It Looks Like This (20 page)

I say, Yeah.

I know that’s what I’m supposed to say.

I go upstairs.

I’m leaving tomorrow and I need to pack.

I hear Dad’s question in my head again. You want to change, don’t you?

I’ve never really thought about it. It sort of makes my heart beat a bit faster, so I try to put it out of my mind.

I open my closet door and look at it. There are a few jackets and nice clothes. A small luggage bag tucked away in the corner, the same one I packed for Thanksgiving.

I stand that way for a while, just staring inside at nothing.

Then I close it and walk over to my computer.

Without really thinking about what I’m doing, I log on to Facebook.

There’s another message for me, and for a second I think Victor sent something else. But it’s from Sean.

I blink a couple times and open the message.

It says:

hey. mike. jesus. im sorry about yr birthday. im so screwed, never seen dad like t his. don’t know what to do. can i see you? i can get out if i need to but if you cant thats fine, i can just go to yr window. whatevr. i just want to see you.

There is a blank line after this and then:

im sorry i pushed you.

I lean back in my chair, staring at the last line. At the period at the end of it.

I think about Dad’s question again.

I think about Victor, about getting my shoulder slammed in the hallway or my books knocked out of my hand or the drawing he did and threw at me in Art.

Pastor Clark’s sermon, and Toby arguing about it with Terry.

Grandma whispering with Dad in her kitchen.

Sean pushing me away.

Mostly I think about the video, the sound of the breaking glass and the muffled laughter and me standing there, just standing there without a shirt on looking really dumb, and how much I hate it.

I lean forward again and put my fingers up just above the keyboard. They hover there for a second.

Then I type out a message and hit Send before I look up to read it.

I hug Mom and Toby good-bye in the driveway. Both of them are crying a bit.

Dad drives. We don’t talk much. I ask about school and he says I might be able to make it up in the summer so I don’t have to repeat the year. I hadn’t thought of that before, repeating the year.

I think about Ronald and Jared. How weird it would be for them to be sophomores and for me to be stuck in freshman year again with everyone younger than me. All because of what happened at Mill Point Beach.

But other than that we don’t talk much.

Mostly I just sleep.

Or I pretend to.

We take the highway through Suffolk and Franklin along the bottom edge of Virginia. It’s a long drive; winding, twisting roads toward the end, flat but pretty woodsy.

It’s kind of nice, really.

We drive forever and then suddenly we turn off the highway and onto a back road. We come to a large campus of buildings tucked away in a cleared section of forest.

There’s a big marble slab at the entrance to the campus that says
INNERPEACE
in the same blue as the website.

Dad parks and we walk up to the main building and into what looks like a reception area.

There’s a sign for registering new arrivals. We go there and Dad gets some paperwork from the lady behind the desk. There’s no one else.

I kind of zone out, just looking around.

Everything seems clean and really still. Like it was just scrubbed and polished.

I say, I gotta go to the bathroom.

The lady behind the desk points down the hall to the right.

She says, Just down there, first door.

She smiles and I mumble, Thank you, and walk to the restroom.

Everything is clean and sparkly in here too. There are big dividers between the urinals. Bigger than they really need to be. I look at this and then I see that there are no doors to the stalls.

I pee and wash my hands with soap and dry them on a paper towel. Every noise I make sounds a lot louder in the silence.

When I come back out, there is a man talking to Dad. He looks a bit younger than Dad, maybe in his thirties or something. Sandy hair, kind of wavy. Light skin. Khaki jacket and gray pants.

I stop and look at them, and then the man sees me and smiles. Dad turns around.

He says, Mike, this is the youth pastor, Mr. Landis.

Mr. Landis smiles wider and reaches out to shake my hand.

He says, Good to meet you, Mike. I lead the program for teens and kids, so we’ll be spending a lot of time together.

I nod but don’t say anything.

Dad looks strained, especially next to the cheerful Pastor Landis.

Dad says, Okay, you’re all checked in. I’m going to head back.

He puts a rough hand on my shoulder and says,

I’ll see you in a month.

And then he leaves my bag at my feet and turns and walks out.

I watch Dad head back to the visitors’ lot. He doesn’t turn around.

Then Pastor Landis says,

Why don’t I show you up to your room?

These are the rules at InnerPeace:

There’s no contact with the outside world. No visitors and we can’t call or write anyone.

We can’t go into town. We have to stay on campus for the full month.

We have to do everything the camp administrators say.

No Abercrombie or Calvin Klein. No dyed hair. No sports bras for girls. No cologne for boys.

Twenty minutes per day in the bathroom, total.

No keeping a journal and no drawing.

That’s it but that covers a lot.

There’s a strict daily schedule for each day. Lights on at six o’clock. Morning prayers, Bible studies, sermons. Youth Group counseling, Small Group counseling, One-on-One counseling. Private Reflection. Supervised Outside Activities. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Lights out at nine thirty.

They searched my bag the first day to make sure I didn’t have a phone, computer, anything that would connect me with the outside.

I didn’t. Dad read the brochure carefully before we left.

My dorm room is small and bare. Two beds on either side. Two small dressers. Two closets. Two desks. Wooden walls and floor and furniture. There’s a small suite bathroom that we share with another room.

My roommate is Timothy. He’s two years older than me. From somewhere in Michigan.

That’s all I really know about him. He doesn’t talk much and neither do I. He has short cropped blond hair and small-frame glasses and a medium build. He wears polos tucked neatly into khakis.

I told him when I first met him that I used to live in Wisconsin on the other side of the lake from Michigan. He mumbled something and went back to reading.

He reads a lot.

I’m in a small classroom, no windows but bright fluorescent bulbs all over the ceiling.

Sixteen foldout chairs arranged in a circle, all of us facing one another.

On my right is a girl about my age, short hair, slumped in her chair. To my left is another girl but a bit older, longer hair, stony expression.

Timothy is almost directly across. Polo, khakis, glasses. Eyes downcast.

The person speaking isn’t Pastor Landis but one of his assistants, Jesse, who leads our Small Group.

I don’t know Jesse’s last name. He’s just Jesse.

He’s talking to the girl on my right, Liz. Polite and cheerful but firm, like always. Liz is sort of the troublemaker in Small Group. I mean it’s not like she misbehaves or anything, but she questions everything.

Jesse never gets annoyed. He doesn’t tell her she’s wrong; he tells her she’s misguided. He doesn’t get angry; he gets disappointed. He tells her he understands.

Liz looks back at him as he speaks, letting him finish, but her foot is tapping pretty fast under her chair.

He finishes and she says, Fine, but you still haven’t said what the harm is. That’s what I don’t get and what no one will tell me.

Jesse nods as she speaks, then looks around at all of us.

He says, Does anyone want to take a stab at Liz’s question?

Jesse does this a lot, makes sure everyone’s involved.

No one answers and his eyes fall on me.

He says, Mike, what about you? Do you know what harm acting on homosexual urges can cause?

My face is warm. I stare at the ground and mumble a response.

I say, I dunno.

Liz glances over at me and I look at her and I see the faintest smile. She thinks I’m defending her.

Jesse looks between us two for a minute and opens his mouth, but then Timothy cuts him off.

Timothy says, The harm is that you’re more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases. Practicing homosexuals are also more likely to suffer from depression and drug abuse, and their relationships are at least twice as likely to fail as heterosexual relationships. According to studies, it’s also not an ideal environment in which to raise children.

He speaks low and fast, eyes still downcast. Body rigid. Everyone looks at him, and there’s silence when he finishes. This is the most I’ve heard him speak, the most any of us have heard him speak.

Jesse smiles.

He says, That was very eloquent, Timothy.

Timothy’s eyes flicker up for a fraction of a second and then back down.

Liz is scowling at him.

The Youth Group is divided by age. There’s a College group, a Mid-Teens group, Early Teens, and Pre-Teens.

I’m in the Mid-Teens group but barely. It’s for fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds. I think I’m the youngest.

We do everything together: Small Group, Bible studies, morning prayers. Everyone has a roommate in their same age group. Even meals and outdoor activities are with the other Mid-Teens, except the other Youth Group ages are also with us for those parts.

Most of us in the Youth Group are in high school. There aren’t that many Pre-Teens. The ones that are here all look scared, all the time.

Even though we see other Youth Group kids, they keep us separated from the Adult Group. I mean sometimes we see them walking around campus but that’s it.

At lunch I sit with the other Mid-Teens.

Timothy and Liz. Rebecca, the girl who was sitting on my left in Small Group. Then there’s also Gerald, a junior who always acts nervous; Patrick, who has a buzz cut and ears that kind of stick out; Kelvin, a Vietnamese kid who doesn’t speak that much English; and Benny, the oldest kid in the group, who turns eighteen in a few weeks and barely talks to anyone.

Then a few other kids whose names I haven’t learned yet, all guys. Liz and Rebecca are the only girls in the group.

We’re all at one big table, sitting close but not really talking.

Not too far away are the tables with Early Teens and Pre-Teens. Off in the corner by themselves is College.

I count and there are forty-eight of us in Youth Group.

Forty-eight kids eating lunch and it’s almost totally quiet.

Then Liz says, Do you have any STDs, Timothy?

A couple kids look up. Timothy is still eating his mashed potatoes like he didn’t hear anything. Liz looks at him a moment and then around at the rest of us.

She says, Do any of you have an STD?

No one says anything and she looks back at Timothy.

She says, No one? Funny, isn’t it, Timothy? Fifteen of us and not one case of AIDS.

Timothy looks up at this.

He says, It’s not a guarantee. It’s just statistically proven that homosexuals are more likely to contract HIV.

Liz says, Yeah, more likely. Isn’t it also more likely for black people to have AIDS than whites? Should black people stop trying to be black, then?

Timothy looks back at his plate and sculpts his mashed potatoes with his fork.

He says, HIV is just one aspect. It’s one negative. Like depression and drug use and relationship instability. There are all of these negatives when you’re a practicing homosexual; it’s like everything is working against you. There are all these obstacles to being a homosexual already, and that’s before you even consider that it goes against the obvious purpose of sex. I’m just saying that maybe the natural world is trying to tell you something, and maybe you should listen.

His voice is low and controlled and a bit nasal, almost like Jared’s. But Jared usually sounds relaxed and bored when he talks. Timothy sounds a little tense.

Liz points her fork at him.

She says, How do you listen? You talk about nature and you know what? Nature is telling me that I like lady parts. I can’t help —

He says, You think you can’t, but that’s tempta —

She yells, I know I can’t!

Rebecca says, Liz.

Everyone gets quiet and looks at Rebecca, the tall girl with the strained face. Liz whips around to face her.

There’s a moment and then Rebecca says, Let’s just eat.

Liz turns to Timothy, who is staring at his plate but not moving. As if waiting for an explosion. Then she takes another bite from her plate.

After a moment, Timothy goes back to his mashed potatoes.

Rebecca is the only one Liz listens to.

Outside it’s chilly and brisk but sunny. We’re in a courtyard in the campus interior, where we go a couple times a day for Supervised Outdoor Activities.