Autoboyography
Page 45

“Come on, everyone likes you. Girls, boys, teachers, parents. My grandma called you the adorable one with the hair.”
“Your grandmother thinks I’m adorable?”
He looks up at me, squinting into the sun. “I think you know you’re adorable.” I want him to write those words down so I can read them over and over and over. “Are you going to give me a cookie?”
I hold his gaze for a moment before handing him one from the plate. They’re still warm. “She told me to take them to your room,” I say with a suggestive lift of my brow. “That’s where she thinks you are, by the way.”
He looks so much better today—happy—church-activity trauma apparently behind him. His mental and emotional resiliency is some kind of superpower.
When he grins, my heart does a little hiccup in my chest. “If she thinks I’m inside, I vote we hide out here.”
“She’s taking Faith to dance.”
“Still, it’s nice out.” Sebastian picks up his things, and I follow him to the shade of a giant tree. To anyone in the house we’d be invisible, completely hidden by the canopy of new, bright green leaves overhead.
I take one of the cookies and break it in half. “What are you working on?”
“Psych.” He flops the book closed and stretches out in the grass. I work to keep my focus on his face, but when he turns to me, I can tell he knows I was just checking out his happy trail. “How was it working in a group with McAsher today?” he asks.
I love that he seems so above the gossip cloud but totally isn’t. Sebastian sees everything. “She nearly fell out of her chair trying to show off her cleavage.”
“I caught that.” He laughs, taking a bite of cookie.
“How was the rest of your day?”
“Economics quiz.” He takes another bite, chews, and swallows. Watching his jaw work is mesmerizing. “Latin quiz too. Choir practice.”
“Wish I could have seen that.”
“Maybe next time you can cut school and watch.” He opens one eye to look at me. “I know how much you like flipping the bird to authority.”
“That’s me, four-point-oh student and juvenile delinquent.” I lick chocolate from my thumb and catch the way his eyes follow the movement now. A shiver moves down my spine. “Autumn is almost done with her book.”
He considers this. Maybe he sees the tightness in my eyes. “That’s good, but not necessary. I mean, you still have a month. Some people need more time to revise. Some people need less. You just need a finished draft by the end of term. Not a polished manuscript.”
I avoid his gaze, and he ducks down, catching my eye. “Are you going to send me chapters?”
I hate the idea of making him fix my book.
I also hate the idea of him seeing my fears and neuroses laid out so plainly.
So, I divert: “When did you finish writing yours?”
“Um.” He squints up at the branches overhead. “I finished in May—right before the deadline, if I’m remembering correctly—and turned in a draft a week later. I still wasn’t sure it was any good.”
“But apparently it was.”
“People like different things. You could read my book and hate it.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“You could. My mom’s probably already promised most of my author copies away, but I’ll snag you one. That way we’ll be even because you’re going to give me your book.” He offers up his most charming smile.
I tap the bottom of his shoe with the toe of mine. “A fancy New York editor has already read and bought yours. You know it’s not crap.”
“Your book isn’t crap, Tanner. It isn’t possible. Sure, details need to be changed to protect the innocent, but it isn’t crap. You’re too thoughtful, too sensitive.” He grins. “Yeah, I said ‘sensitive’ . . . despite your outward flippant thing.”
“My ‘outward’—” I start with a grin, but clap my mouth shut at the sound of voices overhead.
“What are you doing here?” Sebastian’s mom asks, and we duck lower, as if we’ve been caught doing something wrong. “I wasn’t expecting you home until dinner.”
When I lean forward, stretching to see, I see an open bathroom window just above our tree. She’s not talking to us.
Sebastian starts stacking his books. “Let’s go inside,” he whispers. “I don’t want to—”
“Brett Avery married his boyfriend in California last week.” We both freeze at the sound of his dad’s deep voice, and the tenor of hardened disapproval there.
Sebastian looks over at me, eyes wide.
I can only imagine the stricken expression his mom must be wearing, because his dad sighs, saying sadly, “Yeah.”
“Oh no,” she says. “Oh no, no. I knew he moved away, but I had no idea he was—” She stops short of saying the dreaded G-word, and lowers her voice. “How are his parents?”
For the briefest moment, Sebastian’s face falls, and I want to reach out and cover his ears, pull him into my car, and take off driving.
“They’re managing, I suppose,” he tells her. “Apparently Jess took it more calmly than Dave did. Brother Brinkerhoff is praying with them, and added them to the temple roll. I told them I’d stop by, so I just ran home to change.”
Their voices fade as they move to another room. Sebastian is staring mildly off into the distance, and the thunder of my silence rolls through me as I struggle to think of what to say.
How are his parents?
It can’t have escaped Sebastian’s notice that his mom didn’t ask about Brett or whether he was happy; she asked about his parents, almost like having a gay son is something they have to manage, to explain, to deal with.
He’s gay; he didn’t die. Nobody is wounded. I know Sebastian’s parents are good people, but holy hell, they just inadvertently made their own son feel like there’s something about him that needs to be fixed. So much for acceptance. So much for welcoming.
“I’m sorry, Sebastian.”
He looks up from where he’s gathering his highlighters, a tight smile on his face. “What’s that?”
A few seconds of bewildered silence tick between us.
“Isn’t it weird to hear them talk like that?”
“Talk about Brett being gay?” When I nod, he shrugs. “I don’t think anyone is surprised his parents are reacting the way they are.”
I search his face, wondering why he seems so resigned. “I don’t know. . . . Maybe if enough people get angry, things will change?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” He leans in, trying to get me to hold on to his gaze. “It’s just the way it is.”
Just the way it is.
Is he resigned, or realistic?
Does he even feel any of this is about him?
“It’s just the way it is?” I repeat. “So you’ll go off to wherever and preach the Gospel and tell more people that being gay is wrong?”
“Being gay isn’t wrong, but it’s not God’s plan, either.” He shakes his head, and I think this moment, right here, is when it really hits me that Sebastian’s identity isn’t queer. It’s not gay. It’s not even soccer player or boyfriend or son.
It’s Mormon.
“I know this must not make any sense to you,” he says carefully, and panic squeezes my gut. “I’m sure you have no idea what you’re doing with me or what I’m doing with you, and if you—”