Skyler made a sad face.
“Maybe after breakfast,” Cam said. “I think they’re going to the hardware store or something. At least, they wanted to.”
“We could shower together?” Skyler said. I want to shower with you so bad.
“Yeah, I think so. Fingers crossed.” They put on some t-shirts and pajama pants and opened the door to Cam’s room. The smell of pancakes and bacon immediately tantalized their noses.
“I’m so hungry!” Skyler said, and Cam agreed. They headed downstairs and enjoyed the scrumptious breakfast of blueberry pancakes, bacon, eggs, and hash browns that Bill had prepared. All the while, Skyler couldn’t help watching Cam out of the corner of his eye as they chatted with Bill and Jen.
I love you so much, Cam.
4 | But I Love You
THE FOLLOWING TUESDAY, SKYLER SKIPPED up the stairs of the front porch and pushed open the screen door. Most people on the block had opened their doors and windows to let the warm afternoon air into their homes. He plopped himself into a chair at the kitchen table and grabbed a Granny Smith apple from the blue ceramic fruit bowl. He started polishing it on his shirt and thought about whether he would go for a run or a bike ride before doing some homework and studying for final exams.
Rebecca walked into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. He immediately sensed an uneasy tension settle across the room. “Skyler, Mr. Mosher came over around lunchtime today and returned some worship CDs you had left at their house.”
“He did? Why did he do that?” Skyler asked, looking at Rebecca quizzically. “Cam was supposed to be learning some of the songs for worship at church.” Suddenly, a pit formed in his stomach as his instincts told him Rebecca seemed very upset. Her face portrayed a lot of worry. He stopped polishing the apple as she continued speaking.
“He did,” she repeated. “He also told me Cam would not be allowed to be your friend anymore, and despite my asking, refused to tell me why. He said you could tell me why. Specifically, he said, ‘Ask Skyler, he can tell you everything you need to know.’ So, I’m asking you, what happened that has caused his parents to end your friendship, and effectively, the friendship our families have shared over the past few years?”
Skyler’s throat dried up and he felt the blood drain from his face. Oh my god. What the hell? What are you talking about? Is this a joke? His mouth fell open in shock and he stared at Rebecca. He tried to think, but his brain froze as several years of friendship replayed themselves in super fast forward.
“I, I,” he stammered. He didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know what’s wrong!” Why did Cam’s parents do that?
“Skyler,” Rebecca said sternly. “Tell me what is going on. What have you two been up to? I need to know. Something is very wrong here. Why have his parents forbidden him from seeing you?”
Skyler shrugged and lowered his head. He stared intently at the fruit bowl on the table. I don’t know what’s wrong. Looking back up at Rebecca, he said, “I honestly have no idea. Everything has been fine. I don’t know what it could be…” Skyler hesitated.
Unless his parents had figured out…
“Oh,” he said, half to himself, half to Rebecca.
“Skyler, what is it?” she asked, pressing him for an explanation. Her rings clicked as she grasped the wooden chair back. Oh shit, please let it not be that. I do not want to explain that to her right now. I’m not ready. But we’ve never been caught, and we’ve been so damn careful. Or were we careless this weekend? Did Cam come out to his parents and not tell me?
Skyler’s mind raced as he tried to come up with any excuse he could. His hint of admission had betrayed him, even if he couldn’t figure out how their secret had been uncovered. He wanted to make up some horrible yet believable reason, but he knew Rebecca and Cam’s parents could corroborate anything he said. There was no way out of the situation except to come out with the truth.
“Well,” he said, licking his dry lips, “the only thing, uh, I can think of that might be, uh, bad, is that we were fooling around a bit, and maybe that is what upset them?” Skyler felt like he had been reduced to a babbling idiot. Maybe she won’t ask for more details.
Rebecca was not pleased with the vague answer. Exasperated, she asked, “What does that mean? Fooling around? Fooling around how, exactly? Cheating on tests? Doing each other’s homework? Drugs? Alcohol? Cigarettes? Girls?” Each vice was asked louder and more intently than the previous one. Rebecca leaned forward and inhaled deeply through her nose, not bothering to hide her hope that Skyler’s scent could betray him.
You’re smelling me now?
“I don’t smell cigarettes or marijuana,” she said. Her eyes narrowed and locked on to Skyler’s eyes. “Tell me what you were doing,” she commanded.
“No, of course not, we don’t smoke or do drugs,” Skyler said.
“Then what is it?” she asked, pressing him for the truth.
Skyler felt mortified. Ugh, great. So now I have to tell you we were jacking off together and doing other sexual things with each other. Maybe I won’t tell you that part. Maybe I can still salvage this and make it easier on myself.
Either way, he felt his world begin to collapse around him. He knew any admission would have severe consequences for him and Cam. If this wasn’t the problem, Rebecca would surely ask or tell Cam’s parents about what Skyler was revealing. Then they would then be in even more trouble.
And then there was the matter of church. Rebecca’s reputation would be destroyed and the boys would be branded as the worst of sinners in their respective church’s eyes. He envisioned some extensive counseling and prayer sessions where people would attempt to pray away the sexual impurities the Devil had successfully tempted him with, or worse, taken over his body for his own sexually perverse and demonic pleasures. On many occasions, Skyler had heard Pastor Bob’s homophobic demonizing of the sodomizing gays, their evil lesbian counterparts, and the other sinful queer folk during his sermons. He knew all about—and made sure the congregation did, too—the special place in hell God had allowed the Devil to prepare for them because the especially disgusting kind of sins homosexuals committed were most displeasing in the eyes of the Lord God Almighty.
Though they attended different churches, the Tinsdale’s and Mosher’s conservative Christian families had little tolerance for anything that did not fit their Christian worldview. Both boys had learned well that Jesus had no room in heaven for dirty little boys, perverts, and sinners. Even if you had accepted Jesus into your heart, as Cam had done at age twelve, Skyler understood that sex before marriage was something that would expel Jesus from your heart. Sometimes he wondered how Jesus would react to a boy fooling around with another boy.
Somehow, despite the emotional turmoil he was experiencing, his brain provided a tactful sentence that he used to answer her question. “No. Not girls. With each other. We were sometimes, uh, masturbating together.” Rebecca did not react for what seemed like hours to Skyler.
Yikes, that was awkward. Say something already.
Skyler impatiently waited as Rebecca processed what she had just heard. Then she stood tall and squared her shoulders, her eyes locked with Skyler’s.
Please, say something.
“You what?”
So this has got to be what’s wrong. Embarrassed and now angry, Skyler repeated himself and accepted that this must be the reason his world just imploded. “We were sometimes masturbating together, and other things.” Idiot. Shut up.
“Other things?” she echoed, at her wits end. “Other things like what?”
Ugh. I can’t believe how stupid that was. Why couldn’t you keep your mouth shut?
“Other things,” he repeated angrily. Then he blurted out, “Sexual things, masturbation, blow jobs, kissing, being naked together, those kinds of other things.” He looked down at the table with frustration and amusement, surprised he told her more condemning evidence. Do you even know what a blow job is?
“You put your mouth on his
penis?” she asked, clearly shocked.
Oh wow, you actually know what that is.
“You put your mouth on another boy’s penis?” she repeated impatiently.
Well, how else do you think it happens? “Yes,” he said.
“And then?”
For Christ’s sake. Skyler struggled to hold back his anger. “What do you think?” he countered tersely. “I sucked. And he did it to me, too. It felt good. Amazing, actually.”
He was met with silence. Uncomfortable with the silence, he started rambling. “I guess that somehow his parents found out. I don’t know how. We were both in school today. Nothing was wrong all day.”
Dammit! Shut up!
“I, I, don’t…” Rebecca struggled for words. She leaned hard on the chair in front of her to steady herself. She cleared her throat and commanded, “Go to your room.” Skyler realized that of all the things she expected a good, Christian, teenage boy to do, the items of his confession were not on the list of things he should be doing.
Skyler’s face tightened with anger as he rose from the chair and placed the apple back in the fruit bowl. His appetite disappeared and his body surged with adrenaline. He picked up his book bag and walked to the door Rebecca had closed.
“Skyler,” Rebecca’s hushed voice stopped him. He turned around and stared at her.
“Do you think Cameron is gay?”
“Um, well, yeah, he’s more than might be gay.” Skyler said.
“You don’t think it’s a phase?” she asked. Her face searched for a glimmer of hope in what Skyler would say next.
“Nope, no way. He likes guys and he is gay, and will always be gay. It’s more than a phase for him. It’s the way God made him.” There. Take that and stick it in your Bible.
She pointed at him and opened her mouth. It closed before she opened it again to ask him one final question. Skyler noticed that her hand trembled. She asked him flatly, “Are you gay?”
“Yeah, and Cam is my boyfriend.”
Skyler watched a horrified expression appear on Rebecca’s face. That’s new.
“Go to your room,” she whispered.
Fuck this bullshit.
Run.
* * *
Tears streamed down Skyler’s face as he ran to Cam’s house. He wiped his eyes and struggled to see where he was going. He didn’t care that he had just been grounded. He didn’t know if he was grounded, but he had dropped his book bag and run out of the house despite Rebecca’s instruction to go to his room. Thoughts about what would happen to him now began to force their way into his mind as he ran, but he pushed them aside so he could focus on talking with Cam. He needed to find out what went wrong and what his parents had discovered. As he approached Cam’s house, he saw Bill sitting on the porch, reading something.
Shitballs. Skyler slowed to a steady walk and approached the house, his glaring eyes fixed on Bill’s face. He looked very tired.
Bill looked up from his paper and saw Skyler walking toward the house. “Skyler,” he said, coldly. “You shouldn’t be here. Go home.”
“No,” Skyler spat, standing with his hands clenched in fists at his sides. “I want to talk with Cam. I want to know what happened.” I am not leaving until I find out what happened.
Bill looked at him silently. I am going to see my best friend, even if it’s the last time.
“Bill, please. Give them a few minutes,” Jen pleaded from the screen door of the house.
“Fine.” Bill grunted as he folded the paper and pointed at Skyler. “Ten minutes, and not a minute more,” he instructed. “Outside, right here on the lawn, where I can see you both. I’m not giving you two another chance for any of that…sinful crap to go down. Not under my roof, not ever again.”
Skyler took a deep breath and nodded. So they know.
The screen door opened and Cam burst out. He ran down the porch stairs toward Skyler. Cam’s puffy face told Skyler that he had been crying a lot. He wanted to embrace Cam, but he thought better of it. Cam walked to a spot in the middle of the front lawn and sat down. Skyler followed suit and sat, facing Cam.
“What the hell happened?” Skyler asked. “Did you come out or something?”
Cam cleared his throat and shook his head. “They know about us, Sky. They know we’re more than friends and have been fooling around.”
“But how?” Skyler asked. Shit, I sound like Rebecca the Interrogator.
“My mom raided my room this morning after I left for school. She said she was cleaning, but she went through all my drawers and found…” Cam paused and scratched his face. “She found the lube and things I had drawn.”
“Things you had drawn?” Skyler asked. He furled his brow in confusion.
“Drawings of penises and balls, and I had written our names near them. That’s how they found out.”
Seriously?
Skyler felt amused but suppressed the desire to laugh because Cam’s drawings had provided the evidence that exposed and condemned them.
“My dad picked me up from school at lunch time. He drove me home and my mom was waiting for me. They sat me down in the living room and my mom showed me the lube and drawings she had discovered. They demanded an explanation. I lost it and started crying.” Cam took a deep breath before continuing, fighting back tears. “I decided to come out. I told them I was gay and had planned to come out to them sometime soon. I told them you were gay, too, and that we had fallen in love and were boyfriends. I told them everything. Then my dad said he told Rebecca that I am not allowed to be friends with you anymore. Then he told me that he requested a transfer at work today. We’ll be moving away from here very soon.”
Stunned, Skyler could only say, “What?” You’re moving? Over this? You’ve got to be kidding me!
Cam started crying again. “They don’t want us to be together, or near each other, or friends, or schoolmates. They don’t want me to be gay. They are disgusted over what they found. I guess I got outed, and it’s bad, way worse than we expected. Mom and dad already called up the pastor at our church. I have to go see him tonight and he’s setting up some kind of counseling for me, to try to straighten me out or something. I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do.”
As Skyler listened to his best friend, hopelessness filled his heart. He felt an unpleasant weight press down on his shoulders as his insides tried to rearrange themselves. His mind struggled to understand what Cam told him.
“Five minutes,” Bill boomed from the porch.
“What about school?” Skyler asked. “We can still hang out there, right?”
Cam shook his head; tears were still streaming down his face. “No, they forbid me to see you at school, too.”
“But Cam, we have classes together!”
“We can’t talk to each other. I’m not allowed to. I’m in enough trouble already. My parents will kill me. I’m sorry. I have to go.” Cameron stood up to go, but he quickly collapsed to the ground in tears, sobbing loudly. “I don’t know how to leave you,” he said through tears.
Skyler remained seated and put his head in his hands. Holy shit. What is happening here? I will never see Cam again. I will never do this again. Is this what you want from me, God? I will never touch a guy again. Just please don’t take my best friend away. Tears streamed down his face. His best friend was being taken from him because they were gay and there was nothing he could do about it.
“But I love you,” Skyler whispered so only Cameron could hear. Please say it back.
Cam looked at Skyler through his tears and managed to smile. His right hand touched his heart and then pointed at Skyler. “I know, Sky.”
Bill’s voice broke their tender moment. “Let’s go, Cameron. Time to go home, Skyler. Move out.”
You’re the ones who are moving out, asshole. Skyler watched Cam walk back to the house, his head bowed and his shoulders slumped. Jen opened the front door for him. It closed behind him with a gentle clack. Bill picked up his paper and continued reading, ignoring Skyler’s
presence.
Numb and alone, Skyler pushed himself up from the ground. Anger rose with him as he took one last look at the house and brazenly flipped Bill the middle finger before walking away from his ex-boyfriend.
Screw you, asshole!
His anger quickly turned to a hurting emptiness that made his heart heavy and numb, a feeling he had never experienced, even after the death of his mom. As he cried to himself the entire way home, he felt the judging eyes of the neighborhood on his back. He imagined the neighbors secretly peering through their suburban windows, wondering what was wrong with the neighborhood orphan before shrugging off concern and continuing with their perfect lives.
He stumbled up the walkway to the front door and wiped tears from his face. He entered the house and noticed his backpack was still where he left it. He picked it up and the clacking of Rebecca’s shoes on the wooden floor alerted him to her impending presence. She rounded the corner and stopped, her face worn and worried. She looked at him, but didn’t speak. He looked back at her, his face and heart full of sadness.
Silence.
She opened her mouth to say something, but didn’t. Please don’t. I can’t deal with you right now. Skyler looked away and went upstairs to his room. Rebecca walked back into the kitchen.
* * *
For the next week and a half, Skyler avoided the house and Rebecca in the afternoons and took his frustrations out on his road bike when he wasn’t at cycling practice with the team. He chose the most challenging, uphill routes and let his fury power the muscles in his legs. Today, his thoughts shifted among three things, the current scandal in his home, his mother Julie, and his first foster family, the McMahons.
Every night since the disaster, Rebecca, Stephen, and Skyler sat in the kitchen after dinner and fought about what the next steps should be. Rebecca insisted on counseling, while Stephen, seemingly lost and confused with his wife’s intense reaction, kept solidarity with his wife’s decisions, much to Skyler’s chagrin. Skyler insisted he was okay and being gay was normal, despite what Pastor Bob and the Bible said. They were locked in an endless stalemate of biblical proportions.
The Climb Page 6
