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It’s finally happening.
Two years ago, I got a call from an unknown number with a Burdyn, Indiana area code.
To this day, I still don’t know how Parker Chastain found me. But when he revealed why he was contacting me…
Well, I can’t say I was happy about it. Not at first. Not for a while.
As I would come to find out, Parker transferred to Canaan Academy—willingly—almost a year after I had left, all in an effort to avenge his late brother and take them down from the inside out. His brother, who shared a similar fate to me…but wasn’t as fortunate enough to walk away from it.
Given that Parker was just a teenager at the time, he didn’t get too far with his plan.
But that was years ago—and now Parker was a grown man.
At first, I wanted no part of whatever he was trying to do. But he was insistent on at least meeting up and hearing him out.“I have an in,”he’d said.
“Why me?”I remember asking, seeing as I was far from the first or last victim of the Pastors at Canaan. There’s likely hundreds who’ve suffered at their hands since they opened in 1976. And I wasn’t even there when Parker attended, so it just felt…odd that he sought me out, especially when I was nowhere even in the vicinity.
Turns out there was a reason he wanted to chat with me specifically...
On the dock, a gust of wind blows through, tousling our hair and bringing a welcomed chill to my skin. “Adam?” I question softly.
“Parker said he’s….coping as well as to be expected,” Nolan says, somewhat stiffly.
To this day, Nolan still struggles to forgive the guy who befriended and tricked me when I was seventeen, leading me to months of hell at the abusive hands of Pastor Gabriel and his minions.
It was a cold, winter day two years ago when I was supposed to meet with Parker for the first time to hear him out, to see if I wanted any part in this—to see if I felt like I could handle it.
He made the trip up to Vermont, much to my relief. Going back to Indiana was not on my list of things I ever wanted to do. It’d been about six years at that point since I left, and I never looked back.
I still haven’t, and I don’t think I ever will.
I can remember that day clearly—the moment vividly.
Walking into that diner. Heading for the back corner booth where Parker told me he was sitting…
Halting in place when I noticed he didn’t come alone.
I barely gave the unfamiliar guy with short brown hair and pierced ears a second of my attention. I only had eyes for the guy seated next to him. The one with wavy black hair tinged purple and striking blue eyes and hunched narrow shoulders.
Adam.
To say I reacted poorly to that little sneak attack would be an understatement. And I’m pretty sure the only reason Nolan, who I insisted join me that day, didn’t punch either of them in the face was because he was too busy dealing with me.
We left immediately.
It took several days of Parker calling and texting me, and Nolan threatening to get a restraining order, before I finally just…cracked, in a sense. All thanks to a couple messages from an unknown number from the same area code as Parker’s.
Sorry won’t ever be enough. I’ll never forgive myself for what I put you and the others through. I wish I could say it was because I didn’t have a choice, but that’s not true. But this is bigger than me…bigger than us. I’m trying to make this right in the only way I can. For you and the others… But mostly for him. - A
And then a second one came in, dropping my heart somewhere in my stomach.
I love him. And I need those assholes to pay for what they’ve done. Please.
Parker,I realized immediately who he was talking about. He loves Parker. He’s not…he wasn’t straight, and just doing his step-father’s bidding to weed us out. He wasone of us.
Heisone of us.
And just like that, it hit me—
