“Inappropriate?” Bren shrieks, causing Tyler’s mom to cringe. “The fuck?”
“I don’t want my kids being taught by a faggot!” An asshole is standing at the podium without being addressed first. “I ain’t raising my son to suck cock.”
“Suck this–” Bren lunges from his seat, shocking us all. Kade catches Bren before his fist makes contact with the man’s face.
“Duane! Jack! Get our boy out of here!” Kade breathlessly demands as he struggles with a flailing Bren. “This is why I didn’t want you here. This!”
Snarling like a rabid animal, it takes Warren to contain Bren. “Knock it off. Yer making this worse.”
Three more assholes shout slurs through the microphone while we watch Bren get towed out the back doors to the auditorium. “A man who’d diddle his own foster brother ain’t worth having ‘round here. That ain’t the Lord’s path. That’s incest.”
“Seriously?” Francis turns around in his seat, resting on his knees, and talks right to the old man at the podium. “For a God-fearing man, you sure did miss the sermon about what incest meant. Look at your six fingers, and then say that again.” A low rumble of laughter rolls through the auditorium, and Francis turns around looking proud of himself.
“May I say something, Superintendent Ross?” I rise to my feet, not wishing to prolong this more than necessary. “Facts, not hillbilly old wives tales, bigotry, or the bastardization of religion?”
“You practiced that, didn’t ya?” Penny whispers loudly, embarrassing the hell out of me.
I don’t wait for Tyler’s mother to give me the go-ahead since it’s been a free-for-all so far. I don’t bother with the podium, either. I hop up on stage instead, carrying my packet of facts.
“Wynn.” Superintendent Ross sighs my name. “I hate this. I do. You’ve put me in a hard place. Rules are rules. Kade took advantage of his position as a teacher when he began an inappropriate relationship with you.”
“I own that, I admit. But I don’t regret it.” I turn to face the crowded auditorium, clutching the packet to my chest. “Truths first. I’m Wynn Gillette. I grew up in the hollers but was adopted by Royce Kennedy a few months back. I’m a survivor of child abuse, and I tried to take my own life because of it. I’ve overcome a lot of things to be who I am today. I’m Rusty Knob’s Point Guard and will be their salutatorian come June. I have a basketball scholarship to West Virginia University. I’m three weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday, and I’m of the legal age of sexual consent in this state. I’m 6’3” and weigh 176 pounds. There is nothing about me that can be preyed upon.”
I turn around and flop the packet on the table resting before the members of the school board. “I know Kaden Marx broke your rules. But I’m going to point out some facts. I’ve known Kade since my birth. He is not Mr. Marx to me. He was my brother’s buddy, not my authority figure. I’m a senior, not a first grade student. Kade is twenty-three, and I’m going to be eighteen. That is the very definition of normal across the country. I ask, how was that inappropriate?”
Superintendent Ross reads from a book before her. “The rule states that a teacher cannot consort with a student of Kentwood Area School District. The non-tenured teacher will be terminated. I’m sorry, Wynn. It’s black and white.”
I reach for my packet, and then raise it. “There are forty-seven counts of black and white rule breaking in our school district going back to 1973, with not a single termination. Four were between a teacher of one school and a student from another. Twenty-one were with students in their class. Nineteen were with students below the age of sexual consent. Thirty-nine were male teachers with female students, with eight female teachers with male students. More than half were non-tenured, and no charges of molestation were brought against those who were abusing students who couldn’t legally consent.”
I flop the packet on the table– the sharp slap reverberating around the auditorium. “One single case of a male teacher with an adult male student. One case of termination.” I look out to the crowd but talk over my shoulder to the school board. “We all know you’re going to fire Kade and why. I just thought I’d educate everyone for the first time in this ignorant, goddamned high school.”
I jump down from the stage, rage boiling in my blood. Penny’s, “You did practice that, didn’t you?” grates on my nerves.
“Yeah,” I grunt absentmindedly. “Tyler’s mom is the one who gave me the packet.” I head straight for Kade. He’s stock-still, awaiting the decision. Both of us know what I said didn’t make a difference, but Tyler’s mom wanted me to do it anyway.
I lean down and press a kiss to Kade’s lips, but he doesn’t respond. “We’re going to be okay. I’m proud of you. I’m not sorry, and I don’t feel regret or guilt.” I kiss him one more time, just a press of a touch, and he presses back. “I love you,” I say for the first time.
I rise from our kiss to the backdrop of pure chaos erupting in the auditorium. I close my ears to what they say as I walk up the aisle with my head held high. I can’t listen to the moment they fire Kade.
I can’t.
We broke a rule everyone else has always broken, but we’re the only ones to suffer the consequences. If we didn’t want them to use their rules against us to push an agenda, than we shouldn’t have broken their rules.
To own our choices is to earn our consequences.
Goodbye
Warren said I wasn’t to drive up this road again until it didn’t make me feel the urge to off myself. I’m angry at the world at large, but more so myself. There is nothing that would force me to harm myself, because then I wouldn’t be able to target those who deserve my wrath.
It took me over six months to get the balls to get in my truck and head to Gillette Holler. The truck drives the path on autopilot, but to me it feels foreign yet familiar. Even in the dark, these trees, hills, fences, rocks, and soil look the same. Even the ruts in the dirt road haven’t changed.
I’m who’s different.
I huff a laugh when my headlights cast a beam on the sign Warren, Willa, and I made when I was a little shit. The project was my first, and it bred my love of working with my hands. I’d taken a hardwood board and chiseled the words into the sign, Willa had painted over the marks with white paint, and Warren nailed it to an old fence post at the end of our drive.
Gillette Holler
Rusty Knob WV
Lying half in a ditch and half on the road, even our welcome sign is done with life. Its creators have moved on, and it’s time to put it out of its misery. My hands clench on the steering wheel, and at the last second, I swerve to run the sign over.
In my rearview mirror, with a red glow cast from my taillights, I watch as the wood flips up, spirals in the air, and lands in the ditch.
Turning sharply to enter our old driveway, I say goodbye.
Shifting in park, I sit in the yard, looking out over Gillette Holler, just as I did on my last night. The night I should have died. The night the old Wynn Gillette did die.
My heart aches at the beauty of desolation and isolation the hollers offer. On this December night, the grass is white and shiny in my headlights-crystalized with ice. The clear sky shines countless stars overhead… and before me sits the shack of my childhood, agonizingly beautiful.
Between me and the shack stretches a few acres of the yard dumpster with its prehistoric remains of bygone useful items and empty soldiers in the war of alcoholism. A warm, yellow glow lights up the night, only this time it’s not from in between the slats of broken boards acting as siding. The shack now has a waterproof metal roof, painted siding, and brand-new windows.
Rage strikes me deep, but it quickly fades. At first I think my parents sold me for a roof and siding, then I realize they’d never be practical.
Royce Kennedy.
Dad.
Dad knew I’d come back here someday when the guilt got the best of me. How I’d worry about my daddy and momma, even after they sold me. The roof, siding, and windows
were Royce’s way of giving me comfort, removing the guilt I feel over abandoning my blood when they threw me away.
Movement catches my eye in the large picture window. When I sat here last, I had a shotgun barrel shoved beneath my chin with my finger pulling the trigger three times. No longer is the window broken, but the view never changes. Wasting away, Daddy’s in his chair, only it’s a new chair, arm bending to bring a beer to his lips. With Momma at his side, cigarette dangling from her withered fingertips.
No words need to be said, because none of them would be the healing kind. They would only drag me back down to who I used to be, and I won’t jeopardize my future by hearing them. I reach to twist the ignition key, starting my truck, and then I back up and drive away.
I never want to go back to who I used to be. I don’t look in my rearview mirror as I drive to who I’m going to become.
Kaden Marx
Wynn’s head is bent over his work, thoroughly engrossed to the point he doesn’t hear me step foot into his barn. His arm is furiously chiseling at a piece of beveled wood. It doesn’t matter how many times I look at the kid, I can’t believe he wants a thing to do with me.
Wynn says I’m the same Kade he used to know. I tend to agree with him. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see an adult. I don’t see the face and body of my dad staring back at me. The sad eyes of a boy marked for death gaze back at me from an emaciated, pockmarked face. When I shake someone’s hand, I don’t recognize mine unless I’d forgotten to use makeup on my scars that day.
I feel like a fraud– a skinwalker wearing my dad’s flesh.
“Hi!” Wynn finally notices me leaning against the wall. Probably because I was burning a hole into the side of his face with my gaze. I push away from the wall with a huge grin stretching my lips. The little shit always lights up like the goddamned Sun when I enter a room, so who am I to argue with what he sees in me?
“You’re smiling– does that mean?”
I hate bursting Wynn’s bubble, but… “I taught the first grade for exactly a year and a half. I have a degree in Elementary Education from Penn State, which took me four years of a heavy course load, followed by a year of working my ass off to get licensed, only to have that mean nothing because I’m gay and stole Rusty Knob’s golden boy.”
Wynn’s Adam’s Apple bobs when he swallows down his guilt. A small part of me wants to rub it in ever since that day six years ago when he broke me. But the larger part of me is in love with the little shit.
“I–” Wynn sets the chisel down on his worktable. I step forward to cut off his apology because I don’t need to hear it and he isn’t at fault.
“It’s our fault, but it’s not.” I lean my hip against the table, looking down at what Wynn’s working on with a raised brow. The kid is too fucking sweet for his own good. “I’m glad it’s Royce who’s out of four years’ worth of tuition. If I had to pay back student loans until I’m old and gray for a degree I can’t use, I’d probably kill myself or murder Kentwood Area School District’s entire school board– minus Miriam Ross that is. Then I’d chop off my dick for getting me in trouble and tear out my heart because I followed it.”
The choking sound Wynn makes in the back of his throat has me feeling satisfied, and that’s how much of a bastard I am. “Shh… It’s gonna be okay,” I murmur to soothe him because I made him hurt just so I could. My fingertips feather through the back of his curls. “This is for the best. I was too dumb to be a teacher anyway. I’m really not very smart.”
Bright blue eyes glare at me, and it makes me flash a devilish grin. “I’m not like you, Wynn,” I warn for the billionth time. “I’m not good. I’m selfish. I lie. I cheat. I break the rules because it feels good in the moment, and then it gives me an excuse to hate the world.”
“That’s not true!” The kid needs his head examined if he truly believes that. “I know the real you.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining.” I laugh without humor. “I like this guy you’ve made up in your head. But I wasn’t saving myself for you, no matter how romantic that sounds. The reason I didn’t fuck my roommate and his husband was because, even though I look hot now, it’s all a lie. I’m awkward and gross, inside and out.”
“I think you need more therapy.” Wynn gets up from his stool, but his next words rock me to my core. “I’ll go with you.”
My head cocks to the side, really, really looking at Wynn. “You’d do that for me?” He nods his head, forever compassionate and selfless. “Well, I’ve got nothing but time now.” I laugh for real this time, no longer sounding bitter and twisted.
He reaches out to snare my hand, twisting our fingers together. “What are you gonna do now? You can go to WVU with me. I always thought you’d be good at social work.”
“I don’t know.” I tug Wynn to me, and then wrap my arms around him. I feel better instantly, my dark mood evaporating. “I’m bitter about losing my job, but I have no regrets. We stood up for who we are. We didn’t hide. The kids growing up here won’t feel so alone now.”
“Tyler’s mom told me to do what I did.” Wynn’s voice is bashful and embarrassed. I can’t see his blush, but I can feel his body temperature rise. “I don’t understand why when she knew it wouldn’t help.”
Pressing my face into the crook of Wynn’s neck, I chuckle at how confused he sounds. “Miriam is angrier than I am. After Josh outed her son and took off, Tyler’s had a hard time of it. He had his heart broken and his school turn on him. Then the teacher she handpicked– the teacher she brought on to help her son –is fired because he’s gay… that’s why. Miriam was throwing herself, and using you to do it. I appreciated the sentiment, though.”
I pull away from Wynn, needing to have some distance between us. He makes me lose my head, forget all of my problems, and feel good about myself. Which is a real bitch when I have to solve a problem, because all I want to do is fall into him.
I pace around Wynn’s barn, never happier for having him in my life. “Silver lining… I won’t be wasting my time dealing with kids who don’t have an identity yet. I always wanted to work with twelve and over, but I went with an elementary education degree because that’s what Rusty Knob needed. Now I’m free to explore this using unconventional ways. Miriam isn’t going to let me walk away. No way, no how. The woman fought her ass off in a misogynist wasteland, only to have a gay son who wasn’t going to be treated as a human being. The woman is gonna use me to make our area tolerant.”
“Are you gonna be okay with that?” Wynn sits back on his stool, picking up his chisel.
“Yeah, because it’s what the kids need.” I walk back over to him and curl around his back. I watch his hands work with precision, and I marvel over his talent. “God, you always smell so intoxicating, like wood and man. I feel sick for admitting it, but the scent of sawdust always sparks memories of my dad, and you always smell like sawdust.”
“You can talk about him with me, ya know?” Wynn looks at me over his shoulder, smiling. “It makes me feel better to know there are good dads out there, so I don’t feel as guilty for saying goodbye to mine because he was a bad one.”
Palm running from Wynn’s waist, up his spine, and over his nape, my fingertips twist in his sandy curls. I give a sharp yank, twisting his head to the side so I can catch a taste of his lips. I put all of my anger and bitterness into the love and passion I feel for Wynn.
“Hey! Hey! Hey, now…” Bren interrupts us before we get lost in one another. “NTP! NTP!” Bren’s carrying several pizza boxes, and I wonder if the little bastard licked all the slices with olives and sausage.
“NTP?” Jack looks around for an answer. The cute kid sets a takeout tray of Buffalo wings on the worktable, perfectly content if no one actually answers him.
“I’m in my barn, not the house.” Wynn grins, all proud of himself for finding a loophole. “No Touch Policy rules do not apply here.”
“Nice try, son,” Royce’s gruff voice spills from the barn door. I glance over to watch
the stocky man hold the door open for his minions and their skittish momma to walk through. “Whatcha working on there, Wynn?”
Clasping his work of art to his chest, Wynn blushes while stammering, “Okay. Okay. Okay. I’ll show you, but don’t laugh.” He thrusts the sign forward to be seen by all.
We are Rusty Knob
Gillette•Kennedy•Marx•Duncan
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1 (800) 273-8255
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
-Acknowledgements-
A lot of work goes into writing a novel, and it isn’t just by the writer herself. My parents: for their unconditional support. My readers: thank you for reading my twisted words and spreading my books to the masses. For without you, no one would have ever heard of my stories. My readers are my lifeblood. A shout out to the members of the M&M of Restraint Group on Facebook: thanks for the endless entertainment and inspiration. Thank you to my street team: Erica Chilson’s Deviants! You guys ROCK! Wicked Reads: (in all its incarnations) Angela G., thank you for taking over and making Wicked Reads better than I could have done by myself. & thank you for helping promote my work and the work of other authors. Angela? Have I told you lately how much I appreciate you? A huge thank you to the Wicked Writer’s Betas for keeping me grounded and encouraging me to keep trudging along when I get frustrated. Your thoughts and observations are invaluable. ((Hugs)) Beta readers who worked on Rusty Knob: Kris D, Suz A, Sandy D, Darcy V, Di C, Angela G, Diane P, Jacki G, Linsey T, Alexis W, Alicia P, Billie Jo H, Shelby H, Tassie M, & Liz S. Someday, I’d love to meet you all in real life-it would be the experience of a lifetime.
About the Author
Erica Chilson does not write in the 3rd person, wanting her readers to be her characters. Therefore, writing a bio about herself is uncomfortable in the extreme.
Born, raised, and here to stay, the Wicked Writer is a stump-jumper, a ridge-runner. Hailing from North Central Pennsylvania, directly on the New York State border; she loves the changes in seasons, the humid air, all the mountainous forest, and the gloomy atmosphere.
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