The Void Between Stars: Book 4 Of The Orion Series

Fall From Grace

When I had completed upchucking my partially digested lunch (yum), I went to the nurses office and was sent home. My mom wanted to take my temperature, but I refused. I knew it was nerves, and I didn't want to hear my dad go on about how I was skipping school. Which, in his defense, I guess I sort of was? It was totally warranted though.

I had just kissed my best friend. All the girls I had kissed by then had made me feel dirty. I knew I was having impure thoughts—being an adolescent boy wasn't a good enough excuse in my mind. Kissing a boy just solidified the fact that I would be sent to Hell.

Ruminating on my unsalvageable soul made me get sick—repeatedly. In a way all my puking was good. If they thought I was faking, all the noise I was making proved otherwise. At one point I went to the bathroom to piss, and I overhead my dad lamenting how I better not have the stomach flu because he didn't want it. As soon as the bathroom door was shut, I flipped him off.

I barely got any sleep that night, plagued with trying to figure out how to fix this. First off, I would apologize to Daryl as soon as possible. Then I decided I needed to confess my sins. That in it of itself sent me into a panic.

What if I went to confession and it wasn't good enough? What if the priest I spoke with had to tell the nuns who were my teachers everything? I already was getting shit for my struggling grades. Even though I was nearly graduated, would my high school life be harder academically because they knew that I had kissed a boy?

I didn't want that. For as long as I could remember, I went to church. I was in the choir. I was an alter boy. I had my communion. For all intents and purposes, I was deeply religious.

What was worse, I actually believed. I had spent the past two years wondering what I had done that God would be punishing me by giving me such a shitty family. This in turn made me feel even worse. God knew everything. Did He know I wasn't straight before I even knew? I also was fighting with myself if I cared or not.

If He knew my sexuality before I did, why was it wrong? Why did God care if I liked boys? Furthermore, if He had created us, wouldn't that mean He created the ability for us to feel those things? In all my studies, I had never found a definitive answer to that question. I couldn't understand why homosexuality and all its variations of queerness were sinful. No one could explain it to me, other than it Just Was.

And now that I had actually sinned...Did it matter? It seemed like I was preemptively being punished by God. If He was making my life miserable because I wasn't straight, was there even any salvation for me? It seemed a definitive answer; God was punishing me for not being straight, even though I still hadn't rightly muddled through all that myself.

I was a lost cause.

By the time morning came around I had a terrible headache. Even so, I put on a fresh uniform and made my way to the bus. It wasn't until third period did I fully understand how much shit I was in.

I was directed to the priests office, the one who served as principal. Even though logic told me otherwise, I was convinced that it had to do with me kissing Daryl. But that didn't make sense; no one could possibly know I had kissed Daryl, right?

Right?

However, once I entered the office, I wanted to die right there. My parents sat on one side of the office, while Daryl and his mom sat across from them. As I moved to the empty chair between my parents, Daryl glanced at me. When I sat he looked at me, red faced, before casting his eyes to his lap.

"Mr. Bauwens," the principle greeted gruffly.

I quickly made the sign of the cross, clasped my hands together, and gave a quick bow of my head to the priest. "Father."