t push me to play anymore after the months in the cast and needing to learn how to walk again. They think the fact that my career was ended is what caused my depression and further withdrawal from everyone. It wasn’t.

”Jessica Thorne”

My depression was caused by my former teammates constantly putting me down, hitting me, stealing my things, and locking me in closets. I had to hide during lunch and eat as fast as possible to avoid wearing my food. I was constantly on edge, looking over my shoulder in between every class.

“Stephanie Talbot”

Six years I’ve put up with the bullies. I can make it another twenty minutes…

“Sidney Xavier”

As my name is called, I step onto the stage and realize my dad isn’t cheering and embarrassing me. I look out at the audience and the smiles I expect to see on my family’s faces are actually frowns and looks of horror.

Snickers around the room turn into full on jeers and outright laughter, and my confusion seems to make it worse. My younger brothers jump on the stage and push past me and the faculty to pull the curtains closed, but it’s too late.

The banner that was supposed to read “Congratulations, Graduates!” is not what was hung. In its place, someone put up a giant poster of me hiding in the bathroom stall to eat my lunch with the caption of VIRGIN in bold red letters.

The banner above shows my shame, my secret that I still hadn’t had the courage to speak out loud.: “Congrats, Fatty Fag!”

Those assholes took six years of my life. They took my choices away time after time after time.

FUCK THEM!

I race off the stage, barely holding back the tears of rage wellinjg inside of me. I hear the catcalls and jokes about earthquakes, but I don’t stop until I’m pushing out of the emergency exit doors. I don’t care about the alarms going off.

“Sid!”

My dad’s voice calls out to me, but I don’t stop running.

Fuck those assholes. Fuck this small town dickishness. Fuck the obsessive winner takes all mentality that fostered my shit situation. Fuck my dad for giving me a girl’s name…

I start to slow as the guilt of that thought hits me. My dad loves me. He always wants the best for me, and he named me after the number one draft pick the year I was born.

“Son, hop in the truck,” Dad says as he pulls up alongside me. “Let’s go for a drive.”

Obeying my parents is ingrained in me, so I don’t even hesitate to climb in the cab, slamming the door so it doesn’t pop back open while we’re driving. To support the hockey playing of four kids, including two goalies, my parents each work two jobs and I’ve never seen them behind the wheel of a car newer than a 2012 and that was a rental years ago.

“You know I love you, right?”

Dad’s question confuses me until I remember the banner. They told the whole town my secret. I don’t even know how they knew. I only ever told one person, and Miss Johnson is the school counselor. She’s not allowed to share what I say in confidence unless it’s a danger to myself or other students. Even then, she could only tell my parents and the administration.

“Sidney, there is nothing you could ever do or think or feel that would make me or your mother love you less than we always have. You need to know that,” Dad says as he pulls over next to the pond where he taught us all to skate. “You are my beautiful boy and all I’ve ever wanted is your happiness. What did I do that made you think you couldn’t come to me?”

And there’s the reason…

I come from a family of fixers. I’m the outlier. Instead of a fixer, I became a people pleaser. I swallowed my feelings, both figuratively and literally, and ended up gaining a significant amount of weight due to my lack of exercise and emotional eating. As much as my family will want to fix this for me, they can’t.

“I love you, Dad,” I tell him as I wipe my face with the sleeve of my graduation gown before I rip the thing off to toss it in the bed with the rest of the trash. I forgot I was still wearing it. “There’s no changing it, so I was going to tell you before I leave for college.”

Telling my family that I’m gay and was bullied for the last six years was not a conversation I wanted to have when they could put their two cents in repeatedly for months until I’m able to escape. I was hoping to only have to deal with it for a few days at most.

“Speaking of college,” he says as he reaches to bang on the glovebox to get the latch to pop. “You got another acceptance letter. This one is from that school in Pennsylvania you checked out a few months ago. It’s in Pens territory. What do you say?”

I look at the envelope he handed to me and can’t wrap my mind around it. I mean, I was planning on heading to Michigan since my twin brothers got selected to play for the USHL under 17 development team next year. Since Mom and Dad are going to be busy working and looking after Kris and Jordan, I was going to keep an eye on Jared and Marc, hitting up as many games as I could.

“What about Michigan?”

Dad pulls me across the bench seat into his arms. Even though I’m taller and easily a hundred pounds heavier than him, Wayne Xavier has never failed to make me feel like a cherished little boy when he embraces me.

“You deserve a life away from all of the reminders of here. You deserve a fresh start where no one from this hick ass town will follow you.”

“You’ve been in this hick ass town your whole life, Dad.”

Throwing me a wink, he pulls back onto the road to bring us home. I guess this means I’m going to Pittsburgh.