“How was your date, lovebirds?” Matthew asks at breakfast.
Daniel just stares at his untouched eggs.
“It was good,” I say. “The movie was terrible, but the dinner was pretty good. Right, Daniel?”
He nods.
“How was yours?” I ask Matthew and Carolyn.
They grin at each other. “It was so much fun,” Carolyn says. “We went to this big arcade place. Matthew won me a little stuffed monkey.”
“Well, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to treat the ladies.” Matthew winks. “And this girl”—he jerks a thumb in Carolyn’s direction—“is the best Skee-Ball player I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“What can I say? It’s a gift.”
For the second time, I feel that irrational surge of jealousy. I want to switch places with Matthew so badly. I want to be the one who played Skee-Ball with Carolyn last night and won her a stuffed monkey and be reminiscing about it with her this morning.
But I laugh along with them anyway.
For the next few days, the girls focus on childcare. We have to carry around these creepy little electronic babies that cry randomly and won’t stop until you hold a key in its mouth for a certain amount of time.
Brianna and Kaylee demonstrate how to change a diaper on a dummy, and we each take turns mastering the process. Mrs. Wykowski shows us how to use a food processor to whip up our own natural baby food. And over the course of several sessions, Barbara teaches us the basics of knitting and sewing, so we can make things like baby blankets and booties and stuff. I actually really enjoy that last part. I get permission from Brianna to go to the rec cabin and get some stuff from the arts and crafts corner to add to my booties—sequins, different colored thread for adding colorful stitching around the ankle. They actually turn out really adorable and I get a lot of compliments from the other campers. It might not be high fashion, but for now, it’s as close as I’m going to get.
Toward the end of the week, Mr. Martin announces that we’ll be leaving the camp again, this time with our group of four.
“We’re going to take a day-trip into the city tomorrow,” he says. “It’s a major step in the reintegration process. You will still be chaperoned, but the plan is a lot less structured than it was for date night. You will be the ones who decide where you want to go and how you want to spend your time.”
“I vote for a gay bar,” Matthew whispers to us.
I giggle. “Shhh!”
“This outing will be all about experiencing the world through new eyes. Where will you go? What will you do? How will you interact with others? Remember your lessons as you make all of these choices, because the temptations out there in the real world are much, much greater than they are here. As it says in Philippians four, verse nine, ‘Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.’”
That night, the four of us hang out in our hidden spot outside the rec cabin. Daniel flips through a Washington, DC guidebook and suggests ideas to the rest of us.
“There are free shows on Saturday mornings at the National Theatre,” he says. “Or we could go see the butterflies at the National Museum of Natural History.”
“I was serious about the gay bar,” Matthew says. “They have ones that are eighteen and over. I bet they wouldn’t even ID us.”
“Oh sure, I’m sure Kaylee would be totally cool with that,” I say.
“There are ways to ditch a chaperone, Lexi. Haven’t you ever been on a school field trip?”
“It’s not gonna happen, Matthew.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to the Smithsonian,” Carolyn says as she practices her purl stitch.
“Which one?” Daniel says, looking it up. “There’re so many.”
“Oh. I don’t know. Isn’t there a pop culture exhibit? I heard that somewhere.” She scoots over to look at the guidebook with Daniel.
Matthew glances at me. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asks and nods his head toward an area of the field several yards away.
“About what?”
“It will just take a minute.” He starts walking away and, curious, I follow.
“What’s up?” I ask once we’re out of earshot of Carolyn and Daniel.
He sits on the grass and pats the spot next to him. “Sit.”
I do.
“I just wanted to see how you’re doing. We never get a chance to talk.”
I smile. “I’m doing okay. How are you doing?”
“Oh, you know. I’m fine. Looking forward to getting the hell out of here.”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s going on with you and Carolyn?” There’s an eager glint in his eye.
I sigh. “Nothing’s going on, Matthew. And you really have to stop looking at me like that.”
“Bullshit. You’re completely smitten. And who can blame you? She’s hot.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Mr. Kinsey Six, thinking a girl is hot? Maybe Mr. Martin has gotten to you more than you think.”
Matthew rolls his eyes. “I might be gay, Lexi, but I still have eyes. And that girl is gorgeous. And the two of you together…that would be hotness overload.”
My stomach twinges a little at the thought. “We’re just friends.” I tie a blade of grass into knots.
“Why?”
“Why?” I repeat.
“Yeah. Why are you just friends?”
“Why do you think?” I tick off the reasons on my fingers. “Because we’re here to learn to become straight. Because there are more important things in life than having a crush on somebody. Because she doesn’t like me like that. Because New Horizons is the last place on Earth that we could be together. Because some things just aren’t worth the risk.”
“I disagree,” Matthew says. “If there’s anything worth any risk at all, it’s got to be love, right?”
I shake my head. “I might have thought that once but not anymore.”
There’s a pause as Matthew lies back on the grass, leaving me to consider what I just said.
“You do know you’re not going to leave here straight, right?” he says after a minute.
“I know.”
“So why do you keep going along with all of this stuff?”
I tell him my plan to fake being “cured.”
He stares at me, bewildered. Then he says, “Lexi, when you first realized you were gay, like really acknowledged it on a conscious level, how did you feel?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what did you think about the whole thing?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug.
“Think about it,” he pushes.
I pick a dandelion and pluck its little yellow petals off one by one, thinking back to fourth grade, when I finally realized why I had never understood my friends’ excitement about the first boy-girl parties. Might as well tell the truth while I can. “I was terrified.”
“How come?”
“Because all I knew, everything I’d been taught, was that gay people were sinners. I didn’t know what would happen if people found out.” I still don’t know how the town would react, actually, if they all knew. I toss the bald dandelion stem.
Matthew shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t mean what did you think other people would think. I mean what did you think? Deep down. Apart from all the small-town bullshit.”
Oh. Hmm. I push away the fear of the unknown, the fear I’ve been living with every day for eight long years, and really think about Matthew’s question. The answer kind of surprises me. “I guess I felt kind of relieved in a way.”
Matthew smiles. “Why?”
“Because I finally understood why my feelings never seemed to match up with my friends’. Everything finally made sense.” I lie down now too. Fluffy cotton-ball clouds drift across the sky.
“Were you ashamed?” Matthew asks.
“No,” I admit.
“Were you sad?”
“No.”
“Embarrassed?”
“No.”
“Did you hate yourself?”
“No.”
“You were okay with it?”
“Well…yeah.”
Matthew turns to face me. “So what the hell, Lex? You’re already so much better off than most of the kids here. Why would you want to go backward?”
I hesitate. “My mom…”
“I know. It’s a shitty situation. And I get it, I really do. But Lexi, this is your life. It’s not your mom’s. You have to do what makes you happy too.”
I don’t say anything.
“What do you want?” Matthew asks.
He wants me to admit that I don’t want to change. That I don’t want to live a lie. That I’m happier being me, as is, even if it means I have to move away from my hometown and never go back. That I want to be with Carolyn. But I can’t. I’m not ready for that.
“I want my family back,” I say, sticking with the only part of the truth that I’m comfortable speaking aloud. Then a troubling thought occurs to me. “You don’t say this stuff to Carolyn too, do you?”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think she’d listen to me,” he says. “She’s still hoping for a reparative therapy miracle.”
I let out a groan of frustration. “So then why the hell would you think it would be a good idea for me to tell her how I feel?”
“Because I think she likes you too. And it would be a lot more effective if it came from you.”
I watch as a cloud slowly morphs from an ice cream cone into a pirate ship. A minuscule spark of what if has ignited somewhere deep inside me, and I hate Matthew for putting it there.
“You know what I think?” he says after a long stretch of silence. “I think you’re scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of telling Carolyn how you feel and being rejected. And I think you might be hiding behind the mom excuse so you don’t have to put yourself out there again.”
I feel like I’ve been punched straight through my stomach. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Very possible. But one thing I do know is that Carolyn isn’t Zoë. And you’ll never know for sure until you try.”