Chapter 6

Six

Ezra

M y throat feels too tight for words, so I just nod and bite the inside of my lower lip, and then inhale and tell myself to muscle through it.

“In high school…I messed around with another guy on the football bus. Sometimes,” I start. Josh’s blue eyes are wide. My heart is pounding. “It wasn’t anything, but my mom found out and made me talk to her pastor. And then…go off somewhere. You know…somewhere to change that. To un-gay me,” I whisper.

Miller’s eyes still look too wide as he nods. But he doesn’t look horrified.

“The deal was…with my mom…that I could still do football when I got back. She let me pick the place—the kind of place that only made you stay…as long as it took.” I’m surprised to feel my eyes sting, but I blink fast, and I’m able to keep going. “The place was called Alton,” I tell him, keeping my voice as even as I can. “I thought I could do it fast…and then I’d get back. Play the season. ”

My throat feels tight. I swallow and inhale through my nose. Josh’s eyes on mine look caring. That helps.

“It was far away, for me. Up in Maine, near Canada. It was in the wilderness. That was its whole thing. I wanted this wilderness place. They said that they’d teach you to shoot a bow and like…carve wood.” My eyes well again, and I swallow again. “We all rode a bus there. Into the woods. We got paired with someone from the opposite sex, and they put us into a cabin with just that person.”

Josh’s eyes flare slightly at that, and I give a nervous-sounding laugh. “I know, right? Some Christian school.” I look down at the couch’s cushion, biting on the inside of my cheek, and try to slow my racing heartbeat.

Then I look back at him again, finding that his face is still kind. Encouraging, maybe.

“The boys had to hunt, and the girls did domestic shit. It was really gendered that way. There were cameras. Everywhere. We were always hearing that there was a barbed-wire fence around the place, but no one saw it.” My voice is a whisper. I shut my eyes, inhale slowly through my nose. I try to look as normal as I can as I look back at Josh’s face.

“Paul was the one in charge. He was maybe thirty-something.” I swallow, forcing my voice to remain steady. “He had light blond hair, and he looked like a preppy boy to me. We never saw him demo shooting a bow or sharpening a knife or anything.”

I rub my eyes, which ache with tears. My throat aches, too. I look back up. Josh Miller’s face is gentle—rapt but patient.

“It was…weird…in the cabins. It felt isolated. Real survival shit. We’d get together for group stuff, but it had this whole survival feel. I think what’s important” —my voice wavers— “was that it made us feel disconnected. From the rest of the world. ”

Tears sting my eyes. Miller touches my knee, but when I rub my forehead and blow my breath out, he moves his hand.

“Riley—she was my partner. And she was young. Like eighth grade. I saw her as a sister. Every night, I’d sleep on the floor, and she would sleep on the bed. I chopped wood. There was a little wood stove.” Another deep breath in, and blow it out, and I look back up at Josh, feeling strangely, peacefully numb. “I didn’t want the two of us to still be in the cabin in the winter, when the snow started.

“But there were phases you were supposed to move through. The second one, they called it Reformation. And word was that you’d be moved inside, into a real building, for that part. This place was acres and acres of…like, forest. So I guess…I didn’t believe it.” My voice sounds slow and heavy. I notice I’m looking down, so I look back up at him.

“The night before Riley and me got moved to phase two…she had been in her bed. And she wanted me to get in with her.” I suck my cheeks in and wonder what he’ll think. About who I am. “I did it because…” I bite my lip, not knowing how to give words to my memories. And then I do know. “I guess I was lonely,” I say slowly. “It had been about a month, and I think I was sort of scared already. You could feel it underneath the surface. It wasn’t a place that ran like normal.” My eyes fill with tears, and I just wipe them, quick, and get on with it.

“So, this man came that night. Not Paul. It was no one I knew. He worked at the clinic, but I didn’t know that part yet.” Another big, deep breath. Just keep on breathing . “Neither did Riley. She was scared. The guy took us on one of the paths—they had a whole network of gravel paths through the woods—and we walked for what felt like forever.”

I can still see the pale pebbles, like something from a fairy tale. I inhale through my nose and blow it out my mouth, telling myself I can do this.

“Riley grabbed my hand, and I remember thinking I’d do anything to keep her safe.” I wipe my eyes again, thinking about Riley. How young and innocent she was. Big, hazel eyes and pale blond hair. She was just a kid.

I have to rub my eyes again, and I feel Josh lean toward me. I look at the swatch of couch between us.

“Finally, we saw this big, white building. It was three stories, and it looked like a hotel or…I guess a hospital. But it wasn’t.” Mills’ eyes widen slightly as I look up at him.

“It had been a prison,” I rasp. “The whole place…had been a prison. Decades before. It had big gates and…” I shake my head, looking at the couch again. Miller shifts like maybe he wants to come closer, but I straighten my shoulders and keep going.

“I knew as we were walking in that it was bad news.” Chills pop out on my arms. My throat tightens and stings so bad, thinking of how stupid I was. “Sometimes…in my dreams, we run away and see the chain-link fence with barbed wire on the top.” I glance up at him. “It’s really there.”

I swallow. Set my eyes down on his couch. I shouldn’t look up.

“There were three floors,” I say, tracing the edge of a cushion. “Clinic on the first floor. Girls on second. And the boys on third.”

My eyes flicker up to his on instinct, but I know that if I look at him, I’ll start to lose it more, so I look back down at the couch.

“This part’s bad.” My voice sounds raspy and weak, even though I try to keep it neutral. “What you should remember is that it’s over now.” I look him in the eye again for half a second, to be sure my point is made. “It was bad,” I say. “But now it’s over.”

Josh nods, his face looking graver now, as if he’s bracing.

I blow a breath out, hunch my shoulders, and try to pick out the strands of color in his couch. The little blue threads. Little gray ones.

“We all had our own rooms. And what they mostly did was try to turn my dick straight.” I shut my eyes, cupping my hand over them. “There was a lot of straight porn. They had female nurses for the guys, and they would come and jerk us off and just to help things, we’d get drugs, like ‘party drugs’ to make us come and make us like it. So we maybe felt more straight?” My eyes flicker up to his, and I jerk them back down. “I don’t know. Fortunately—unfortunately?—it didn’t work for me. When they showed gay porn, if you got hard, in your IV you would get what I called barf juice. So your stomach would hurt, and you’d feel pretty sick, and then you wouldn’t get a boner.”

I rub my throbbing forehead again. I wonder what his face looks like, but I’m not brave enough to look.

“It was all fucked up and twisted,” I say, my voice sounding tired and raspy. “They thought if they had those nurses jerk us off enough, we’d all go straight. I don’t know if it worked for the other guys, but I think no, because eventually there were a lot of us down on the first floor. Meaning” —I glance up, not really seeing him—“in the later part of the day, we would be taken down there for more… treatment . And it was never only just me being taken down there.”

My eyes slide to Josh’s face, and it looks stricken. I can tell he’s trying to look neutral, which makes me almost laugh. But I don’t. I rub my palm over my knee and press my lips together for a second.

“Sometimes they would get you pretty high on stuff, and when they took you back to your room from the ‘clinic’ they would run IVs and stuff to cool you down or give you fluids. So, the rooms themselves were like a hospital room, almost.”

I look up at him, feeling brave for just this one breath, and his eyes are red. His face is pale. Because he’s normal . This stuff would be a shock.

“Remember, I’m out now,” I say, at the same time he croaks, “You were scared of hospitals.”

I lift a shoulder, holding his eyes for a second—I see that they’re filled with tears—but then I have to look back down. “So…” Deep breath . “That went on for a while. For me, I think like a month? And they’d just…jerk you off. A bunch of women nurses. And the stuff they gave us—I think it was a mix of different stuff—it really did give you a boner. Sometimes it would hit hard, and I’d come from someone jerking me. Or using their mouth.”

I can’t resist a masochistic glance at Josh’s face, which I find slack with shock.

“Yeah, I know. It’s rape, but these people didn’t see it that way. They got paid well, so I think the place attracted sadists who could do whatever they wanted, off the grid. All the program wanted was to deliver a straight kid to its parents. They really thought they could re-program us. That was the point of the first part, in the cabins. They made sure one of the two partners was bi, if possible. And then they’d try to bond us with survival stuff. Remove your partner from you in the clinic phase, and you’d get lonely, scared and all. And then before you left, they’d tell you that the two of you would—” I look back up, waving my hand. “You know.”

Josh looks stricken.

“Fuck.” I say it loud and crisp. “If you could fuck, then you were cured. Cause everybody knows to be a functional adult, you need to keep your dick hard for sex with someone you don’t actually want, right?” I frown at his shocked face, feeling numb and frozen. “I’m being too glib?”

“No.” It’s a soft whisper.

“Have you heard enough, Josh? It’s a good time for a break. You wanna pour a drink?” I ask him.

“No,” he murmurs.

I bite the inside of my cheek—hard enough to taste blood. “No one wants to hear this shit. Even I wouldn’t. So it’s okay if you want me to stop. I could explain my memory problems in just a few sentences if— ”

“No, Ez.” He scoots closer, so his knees are almost touching mine and I can feel the heat of him. “Keep going.” His face is soft and gentle. Even his voice is so soft, as if he’s speaking to a wounded animal. “Can I touch you?” he whispers. “Do you want me not to?”

I can barely choke out, “Not to.” I close my eyes, and he says, “Sorry.”

My eyes sting and throb, but moisture doesn’t come. “I’m telling you,” I say, holding my head. “The next part is not good.”

“I’m here for it,” he says softly. “If you want to tell me, keep going. I’m okay, angel.”

Again, the sting of tears—from the word “angel.”

“I’m not an angel.” I rub at my forehead, breathing deeply. For a moment, I’m consumed by disgust. I think of how he would feel as he hears this stuff, and I can feel the horror. I keep breathing, telling myself that it’s almost done.

“One night, I saw Riley in the stairwell. She was coming up from clinic. I was going down. Cause I’d gotten hard for dicks that day. And they were doing more stuff to be sure I wouldn’t keep that up. They had this shock stick, and—” I look at him, his handsome face distorted by the tears in my eyes.

“She looked fucked up,” I rasp. “I could see her nipples under her shirt. Her cheeks were pink, and when she saw me, she hugged me and like…rubbed my abs. And then her nurse took her away.” I bite down on my lip. Look down at my legs.

“Paul came into my room to talk to me. Because my dick kept getting hard for dicks on their porn. I mean, why would they even have gay porn, right? When they used their little shock stick—like a billy club with an electric charge—I could still stay hard. They didn’t like that.” I roll my eyes, and when I glance up at Josh, I see tears on his cheeks for the first time.

For a minute, I can’t go on.

It’s not sad. I want to tell him it’s really not even that sad . It’s only awful in the way the world is. We all know how awful it is. People get raped every day, and it’s no big deal. No one ever pays the price except you. And you go on, because you have to go on. That’s the world that we have.

“I got into it with Paul that night,” I murmur, “over Riley. He was so mad, he locked me in my room for three days. And the windows there were plastic.” I wave my hand. “As one does when one keeps captives.”

Even though I’m looking down, I can tell from Josh’s breathing that he’s crying.

“I’m okay, Miller. Look at me.” I look up at him and wave at myself. “I just won a football game.”

“I know,” he whispers. He presses his lips flat as one tears drip down his cheeks. He rubs a hand into his hair. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. Don’t be sorry. It’s probably sad if it’s a new story to you. You should be happy you can feel sad.”

I look back down as he breathes deep and heavy. I think of him on his Snapchat this summer. Funny, charming Josh Miller. I feel bad for fucking up that chill vibe. Even if it only lasts an hour, and afterward he doesn’t want to see me again, I’ll still feel bad for telling him this terrible shit.

“I was locked up in my room for three days. The next time he—Paul—came in, I was really hungry. I was hangry, and he said I’d have to tell him I was sorry for what I said—the shit I said about them drugging Riley. That the program was fucked and twisted, and abusing minors. And Miller…” My voice is a whispered rasp as I lift my eyes to his. “I couldn’t.” Tears are blurring my eyes again as I tell him, “I don’t even know why. Stubbornness? Paul went on this tirade about how my main sin was wrath—the one that really had me gripped.

“He said homophobic shit, and he said shit about Riley. Shit that made me think that maybe he’d been messing with her. So I went at him. A stupid move. Paul called for backup, and someone shot me up with something. And I woke up in the closet.” Deep breath . “The supply one in my room, where they kept all the medical supplies,” I whisper. “The thing didn’t have a doorknob on the inside. It was small, like smaller than a handicapped stall in a bathroom. There were machines in there. Like a cart, this IV machine thing. Needles. Bandages. There was some saline in there, bags of saline. And a sheet. And I would lie on the sheet.”

Tears are sliding down my cheeks, and I don’t like it. But I can’t help it. And I can’t look at him. “For the first stretch of time, I was scared about how dark it was, and scared of being trapped. I would go fucking insane, trying to get out. I thought I could break the door down. But I couldn’t.”

God, the way my heart is racing. Kind of amazing, PTSD.

“Paul was fucked up. Smart, though. He made me wait four days for food, two days for water, and he had it brought by someone else. Security, I guess they were. They would shock me first…but with a Taser.” I can feel my body shaking, so I try to breathe deep. “And then they’d leave the food or water,” I add thinly. “Paul waited a while to come in. When he did, he would have the shock stick they used. It was milder than a Taser. But he’d press it to your skin, and that would burn.”

I shut my eyes and try not to get really crying.

“Angel—“

“I asked for a light. And so he put a red light in there. Red like hell. He told me if I wrote ‘I have no more wrath’ over and over, until it filled the walls, then I could get out.” I shake my head. “But I didn’t even try. I laid down, and I tried to make myself not care what happened to me. The less they brought food and water, it was easier for me to zone out. One day—” I swallow hard, because this is hard to say. “One day, I realized I couldn’t stand up. Like my legs just…didn’t work. They were too weak and shaky.”

He moves closer to me, rubbing his hand over my knee. Our eyes lock, and I can feel this… something move between us. It’s like a little burst of warmth, and it makes me feel steadier. I try to give him a smile, but my mouth just trembles.

“You would have thought I’d have done more…or different stuff. But I thought I would die in there. It had been weeks, I think…by that point. So I stopped eating food,” I say in a flat whisper. His hand feels so solid on my knee. I tell myself to focus on that. Focus that we’re here, in this room and not that one.

“I guess it was like a hunger strike. I was so weak, I couldn’t really drink, so Paul sent nurses in to start an IV. They set up a whole thing in there. This whole…torture chamber with me. And I couldn’t move by then. My eyes were blurry and I didn’t understand time. I hated the dark. And I hated the red light. I prayed so hard my mom would come…or someone. But they didn’t.” I breathe deeply, hating that I’m crying.

“I would have come,” Josh says.

Our eyes meet for half a second, and I try hard to smile.

“I wanted it to be over,” I manage, wiping my face. “You know…just be done. But one day, they took me to a clinic bed, and there were doctors. Real ones, and real nurses.” I inhale, and he rubs my shoulder with his free hand. It feels so good that I just want to hold him. Stop this stupid fucking story. But I have to go on.

“I got put to sleep and woke up with a feeding tube in my nose. A lot of tubes. Paul came in, and he said if I ate, that they would let me go home. He came in there every day and fucked with me.” His hand rubs my shoulder. “Like…shocked me. If I couldn’t eat enough or in the early days, I was too weak to hold the fork.” Josh shifts, and now he’s holding me. I’m shaking.

“He got off on that shit, and I knew it. So when he shocked me, I would act like it didn’t hurt. I called him names, too. I knew what would push his buttons.” I laugh, the sound soft and choked.

“He was gay, Miller, I’m pretty sure.” He’s rubbing my back. My cheek’s pressed against his chest, and although it makes me kind of nervous, I like it. I try to keep my voice steady and clear.

“I think he was an alum of the program, and that his parents started it.” I shut my eyes and fill my lungs and focus on the warm weight of his arms around me. “Anyway, I gained the weight back. Feeding tube out. All the IVs out, and Paul—he knew me by then. I had asked before if he’d been fucking Riley; I let him know that Riley mattered. So he brings her in, and he says we can both leave if I’ll fuck her, right? Both her and me.” Josh hugs me tighter, like he knows this part is one of the worst for me to think about.

“And you would think I might have done it, right? Someone was going to, after all. She wasn’t resisting. Even if she had…”

I draw my shoulders in, and Miller wraps himself more tightly around me.

“Anyway.” My voice is rough as fuck. “I didn’t do it. Paul sent everybody out. I was still weak, and…Paul Tasered me and turned me over.” My chest shakes on a silent sob. I manage to keep from getting worse, but now I’m shaking. Miller’s rubbing me down.

“I’ve got you, angel.” His cheek’s pressed against the top of my head. Fuck, it feels so good for him to hold me. Thinking that makes more tears come. How happy I feel, even telling him this.

“He pulled my pants down, and he tried to get his dick into me.” Miller holds me so tight. “I was fighting. We were on the floor, and I was losing my mind…and somehow I got his throat. And when I squeezed…”

“You’re okay, angel.” His hand cradles my head.

“Somehow,” I whisper. “He had a stroke.”

I wipe my face with a hand. “I thought I killed him. But I didn’t. Then I got strapped down to the bed, and the staff called my mom. And she took me back home from Alton.”

His hand, softer on my back now, stroking. I like it.

“When I got home to Richmond, I was fucked in the head. So my mom sent me off to this psych place called Sheppard Pratt. She told me to pull it together, but don’t tell anyone. Or they’d find out…about what I did to Paul.”

I rub my face, take a few deep breaths. “I was there for a long time, at SP. Like around six months. And they diagnosed a million things wrong with me. Not PTSD. They had no idea. I wasn’t getting better, of course. Picked up smoking, though. And then they thought they would try ECT. You know…electroconvulsive therapy. So they did that. It was fine, and then I went to my mom’s. I told her I wanted to move down with Dad. But it wasn’t because I wanted to,” I rasp out. “I was going to hang myself. I had it all in my Jeep.”

“Angel…”

I lean back a little, so his grip loosens on me. His hand’s still on my shoulder, but he’s no longer holding me. I look down at the couch again, feeling worse now. My throat feels tight and sore, and I just want to scream at how unfair it all is. That I don’t remember.

“I don’t remember what happened after that point.” My voice sounds terse. “But since I wrote a love letter to you, and the letter said I’d link back up with you as soon as I did ECT again, I’m guessing we met and…things happened. According to what Mom said, Carl told her I was gay. The only way I know this is through a letter I wrote you and didn’t mail, but I think Carl was just telling her, thinking she didn’t know. And Mom lost her shit. She called me and threatened me. She said I better do something about it, go inpatient again, or she’d tell the cops I hurt Paul. And that I went crazy. Something she always believed, I think.” I blow a breath out, drag another one in. I rub my forehead. “Guess it’s easier to think that than to think that I was catatonic at her house because they really hurt me.”

Josh rubs my shoulder.

“So that’s what happened,” I rasp. “Last Thanksgiving, Mom said I had to come home, and go back to Sheppard Pratt. Do more ECT, and get back on my meds. And I thought if I told you…” I shake my head, wishing I remembered any of this. “From the letter, it looks like I thought that if I told you that, you’d take it hard. So I just ghosted, with a plan to get in touch in a few weeks. I did a few sessions okay. And every time, I wrote your name on my arm. ‘Miller.’ I knew forgetting was a possible side effect. But since it didn’t happen before, I guess I wasn’t worried.

“I don’t know. But I woke up one time with no memory of ever going to Fairplay. And I had your name on my arm.” I feel him inhale. I’m too chicken shit to look up at him. “Took me months to figure out I had a stepbro surnamed Miller. Got to Bama, started stalking you like crazy. I would feel this clawing, anxious thing when I would watch you.” I have to stop and swallow just remembering that feeling. “I think I missed you,” I rasp, “but I just didn’t know.”

I lift my head, and find tears running down his cheeks. He wipes at them, and I want to get up and run—just so I don’t have to be this person anymore.

“I don’t know how it was before,” I rasp, “but I’m fucked up. As you can see. I might not be who you were thinking. Or what you would want in college.” I swallow. “I can tell from your stuff that you’ve been having fun. And I can’t do that with the football…you know.”

A few tears fall, and I wipe at them. My throat is so tight. “I’m not flowers and sunshine and that shit. It seems like I didn’t tell you this story before. Anyway.” I wrap my arms around myself, feeling kind of dizzy. “I guess I just…thought I could go right back to you. After the ECT. I thought I could do it again. But it wiped me out from a few weeks before I left for Fairplay. I might get the memories back, or might not. I remember a few little things, but that’s it.”

Tears are dripping out of my eyes non-stop. I wipe them, breathing deep so I won’t break down. “I feel sorry that I put you through not knowing. That I figured it would all work out. And never mailed that letter.” I rub my eyes again and look at Miller through the blur of my tears. “I’m kind of sorry that you got involved with me.” My voice cracks. “Because on Snapchat, you seemed sad and all.” I start to lose my shit there—with Josh looking at me with his wet, hurt eyes. “I didn’t mean to mess you up, too.”

Josh

He keeps his emotions mostly under control as he tells me a story so horrific that it almost seems made up—I fucking want it to be fake—and then he starts to lose it when he says he’s sorry he hurt me. It’s quiet at first. He puts his face in his hands, and I scoot closer, desperate to hold him again.

When I touch his arm, he tenses and looks up and he says, “Sorry,” and I notice that his eyes are strange. They look dazed…like, unfocused.

I realize he’s breathing pretty fast. It reminds me of the thing he used to do after he first woke from a nightmare, where he’d kind of zone out.

“Hey, Ez.” I touch his shoulder lightly. “Let’s go to my room, okay? That hit pretty hard for me, and I just wanna hold you again. If it’s okay.”

He nods once, and I can tell that he’s not tracking. Fuck. I take his hand—his clammy, shaking hand—and lead him to my bed, and he just stands there, so I lie down and beckon him onto the mattress with me. He moves almost stiffly onto his back, but I can’t let that fly.

I whisper, “We like to lie on our sides, facing one another. Is that okay? Or do you want me behind you, big spoon? ”

“Either way,” he manages. His lips are trembling. His eyes look so dazed. He’s shivering a little—shaking, I guess—and in that second, I can feel the full weight of how broken he is, and it’s so gut-wrenching I want to sob.

Tears are dripping down his cheeks, and he’s so pale and haunted, but his eyes follow me as I get onto my knees, and on his face there is a look of concern.

“You don’t have to,” he starts.

I lie down beside him, and I hug the shit out of my Ezra. The sick feeling I’ve had—it gets driven away by this feeling where my stomach coils and my chest goes all warm and achy, and all I want to do is hold him for a lifetime. Till he’s okay again. Till he feels good.

I’m kissing his cheeks and forehead, stroking my hands up and down his back and his shoulders. I hug him tight, and he starts shaking harder.

“Sorry,” he grits. He feels tense in my arms.

“No, angel. Don’t be sorry for anything.”

“It’s just…old adrenaline,” he whimpers.

“I know.”

“Sorry I can’t even tell you without…”

“Feeling little echoes from it?” I rub his back…rubbing him good and steady. “Put your cheek right under my throat. Hold onto me tight, Ez. That’s the way we like to do it. Make it so there’s no air between us. Then just cry if it’s in there. Don’t cry by yourself. Cry so I can hold you. That’s the only thing I want.”

So he does. He sobs, soft and broken, it breaks my heart into a million pieces. His body trembles, and at one point he can’t get his breath, so I cup my hands around his mouth and blow my breath into his lungs.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps, still twitching from the aftershocks of crying. His eyelids lift open slightly. “Miller?”

“Yeah, Ez? ”

“Feels good…with you.” He wraps his arm around me and scoots close, and I hold him as tight as I can.

“I love you,” I say. “I’ve got you. You’re mine, and I’ve been waiting for you, so I can wrap you up and never let a damn thing ever hurt you again. Not without going through me first. I know you’re bigger, but I need to take care of you,” I whisper. “I already knew from the nightmares that you had in Fairplay someone hurt you. Now I want to murder that guy Paul, and everybody who was there. But that’s another story. Sorry I said that,” I add.

“You’re as good as I thought, Mills,” Ez whispers. Then his body twitches, and he’s asleep.