Chapter 12

Twelve

Ezra

W e end up in their living room—the really nice one that looks kind of like a palace, even in comparison to my mom’s pretty nice crib.

Pastor McDowell sits in an armchair, so I sit on the love seat. As soon as my ass meets the couch’s cushion, my heart starts fucking racing. I think of getting up and bolting out the front door. I know I won’t do that—there’s no fight or flight for me today—so my head starts to go hazy. It’s dissociation. Learned about it during my first go ’round at Sheppard Pratt. This shit is pretty damn annoying.

I fight through it, even though I feel like I might get sick. My whole upper body starts to shake a little, so I have to swallow a few times and lock my jaw at other times to keep my voice steady. Not that I’m talking yet.

Pastor McDowell says, “You have the floor, kid,” and I look down at the real floor. It’s kind of impressive how my head gets so spacy. I feel like I’m high as I look up at him .

“I was wondering,” I manage to say clearly, “about conversion therapy.”

My voice goes raspy on those words, the way I figured it would.

I know I fucked up because his face goes startled and his eyes widen behind his glasses.

I look down at my feet. My throat tightens as if Paul has got his hands around it.

“Just…you know.” I suck a breath in as my eyes well up. Then I fucking force myself to look at his face. “What do you think about it?”

In the moment that his face goes solemn and he sits up straighter, my stomach feels so topsy-turvy that I really think I’ll puke on his rug. His eyes narrow on me, and I wipe my palms on my knees. I know he can see it—I can’t hide the way I’m breathing.

His eyes get slightly wider and his mouth twists like he’s angry. And he says, “I’m unequivocally against it, of course. Not only is it damaging—it’s abuse —but it’s ineffective, and most importantly, it goes against what I see as the will of God. Who makes no mistakes. There’s an anti-conversion therapy nonprofit called Born Perfect, and that’s what I would say about it. Every one of us is born perfect. Innocent like little Eden, my daughter. If something like that happened to you, it’s not your fault. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t needed, and it definitely wasn’t Christian.”

I’m nodding as tears drop down my cheeks and his face gentles.

“It’s something a lot of people went through.” His eyes get slightly wide again, and he takes a deep breath as he looks down and then back up at me. “Listen, kid.” He blows his breath out as I wipe at my eyes. “One weekend when I was about your age, I got sent off somewhere just like that.” His face is composed when he says it, but I can tell it bothers him because he swallows right after .

“You know who sent me?” he asks.

I shake my head, holding my breath as I wait on his answer.

“My parents.” His hand comes to his forehead, two fingertips rubbing for just a second before he moves it, frowning back up at me. His brows are pinched like he’s a little confused as he says, “My parents—who both loved me. My dad’s dead, but he was a good guy. My mom is pretty awesome, too.” His nostrils flare as he sucks air in. “They thought it was for the best,” he says, so quiet. “The people they sent me with? They thought they were helping. Weren’t really ‘bad’ people. Just wrong.”

That turns on the fucking waterworks for me again, because that’s not true in my case.

He leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees and fixing me with eyes that look careful. “Did you get sent to somewhere like that?”

I find myself nodding.

He nods with me. "Okay," he says. "So you came to the right place." His hand are pressed together in the classic prayer-hands pose. "My stuff," he says, quiet but steady, "was embarrassing. And weird," he offers. "I kept it to myself for ages. And when I thought about myself after that—being gay—it seemed like something dirty."

Tears keep dripping down my cheeks. I'm not losing my shit, thank god, but I can't stop them coming. I keep wiping at them, even as I try to keep my face from looking weird and teary.I can’t believe I’m not alone, that it happened to him—Luke McDowell.

"Who sent you? Your parents?"he asks.

"Just my mom," I manage somehow.

He nods. "You get any say so in it?"

I put my hand over my eyes as I nod. Because this part is one of the worst. "I picked the place," I rasp. I rub at my forehead, telling myself to calm the fuck down. I don't want to break down in here with him. I look up at him, swearing I won't cry while I talk. "There was this place that said they'd teach you how to shoot a bow. It had like...cabins," I say, swallowing the crack in my voice. "It was on this land. Remote. I thought it sounded like survival courses."

More tears fall down my cheeks as he nods. "Okay," he says softly. "But it wasn't, was it?"

I shake my head.

"None of that was your fault," he says, quiet and steady. "Whatever happened there—you wanted what you thought was best. Maybe to please your mom? Your pastor?"

I nod, feeling like a fucking moron.

"Did you want to be straight?" he asks me.

I nod again.

"I get it," he tells me. "Me too. For a long time. That's a failing of our modern Christianity. A really harmful one that hurts a lot of people. But it's different when it's you, isn't it? It's not theoretical or theological. For me, it all came down to a few memories. Like...these peak moments of feeling embarrassed. Or violated," he adds softly.

More tears seep out when he says those words. I don't feel like talking, but I don't want to leave him hanging. "That's how I felt," I say in a voice that sounds an octave too low.

It feels fucking weird to say it out loud. I look down so I don't have to see his reaction.

"I'm here to listen to you. Anything you want to tell me. It will never leave this room. No matter what."

I look at him, my throat tightening like I might really lose my fucking shit. But I won't. Not for Alton.

I look at him, and then back at the big, dark wood coffee table. I look at the rug under my feet and leave my mind on idle. I hear myself say, "It was okay at first." I look at him, finding his face neutral. "It wasn't that bad. We got grouped in cabins with someone from the opposite gender." My throat's raspy, so I swallow, but it doesn't totally help. "My partner," I whisper, "was bi, I think. I think they did it that way. On purpose. So one of you would want the other one—and keep things..."

He's nodding, looking into my eyes, and I'm talking like it's nothing. Like it's fucking SEC football. "Her name was Riley. She was young, too. Really young. Like middle school. I didn't get it at first. What we were meant to do." My throat tightens again, and I can't go on. I swallow and regroup. "By the time I was understanding," I whisper, "they moved us out of our cabins. Which was a good thing," I add, finding my voice, "because it was fall and getting cold. They made us hunt and build our own fires. Shit like—stuff like that."

His lips give a little twitch. "It's okay," he says softly. I'm not sure how to say the next part. He says, "Go on," in this soft voice. It's like hypnosis...because I do.

"They moved us," I tell him. "We were in the cabins, but when they thought we were ready—based on cameras, cause they were watching us all the time—they would move us to the next step of the place. Nobody knew what it was." Again, the stop and swallow. My eyes ache, but I'm not crying. "It turned out it was an old prison. Buildings. Up in...somewhere rural. Near the Canada border," I dare tell him. "They bought the prison first, then built the cabins. So they took us inside." I take a deep breath. I look at him again. "That place was where stuff went down," I say in a voice that sounds too low, and too soft. I look at the table. "She was on the girls' floor. I was on the boys. That's when shit got weird. You know what I mean?"

I look at him, brave enough to do that only because the inside of me feels so frozen, and he nods. "Yes," he says. "My shit got weird too."

I can tell by his face that he means that.

So...I tell him. I look at him, and I tell him all about it. Tears streak down my face, but it's weird; I'm not crying like I usually do. The tears are just there, and I keep wiping them. I tell him about Riley, and how I hated what they did to her, and it made me mad. I tell him about Paul, and how I didn't like him from the start. About the plastic windows, and my temper, and how sometimes, at first, I could get it up when female nurses jerked me off, but then I couldn't. Even with the stuff they gave us, I couldn't. I didn't like their cool, thin hands.

He nods, sometimes frowns. He's quiet, and I just...keep talking.

Even with the barf juice and my stomach churning, dicks still always got me up. I tell him how I hated Paul. I stumble over the word "hate"—pastors don't believe in hating, do they?—but he murmurs, "Of course," so I keep going.

My tears have dried up by the time I reach the part about how I mouthed off to Paul, but I notice my shoulders shaking. Just adrenaline.

"He was scared of me. That's what I think now," I say in a voice that trembles. "Sorry." My throat closes up, and he moves over to the couch beside me. "This too close?" he asks, and I shake my head, putting it in my hands.

"You can stop if you want,” he says. “Or you can keep going. I'm here with you. If you can say it, and you want to say it, say it to me."

I know I can. I just have to keep going.

I tell him how Paul lost it and locked me in the supply closet. I even manage a laugh at the analogy of that. "It's like that bad R. Kelly song."

And he laughs. "I think I remember that."

His hand comes down on my upper back. "Too much?" he says quietly, and I laugh again, a choked laugh into my hands.

"It's okay." I swallow. I move my hands off my face and look out at the coffee table again. "Anyway, I was locked inside there for thirty-four days." My voice doesn't crack at all on that part, but I can’t breathe after I say it. When he doesn’t gasp or have some sort of shocked outburst, I push myself to go on. "It was a really small space. Dark. When I asked for light, they brought this red light in. A red light bulb. So the room was red."

My voice is steady, but my torso shudders under his hand. "I think he wanted it to be like hell," I choke out. I get a few deep breaths, and his hand on my back rubs a little. "I would lie on my side, right by the wall. Sort of curled up. There was a sheet in there. It was a medical supply thing. So it was a sheet for that."

I didn't use the sheet for that.

I can't breathe.

He says, "It's okay," and his voice snaps me out of my head.

"They didn't bring that much food. But...some. And I stopped eating it." My voice shakes. "It was my fault. I stopped eating it in...protest. I don't know. There were needles in there. I would stab myself with them, like syringe needles. So I could feel something," I choke.

His hand rubs big circles on my back, and I keep going. "I tell everyone it’s chickenpox scars."

I don't; I don't know why I said that. I’ve never told anybody that line. It's a good idea, though.

I rub at my left hand. "I didn't know I would get weak. I guess I just..." I rub a hand into my hair. "It was stupid. Paul let it keep going," I whisper. "They wouldn't let me out. Unless I wrote on my walls, every blank spot, with letters no bigger than my pinkie finger: I have no more wrath. That was the sin he said I had the worst of."

"Fucking blasphemy," he murmurs.

"I was gonna do it, but one day I couldn't get up." Now my eyes are welling. Now my throat aches. "I was trapped there." I wipe my eyes, and more tears fall. "And you know what I wanted? I wanted someone to come get me out."

I suck in air after I say it. Didn’t know till right now that that’s how I felt.

"Someone fucking should have,” he says.

I laugh, spilling some more tears. "But no one did. I was always asleep." My voice falls to a whisper. "I could dream about...whatever worked. To distract. I was sore from being on the floor, but I thought I would die. And that was good. That's what I wanted. But they let me out. I found out later Paul thought if I died that way—so skinny—they'd get charged for something. For a crime. By then..." I inhale deeply, exhale slowly. "Paul realized that he had messed up. Really messed me up," I rasp. "I could die, and he was scared of that."

I rub my hand over my face, getting up my courage for the rest of it. I'm breathing sort of hard, and Luke McDowell's hand is cupped over my shoulder.

"They took me down to the clinic floor. I remember someone carried me...and when we walked by anybody...like the nurses in that room...they would gasp. Like they were scared. So I was scared, too. When I got in there, it was so bright. They gave me water. I could do that, like with little sips, but not food. Someone had to come in. I ended up with a feeding tube in my nose." Tears start up again. I rub them away, and his arm settles heavy around my back. It's embarrassing, but that shit grounds me.

"Paul would taunt me. He'd come in and push a rolling tray over my bed and put a fork in my hand. He would try to make me eat. I couldn't lift my arm, though. Every time he gave me food, I couldn't eat it, and he'd shock me. With this shock stick. I'm crying because I hated him," I tell the pastor. "I hate the scars I have all over me now. They're these little burns," I choke out. "Mostly under my shorts. So no one can see them." My voice trembles there—because I know that no one ever will. "They said I went crazy. That's what they told my mom. Then she took me to Sheppard Pratt. Like inpatient. And they said I have all this stuff. Bipolar. Psychosis. But they didn’t know about Alton. That was the name of the place. My mom said if I told, I’d be sorry.” I close my eyes, try to speak again without crying. "So I just wondered what you thought about it."