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“Oh, I’m used to it,” she said, exaggerated optimism making her voice pitch higher. “That’s just how my mom is, you know? Always has been. I told her she’d lose me...” Her optimistic expression froze into place. Her lower lip trembled for a moment. “She probably won’t care. I don’t fit into her perfect little world anymore.”
She cleared her throat, chugging down the rest of her juice. I hated to see her burying it: shoving the pain down, pretending it didn’t matter, a mask of smiles.
“Come on,” I said, rising from my seat and taking what was left of my food. “Let’s go for a drive.”
***
Jess picked the music, choosing something upbeat with a heavy bassline, and we drove around Wickeston with no particular destination in mind.
But eventually, without even meaning to, I drove down the familiar streets of a suburban neighborhood. It was quiet, mostly older houses on small plots of land, as opposed to the newer cookie-cutter housing tracts.
After a while, I pulled over and parked. The street was lined with trees, and birdsong filled the air. Ahead of us, at the far end of the street, was a familiar two-story house. There was one car in the driveway, a Toyota SUV that my mom had been steadfastly driving for years. I could only assume Dad was at work, as usual. Charlie would probably be in school.
We sat there for a while in silence. Jess wanted to ask; she kept moving slightly in her seat, drawing in her breath as if she was preparing to speak. Maybe she thought it would upset me to ask, or maybe she had her own shit to worry about and didn’t need my problems poured on her too.
“Jason...” When she did speak, as gentle as her voice was, it still felt like being prodded by something sharp. “Are you okay?”
I dreaded that question. Always had. Most people didn’t want an honest answer when they asked. They wanted a convenient answer, something that wouldn’t require them to feel anything or offer any sympathy.
Jess asked because she cared; I knew that. But the more cynical interpretation still gripped me.
“No,” I said. I turned off the engine, sighing in the silence that followed. “I’m not okay, Jess. It’s...it’s my little brother’s birthday. Charlie. He’s fourteen today.”
Why the hell was I complaining? What right did I have to sit here whining about this? My life was good. I was fortunate as hell with the things I had. Why should I complain when there were people who had ended up in far worse circumstances? People who had no one?
Sometimes I felt guilty that it hurt at all.
“Is this your old neighborhood?” she said, her words prodding me gently when I was silent for a while. “Are we here to see him? I’d...I’d love to meet him.”
God, she meant it so sincerely. She was looking around, trying to figure out which house belonged to my family, no doubt. But this wasn’t going to be some sweet visit like it was with Vincent’s family; she wouldn’t have dinner with my mom or hear terrible jokes from my dad.
“My parents won’t let me see him,” I said. “I haven’t...not since...not since I left. Since they made me leave.”
She reached across the seat and laid her hand on mine. She didn’t say anything ...and I was so damn thankful she didn’t. Because this was the part where people apologized, where they said howsorrythey were. But sorrow didn’t help, pity got me nowhere. Sympathy didn’t fix my parents’ bigoted views; it didn’t erase the ideas they put in my brother’s head.
Her silence made me feel like I could keep talking. When people expressed sadness for me, it shut me up quick. If my words were causing pain, why keep talking? But she was quiet, holding that space for me and touching me to let me know she was there.
“When you talk to Lucas or Manson about their childhoods, it’s obvious how it hurt them,” I said, starting slowly. “It would be clear to any decent person, I think, that how their parents treated them was fucked up. But for me...it’s not quite like that. My childhood was nice. It was calm, quiet. My parents didn’t yell, they rarely spanked us for anything. My mom stayed home with us all day, read us bedtime stories, played with us. We ate dinner together as a family every night, we went to church every Sunday, we took family vacations and had a big party on Thanksgiving. That’s the kind of childhood you’re supposed to want. But...it wasn’t that simple.”
For a moment, I swore I saw movement in the upper window of the house. Maybe Mom was cleaning, humming “Amazing Grace” as she dusted the windowsills and swept the floors. She’d always loved to sing. She was a shy woman, but when she joined the church choir, she had loved getting to perform.
“It’s strange that I can think of my family, and the way I was raised, and feel like it was good. But it was, in so many ways. It's just that all that goodness, all that love, affection, and kindness, was conditional. It’s really foolish to think unconditional love even exists because it really doesn’t. Not from family, friends, lovers. Everything has a condition. And if you don’t meet them...”
I hated thinking about it. I’d replayed the day they found out everything again and again. The way they’d looked when they opened my bedroom door and said that we “needed to talk.” How they’d taken me out to the garage to discuss it, because they didn’t want my little brother to hear them yelling — berating me. Telling me I was disgusting, that I was a sick, confused sinner. That if I stopped now, I could be forgiven. I could “fix” it. I could fix myself.
But I wasn’t broken. I’d tried so hard to tell them, to make them understand. They’d only gotten angrier. My explanations were defiance, my desperate insistence was seen as me being lost to sin. They claimed they would have rather discovered I was addicted to drugs, or that I’d gotten someone pregnant.
But no. The worst thing I could have done was fall in love with a boy.
The next worst thing was to refuse to renounce it.
“Jason...” She grasped my hand, twining her fingers through mine. It was an anchor back to reality, a reminder that I’d moved past that event, past that pain.
“It was worth it, to give it up,” I said. “Even though I was scared. I was really lucky, honestly. I’ve known kids who ended up on the streets for years after their parents kicked them out, kids who died. That could have been me, easily.”
That was why Lucas had given me that warning back then, that was why he’d questioned if I should just keep my head down. Because he knew what happened to kids like me.
“My parents tried to use my safety as a bargaining chip. If I did what they wanted, then I’d be safe. I’d be cared for. I’d have a roof over my head, food, a bed.” The fear still felt so real. It still lived in me, that terror that everything I knew and needed could be snatched out from under my feet with the snap of someone’s fingers. “But I had to live a lie. I had to pretend to be someone I wasn’t, and keep pretending. I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t...I couldn’t walk away from Vince. I remember my mom screaming at me that if I showed up at Vincent’s door needing a place to stay, he’d turn me away. They tried to make it out like he was using me, like he’d corrupted me.”
