felt like I couldn’t get enough air, and I wanted to scream. Mom hugged me and I leaned over so I could rest my head on her shoulder, wondering when she had gotten shorter, and I inhaled the smell of her perfume. When she let go, Dad just nodded at me and took her arm. She looked back at me as she went through the door, her sweet face so sad, and I had to hang onto the back of my chair to keep from running after them.
They were leaving me in this prison!
Strickland picked up his phone and spoke to someone about sending Charles in to get me. Then he said, “Do you have any questions, Taylor?”
I tried not to shake as I sat down again. There was one thing I was dying to ask: How many other kids here are in for the same thing as me? How many other queers do you have?
I took a deep breath and asked the only thing I could think of that he was likely to answer. “What’s SafeZone supposed to do for me?”
He could almost have closed his eyes and taken a nap, his response seemed that memorized. “SafeZone provides residents with an opportunity to maintain an internal focus while remaining physically present in an environment designed for their enlightenment.” He stopped there. I waited for him to go on, ’cause that didn’t really tell me anything, but he gave me this half-smile that didn’t affect any other part of his face, like he was done. Like I was expected to know what the hell that canned statement meant. Then he said, “Other questions?”
I shook my head. MWBRL. I mean, More Will Be Revealed Later. Isn’t that what the Bible says? Though I had my doubts about getting an answer to the SafeZone question.
We sat there in silence, him pretending to read something on his desk, me trying not to stare at the crucifix and clenching my hands so hard my knuckles were white, until someone knocked on the frame of the open office door.
“Ah, Charles. Come in. I want you to meet Taylor Adams, your new roommate. Taylor, this is Charles Courtney. Charles will show you around the facility, where the meeting rooms are, the dining hall, bathrooms, laundry room, library—everything. And then he’ll take you to the chapel, as I mentioned earlier. Are you ready?”
Was I ready? I was ready, but not for what he meant. I was ready to run screaming from the place. Bad enough I’d be trapped here for six weeks minimum, but to have to deal with Charles Courtney was adding insult to injury. He was maybe seventeen, a year older than me, tall, so clean-cut he looked artificial. Light brown hair at what was certainly the perfect length for this place, thin nose, pale brown eyes, and no lips. Oh, and his nose sat a little high in the air. Kind of an Aryan android.
He smiled, or did something he meant to pass as a smile, and his thin lips got even thinner. “Taylor. Welcome.” He held his hand out and I had little choice but to stand and shake it. Then he turned to Strickland. “Sir, if Taylor is ready, we’ll leave you now.”
“Taylor, I’ll see you in a few days—when you’re out of SafeZone—for our first talk. God bless you.”
Yeah. Gesundheit to you, too.
The first place Charles showed me was the laundry room, following a map of the place that he gave me.
“This will be your first work assignment,” he told me. “They’ll show you what to do. It’s the first one because it’s pretty straightforward work and there won’t be any need for you to speak. You’ll be here for a week.”
He looked like he expected me to say something, but I was practicing. Practicing not speaking. Wouldn’t do to fail at SafeZone, would it?
Dining hall was next. “If you’re lucky, Reverend Bartle will release you in time for you to get something to eat. You might need to get here as quickly as you can or you’ll miss dinner. I’ll keep an eye out for you.” To which I was dying to respond, Don’t do me any favors.
We went through the meeting rooms, starting with a really huge space that had nothing in it. “After dinner we’ll come to this room for Fellowship, for around half an hour, and then we’ll have an evening Prayer Meeting. We don’t always have one on Sundays, but this week we do.”
Fellowship? Well, I couldn’t participate in that; how can you have Fellowship with people you don’t even know if you can’t talk? Now, Fellowship with Will—that I could do with very little talking. But Charles didn’t give me time to dwell on any images.
The meeting rooms, where Charles said our evening Prayer Meetings would take place, all had names from the Old Testament. He stood proudly in front of the one named Isaiah.
“This one is ours. We meet here after Fellowship.”
Then he led the way past Ezekiel, Obadiah, Esther, Daniel, Ruth, and Malachi (I kind of liked that one) to the boys’ wing, pointing down the hall toward the girls’ rooms as we passed it. “We’re not to go into the girls’ wing under any circumstances.”
No worries.
Before going to the chapel, Charles took me to the bathroom. There were no urinals, just stalls with doors only halfway up so you could see the back of anyone standing in there, and probably the face of anyone sitting down.
“I don’t need to piss,” I told Charles, which was true, but mostly I didn’t want him standing there watching the back of my head while I took a leak.
“Maybe not now,” he said, a warning in his tone, “but you won’t get another chance for a while.”
I shrugged and went into a stall, unzipped, and let go of the little there was. What I was really feeling was like I needed to take a shit. My intestines were churning, and when that happens I usually get diarrhea. But I was damned if I would do that with him standing there.
I left the booth and headed toward the door, but Charles stopped me. “We always wash our hands here, Taylor.”
I looked at him like he had three heads, but he just gestured toward the sinks. I thought of flipping him the finger but decided it wasn’t worth it. There would be more important things to lock horns over.
The chapel was pretty spartan. White paint everywhere, and not much in the way of amenities. No cushions in sight. And there was this humongous cross that had to have been designed for a bigger space hanging in the middle of the room, suspended from the ceiling. Reverend Bartle was kneeling in front of the altar, head bowed over folded hands, and he didn’t look up when we came in. I expected Charles to say something, but he just stood at the back, hands folded in front of him (hiding an erection, Charles?), waiting. Finally Reverend Bartle stood up slowly and turned toward us.
“Ah, boys. Come forward, please.”
I’d met Reverend Bartle once before, when my folks had driven me up to see the place. It had been a grueling forty-minute trip, with me sulking in the backseat, terrified and frantically searching my brain for ways to convince my parents that this was a bad idea. When I met him, Reverend Bartle had seemed—well, fatherly, I guess, in a religious kind of way. Maybe patronizing is closer. Tall, with white hair and sharp eyes. They were probably blue, but they seemed almost metallic.
Things had happened pretty quickly once my dad decided it was going to be Straight to God for me. And here I’d been looking forward to the best summer of my life, spending as much time as possible with Will. We’d been a kind of secret item all through the school year. Sometimes it was super hard not to sit with him when we were in the same class, not to hold hands every chance we got, not to go out on real dates. Hell, I even wished we could have gone to junior prom together. Wouldn’t that have turned some heads? But we didn’t need dates. We just needed to be together.
So summer was going to be a special time for us as a couple. Until I was practically forced to confess my “sin.” To tell my folks I’m gay.
It was their own fault, actually. Pestering me about girls. I’d taken stupid Rhonda to the prom when they made it obvious they weren’t going to stop poking at me until I did, but that wasn’t enough for them. It was kind of like, now that I’d taken her out, all of a sudden they noticed I didn’t take any other girls out. So when they failed