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His brows notch, and he shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
I lean over just a little, massaging my temples with my fingertips. I didn’t figure. That letter I wrote him, which I read right after I listened to his voice mails—it said I didn’t want him to know. Fuck that shit, though. Fuck the secrets. If I’m moving forward…if I’m ever going to get well or whatever…I have to tell him.
“Do you have a drink here?” I ask.
He frowns.
“Do you want to pour one?”
“For you?”
I shake my head. “For yourself.”
“No, Ez.” He scoots a little closer to me, looking like he wants to touch me, but he doesn’t. “I don’t need a drink to listen to you.”
Six
Ezra
My 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.
