He’s in the boys’ dorm, curled up on his bed.
The boys’ dorm is pretty much exactly like the girls’, except there’s blue everywhere instead of pink, and instead of vanities, they have desks and a shelf filled with sports books.
“Hey.” I sit beside him.
“Hey.”
“He’s going to be fine. He’s on his way to the hospital right now.”
“Great.” He doesn’t seem happy about it though. He looks at me. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.”
He buries his face under his pillow.
“I’m proud of you, Matthew,” I say gently.
“For what?” His voice is muffled.
“For fighting back. For not…you know, doing what he wanted you to do.”
He slides the pillow off his face and stares up at the ceiling. “I thought I was going to have to. I took my shirt off for him. And I kissed him.”
I gasp. “You kissed him?”
“It was the only way to get close enough to hit him without him seeing it coming.”
“Oh.” I think about what I would have done in a similar situation. I don’t know if I would have had the guts to do Matthew did. “Matthew, why didn’t you just call your father?”
“Not an option. He wouldn’t understand.”
“Whatever happened to, ‘Lexi, this is your life, not your mom’s. You have to do what makes you happy too.’ Sound familiar? I could say the same thing to you—just substitute the word dad for mom.”
“It’s different.”
“How?”
He looks at me with sad eyes. “Before I left to come here, my dad told me that if I didn’t stick with the program for the entire summer, I wouldn’t have a home to come back to.”
“You mean…he’ll kick you out?”
“Yeah. He was serious about it too.”
“But he can’t do that—you’re his kid. He’s responsible for you.”
He gives me a can you really be that naïve? face. “It happens all the time, Lex. There are homeless shelters just for LGBTQ kids, for this exact reason.”
It’s pretty sobering to think that some kids might actually have it even worse than I do. No matter what my mom might be feeling about me being gay, and no matter how damaged our relationship might be because of it, I don’t think she’d ever actually throw me out on the street.
“Do you have other family you could stay with?” I ask. “What about Justin?”
“My dad’s parents would never take me, and my mom’s live in Canada. Justin lives in the dorms at UCSD. They don’t let you have guests for more than three nights in a row. I could probably stay with friends for a while, but how long can you really do that for? I’d be pretty much homeless.”
“What about your mom?” I ask. “Wouldn’t she let you come home?”
He lets out a little humorless laugh. “My mother doesn’t do anything my father doesn’t want her to.”
So the perfect family that Matthew painted during his Father Wound session isn’t so perfect after all.
I have a sudden flashback to the very first time I saw Matthew. “Did you know I saw you that first day, before we met at the carpet cabin?”
He shakes his head.
“You were coming down the stairs from the dorms. You must have checked in just before I did. You looked…” I trail off.
“Petrified?” Matthew supplies.
I give a little chuckle. “Well, yeah. Was that because of your dad?”
He nods. “He’d just dropped me off. And before he left, he made sure to reiterate his point: finish the program or else. So I thought I would get through the summer, go home, and go back to normal. My father never said anything about kicking me out if the program didn’t work; he just said I had to finish the full eight weeks.”
I’m not sure that makes much sense—if Matthew went home at the end of the program acting exactly the same way he used to before New Horizons, something tells me his dad wouldn’t be so thrilled about that either. But I guess we’ve all been leaning on a crutch of denial this summer.
“Matthew…not that I’m blaming you or anything, believe me, I love that you are who you are, but…if you knew all along what your dad was threatening you with, why didn’t you try a little harder? Why did you always have to challenge everything?”
He digs his palms into his eyes. “Honestly, Lexi, I never thought they would actually kick anyone out. Places like this thrive on their reputation. That’s all they have going for them, you know? They’re a total scam; they can’t actually deliver what they promise for most people. So the only way for them to stay in business is if people think they can. If they kick campers out before the summer is over, it would be admitting failure. And then the smokescreen comes down. I saw through it all from day one—or, at least, I thought I did. Clearly, I was wrong.”
There’s silence for a minute, then Matthew groans and says, “What the hell was I thinking, attacking Mr. Martin like that?”
“You were thinking you had to defend yourself.”
“Yeah, but I did it so I wouldn’t have to call my dad and tell him I got kicked out. But I’m definitely kicked out now. It was all for nothing.”
“You don’t know that…” I say. But he’s probably right. There’s no way Mr. Martin is going to let him stay now.
“I knew there was something off about that guy,” Matthew says.
“Yeah, but did you know it was that? I had no idea.”
“I knew from the moment I met him that all that talk about overcoming his SSA was bullshit. But it never occurred to me that he was screwing his campers.”
A little gasp escapes my throat. “Wait—you think this has happened to other people too?”
He gives me a wary look. “He knew exactly what he was doing in that office, Lexi. He’s no amateur.”
“Do you think he’s done it to other campers who are here now?” I immediately think of Daniel. Matthew might be able to defend himself, but Daniel? No way.
Matthew thinks for a second. “Nah, probably not. I’m the only one he ever calls to his office. And even with me he didn’t try anything until today.”
I exhale. “But other campers from other summers?”
“No doubt in my mind.”
Mr. Martin and Brianna return from the hospital a few hours later—I guess his injuries weren’t very serious after all. Matthew and I are still in the boys’ dorm when the taxi rolls up the gravel road. He didn’t want to go face the rest of the camp, and I didn’t want to leave him alone. Funny how with the two head counselors gone, no one came looking for us.
Brianna appears in the doorway, an ominous silhouette in the darkened room. “You two. Classroom cabin. Now.” She spins on her heels and marches down the stairs.
Matthew and I look at each other. Why are we going to the classroom cabin? Shouldn’t they be making arrangements to send Matthew home?
We follow Brianna in silence and get to the classroom cabin to find the whole camp already assembled there. Including Mr. Martin. A thick bandage over his eye is being held in place with a few yards of gauze wrapped around his head. But the scariest part is the look on his face—there’s fire in his eyes.
“Lexi, find a seat, please,” he says so calmly it’s almost menacing. “And Matthew, please join me up front.”
Matthew sits in the chair Mr. Martin has pulled out for him at the head of the classroom.
I automatically glance at Carolyn, forgetting in the moment that we’re not friends anymore. Her face is distressed. Yeah, whatever’s going on here, it’s not good.
Mr. Martin wastes no time getting to the point.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says. “It’s no secret that over these past five weeks, Matthew has been lacking in his commitment to the work we do at New Horizons. Though he hasn’t taken to the reparative therapy process as quickly as we would have liked, we have nurtured his need to find his own way on this journey.”
That is such a lie! But the other counselors are nodding sympathetically.
“But his waywardness reached a new level today. Matthew has disgraced this camp, its teachings, and most of all, himself. We had hoped that, given enough time, Matthew would give himself over to the Lord Jesus Christ, but it’s now clear that the devil is more firmly rooted in him than we first thought.” He points to his bandage. “Matthew attacked me today.”
Gasps and cries of shock ripple through the room.
Mr. Martin looks sad. “I was just trying to give him some extra attention and help him get on track with the rest of you—who are all doing so wonderfully in your therapy, I might add—by giving him some one-on-one tutoring, when out of nowhere, he came at me with a weapon and sent me to the hospital.” He stops and looks Matthew in the eye. “Isn’t that right, Matthew?”
Matthew stares back at him, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. I desperately want him to disagree, to stand up and tell everybody what really happened, but I know he won’t. He won’t for the exact same reason that I’m not jumping on top of my desk and shouting Liar!—we’re scared.
And for whatever reason, Mr. Martin hasn’t kicked Matthew out yet. We can’t risk doing anything that would change that.
“Isn’t that right?” Mr. Martin repeats.
Slowly, Matthew nods. “Yes,” he whispers.
A brief smile flickers across Mr. Martin’s face. It’s so quick that I doubt anyone else even notices it. But its meaning couldn’t be clearer: he knows he’s back in control.
“Yes, what?” he demands, sure of himself now.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Martin turns back to the group. “Even though I was assaulted unprovoked,” he says, “and had to receive eleven stitches in my forehead, I have decided not to press charges against Matthew or send him home early. After all, it’s not his fault that the devil lives so loudly inside of him.”
There are more sympathetic nods, mostly from the counselors.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what to do to help Matthew get rid of that darkness inside him, and after what happened today, I’ve come to a conclusion.” He pauses and looks down at Matthew. “We are going to have an exorcism.”