Two Birds, One Stone

25. Double Dare

The First Steps in the Right Direction

    I turned the pamphlet over in my fingers. It was three pages long; the kind of thing someone might pick up while traveling, or get in the mail from some company trying to advertise its product. I'd never imagined that one piece of paper, cleverly folded and purely informational, could be used as a weapon.

     I knew what it was about before I opened it. I knew what the so-called "right direction" would be, I could guess those "first steps" without seeing a single page.

    I knew how it had gotten onto my desk, too. I knew who must have crept into my room early in the morning and set it down there. After a month -- or had it been two? Time hardly seemed to mean anything anymore -- of being out to my parents, both of them still treated me like a stranger. But only one of them would be this cruel.

    I saw my dad as rarely as possible, and not of my own doing. He rarely stayed in a room long once I entered. He no longer called family dinners and movie nights. He didn't burst into my room at odd hours to show me funny articles he'd found on the internet or pop out from behind corners to scare the piss out of me. He was still unbearably uncomfortable around me.

    But he wasn't angry.

    I saw my mom more often. She didn't avoid me the way dad did. But I almost wish she did; at least dad talked to me, if only in brief, awkward spurts. I felt as if I hadn't heard more than a sentence at once from her in the last month, and what did come from her lips was almost always accompanied by an underlying hiss. I didn't think it could get worse than the night I came out, but it did; she seemed to convince herself more and more over time that I had made a choice, and that I'd done it to hurt her.

     She never told me that, but it was the best explanation I had for why she glared when she looked at me and snapped when she talked to me and did things like this -- like playing speeches by homophobic politicians on the TV when I walked through the living room, leaving her book on How to Guide a Wayward Child around the house for me to see, and placing "The First Steps in the Right Direction" on my desk.

    My mother was a smart lady. I was sure she knew none of it would change me. But she knew it would hurt me, and she was determined to get back at me.

    We used to waste hours on end together. Throwing around a ball in the backyard, screaming at the TV during frustrating football games. Super Bowl night was our night. Now I was just her Wayward Child.

    There was a loud knock on my bedroom door. "Get your ass out here and eat breakfast so we can go, you slow fuck!" Jacob called through the door.

     "I know you aren't talking to me when you made me late to first yesterday you walking shitstick!" I yelled back, eyes still trained on the pamphlet. Ever since Jacob had started riding with me to school instead of his friends, I had been forced to deal with his dipshit-ery way too early in the morning. We still bickered constantly, but there was no malice in it anymore. For the most part. Sometimes. We were still learning how to work together, but he was the only person in the house that didn't make me want to rip my hair out (most of the time).

     Besides, my mom had enough malice in her for the both of us.

     My eyes scanned over the pages, soaking in every word. I should've just thrown it away; it was all bullshit, anyways. But it came from my mom. I had a feeling it was the closest thing to a gift I'd get from her for a long time. So I read it like it meant something.

    I couldn't focus, though, because Jacob kept knocking on my door. "Do me a favor and shut the hell up, Jakes!"

    He didn't. "Jacob!"