The Incident - 2. Chapter 2

Justin had been speaking for over an hour. His mother, after leading him out of their bathroom, sat him down on the edge of their bed and took his hand in hers. At first, the words had taken a while to come to Justin. But then, all of a sudden, the story became this squirming creature, clawing its way up Justin’s throat and out of his mouth, desperate to reach the outside world. For months since the “incident” Justin had thought his best course of action was to completely seal himself off from the outside world – that he didn’t need anyone else to be happy or to be complete. This creature had been slowly but steadily chipping away at him, little flakes of his sanity piling up.

Noticing that Justin had stopped speaking for an extended period o f time, but realizing that a crucial part of the story had been reached, Eileen simply sat there, holding Justin’s hand in her lap. Giving it a gentle squeeze to let Justin know she was still there, she smiled at him as he looked up at her, tears welling in his eyes.

“So, you think that you’re gay, Justin?” Justin half-smiled to himself. This was a question that he had asked himself a thousand times. For a while, the answer wasn’t clear. But now, it was a certainty for him. Justin Parks was gay. It wasn’t a choice he had made. He didn’t wake up one day and say “now I like boys.” It just simply was, and always had been.

“I know I am, mom.”

“How can you know? You’re only 14.”

“Did you know at 14 that you liked boys?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so, but…”

“There’s no difference, mom. It’s just how I am.”

“Did I do something wrong?” Justin squeezed his mother’s hand in his. She didn’t understand. For her generation, homosexuality was a taboo subject. Times were definitely changing, but as someone who had grown up during the AIDS crisis of the 80’s and the real emergence of “out” gay culture, certain views were deeply ingrained.

“No, it has nothing to do with you. Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” There. He had said it. His greatest fear – that his friends and family would consider him broken or damaged when they found out the truth. His mother looked away from Justin before answering.

“Oh, no, it’s not that. I just…I’m a bit shocked is all. But I will love you always, no matter what.” Justin broke into tears at this and grasped Eileen in a hug, happy to be in her embrace for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, Eileen’s cell phone rang at that exact moment. Disentangling herself from Justin, she reached into her pocket and took it out. “It’s Mark. I have to take it, Justin.” He pulled back from their embrace and sat on the edge of the bed, his hands in his lap.

“Hello? Really? Now? Can’t it wait? No, no – I guess there isn’t a problem. I’ll be there soon.” Eileen pressed the button to end the call and stowed her phone back in her pocket. “Justin, I’m sorry, but I have to leave. We’ve got a big client that flew in from Scotland today and I have to be there. I want to hear the rest of your story and we’re definitely not finished talking yet.”

“It’s ok. Go.” Eileen stood up and reached out to her son’s forehead and brushed the hair out of his eyes. He looked up at her, his eyes still red and puffy. Smiling, she ran her fingers down the side of his face.

“Promise me you’ll be here when I get home.”

“I will, mom. I promise.” Not wanting to leave, but having no choice, Eileen grabbed her coat off the bed and bent down to kiss Justin on the forehead. He smiled at her one last time as she headed out the door, leaving Justin all alone once again.

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He wasn’t entirely sure how long he sat on the edge of that bed, staring at his hands clasped in his lap. Not even his younger sister, Susannah, slamming open the front door and stomping up the steps to her room shook him out of his trance. Finally noticing Justin’s book bag on the kitchen table, Susannah began calling his name to find out where he was. At 11 years old, Justin’s sister secretly looked up to her older brother. You would never be able to tell this by the way she acted around him, though – instead, you would have thought they were mortal enemies, desperately seeking a chink in the other’s armor to exploit. You know, normal sibling relationship. Susannah eventually stopped in the doorway to their parents’ bedroom and stood and stared at Justin for a long while.

“Justin…what is it? Is it mom? Is she ok?” At first, Justin didn’t answer. He knew that she was there, but he was still wrapped up in the swirling chaos of thoughts in his head. How was he going to survive RMS after what had happened today? Was his mom write in her worry? Was there actually something wrong with him after all? The maelstrom was starting to become too much for Justin. Just as he was about to break down again, his sister slapped him across the face – hard.

“Ow!”

“Ahh, he does speak. Now, tell me what’s wrong. Is it mom? Or dad?” Rubbing the side of his with one hand, Justin looked up at his sister.

“No, they’re fine. Why did you hit me?”

“Because I called your name like 20 times and you didn’t answer me, idiot. What the fuck are you doing in here?” Justin’s sister had been using the word “fuck” since she was 7. This had earned her more than her fair share of disapproving glares from their mother and spankings from their father. However, if they knew what Susannah really did when others weren’t around, she’d get quite a bit more than that from both of them.

“Sorry. Just been a bad day.”

“Fine, whatever. I’m going to go watch TV.”

Justin half-smiled to himself. It was easier that way. He didn’t really want to talk to his sister about what had happened anyways. Likely, she’d hear about it from friends at school – someone who had an older brother at RMS, perhaps. Something about this freak kid who ran out of class, knocking people over and vanished for the rest of the day. Some freak kid who was rumored to have tried to kill himself at his old school. Susannah would know that it was Justin. There was no need for him to be the one to tell her about it.

Finally, Justin picked himself up off the bed and walked into the kitchen. He grabbed a pack of crackers from the cupboard, a bottle of water and his book bag off the table and headed upstairs to his room, the sound of the television blaring some afternoon kids show following him until he closed his door. Sighing, he dropped his bag on the ground and sat at his desk, powering on the laptop his parents had bought him for his 12th birthday. Opening the crackers, Justin stuffed one into his mouth just as his cell phone began to ring. Sliding the “answer” bar across the bottom, he put the phone to his ear.

“Herbrwro?”

“Umm…Justin?” Recognizing his mother’s voice, he quickly finished chewing and swallowed.

“Sorry – cracker.”

“Right…Look, sorry it took me so long to call. I’ve been in a meeting since I got here. Finally got a second to step out and call you. Are you doing ok?”

“Yeah, I’m ok. Susannah’s home.”

“I don’t know when I’m going to get out of here today. It’s insane right now. Apparently something went really wrong with this deal. Your father’s plane won’t land till late and it’ll be after 3 before he gets home, I’m sure. Will you be all right?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Mom…do I have to go to school tomorrow?”

“Umm…no, I guess not. But you’re going to have to go back eventually. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know. I just…I’m not ready yet.”

“It’s ok, it’ll give us more time to talk anyways. I do really miss hearing your voice, though it’s changed a bit in the past 6 months. More…crackily.”

“Mom!”

“See what I mean? Look, I gotta go. Love you, sweetie.”

“Love you too, mom.”

Justin pressed the end call button and dropped the phone onto his desk. His laptop finally finished booting up and he began checking his normal set of websites. Nothing seemed to catch his attention and he quickly gave up, his mind too consumed by more important things to be entertained by funny image macros. He stood up, stretched and began to walk towards his bed. He stopped at the mirror that hung on the back of his bedroom door and noticed again the bruise on his face. Stepping up to the mirror he examined it closely.

“Where the hell did this come from?” He poked the center of it with his index finger and winced in pain. He could tell it would be a beautiful purplish-blue color by morning. Stepping back, he stopped to look at himself in the mirror, something he had not done in months. His hair was an absolute mess and desperately needed to be cut. His clothes looked too big on him – he had lost close to 20 pounds in the past six months and given his already slight frame, this made him seem almost emaciated. In short, he looked awful. But behind it all, there were elements of what would one day be a good looking man. His brown hair was naturally wavy, and if properly cared for and styled, actually looked quite cute. His eyes were a deep brown color, almost the exact same shade as his hair. This gave him an almost sorrowful look at times, something he had done little about the past six months.

Figuring he should at least make use of the time he had, he walked back over to his desk and opened his book bag and pulled out the homework from his morning classes. Sitting down at his desk, he grabbed a pencil and got to work, trying hard to focus on the textbook and not what the future was surely going to bring.

Around 7, his sister called up to him to let him know that she had ordered a pizza. Justin was still sitting at his desk, though little of his homework had actually been completed. He had found himself staring at his blank computer screen as the events of the day roiled around in his head. At a complete loss for how he was going to deal with walking back into RMS, he gave up on his biology project and closed his notebook. Sighing, he walked over to his bed and collapsed onto it, still fully dressed and without having eaten dinner.

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“I…I…”

“….”

“I’m sorry. I don ‘t know why I did that.”

“I’m gonna go…”

“No, Ryan, wait!” Standing in the middle of the river, Justin watched as Ryan turned away from him and began pushing his way through the water back to the river bank. Justin called after him a few more times, but Ryan didn’t even turn around. They had known each other for years. They were like brothers, and yet it seemingly had all come to an end. Because Justin had been stupid. He was being truthful when he told Ryan he didn’t know why he had done that. Over the past few months, he’d found himself looking at Ryan in a different way, but growing up in such a small town, it wasn’t like Justin had a lot of resources to explain to him what was going on in his head. Sure, they had taken a sex education class, but had mostly just uncomfortably joked with each other about it. The internet had been a source of an absolutely insane amount of material as well. There had been a box that people could submit anonymous questions in, but none that were serious had made it into the box. However, none of that is the same as being able to talk to an actual person who understood what you were going through. So Justin sat next to Ryan, laughing along with his best friend when the teacher had shown them how to put a condom on a banana, while on the inside he was becoming increasingly confused.

Justin stood in the middle of that river for nearly two hours. Finally, he waded back to the bank and collected his shoes and began the long walk home. Since they lived next to each other, Justin wasn’t sure how he was going to avoid seeing Ryan. He purposely walked the long way around the outside of the neighborhood to come at his house from the opposite direction, hoping that Ryan wouldn’t see him. His plan beyond that was still a little fuzzy. Ryan, however, was waiting for him on the front step of Justin’s house. Still a few houses down, Justin stopped in his tracks, instantly recognizing the unruly red hair on his friend’s head. Ryan was looking up the street in the other direction, apparently waiting on Justin. Justin managed to get within 50 feet before Ryan turned his head and saw him. He stood up and waited as Justin closed the remaining distance until he was standing in the middle of the front yard facing Ryan.

“Look, Ryan…”

“No, don’t say anything. I don’t know why the hell you did what you did. I…thought we were friends.”

“We are…”

“Well, apparently you think we’re a different type of friend. I love you like a brother, Justin, but…I just don’t know.”

“Ryan…” Ryan had stepped down off Justin’s front porch and was heading across the yard back towards his own house. He stopped as Justin called his name and turned to look at him, tears welling in his eyes.

“Justin…don’t come over any more. At least, not for a while.”

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Justin’s eyes opened and he stared at the ceiling of his room. It was dark with only a small amount of moonlight coming in the window of his second-story bedroom. He had dreamed about that day so many times. He had had nightmares about what had followed that day almost as many times. He wondered if he could have done something differently – said something to Ryan to make him understand. Ryan’s father, however, was the town’s preacher and had raised Ryan on a fairly steady diet of homophobic rhetoric. Justin had sat through those sermons as well, thinking nothing of it until things started to change for him at the start of puberty. Even then, Justin wondered what was wrong with him. If it was true what Ryan’s father had said – that God considered homosexuality one of the worst sins – how was it that Justin felt the way he did without even a choice in the matter? It didn’t make a lot of sense to him that God would look so strongly down on him for something that Justin couldn’t control. Going to speak with Ryan’s father about this, however, was absolutely out of the question. He had made his stance on gays quite clear on a number of occasions.

Sighing, he looked over at the alarm clock on his nightstand. 11:36. He swung his feet off the bed and stood up, blinking to let his eyes adjust to the darkened room. Slowly, he made his way to the door and out into the hallway. The house was completely silent. Assuming his sister had already gone to sleep, he made his way down the stairs to the kitchen where the box of pizza sat in the middle of the table, a clean plate and folded napkin sitting next to it. Smiling slightly, Justin sat down at the table and ate dinner by himself.

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The next day, Justin woke at his usual time, his body trained to automatically wake up at 6:30 every morning. The sun was just beginning to rise and he could hear several birds chirping outside his window. He had no memory of how he had gotten to bed, but his blanket was pulled up to his chin and he was wearing only a t-shirt and underwear. The last thing he remembered, he had sat down on the living room sofa to try to watch TV. Stretching beneath the covers, he slowly got out of bed and headed for the bathroom to shower. Figuring his father was still asleep since he had gotten home so late, he tried to be as quiet as possible. When he was finished, he got dressed and headed downstairs to find something for breakfast. As the turned the corner from the bottom of the staircase and headed through the doorway into the kitchen, he stopped suddenly as he almost ran into his sister who was rushing out the door to catch the school bus.

“See ya later, butthead!”

Justin shook his head and stepped into the kitchen, surprised to see his mother standing at the stove with an apron on, making pancakes. She turned at Susannah’s outburst and smiled slightly at Justin.

“Blueberry pancakes. I haven’t made these in years. You used to love them so much.”

“Mom, I…”

“Shh, sit down. First you eat.” Justin sat down at his usual spot at the kitchen table, the pizza box and plate already cleared away. After a few minutes, his mother set down a huge plate of blueberry pancakes for him with a side of scrambled eggs and bacon.

“Holy shit, mom!”

“Watch your mouth, young man. Now eat up, you look like we starve you or something.” Justin picked up his fork and knife and dug in, savoring the first bite of one of his favorite foods. Since his mother had taken her new job a few years back, her available time to spend with the kids had shrunk to almost none and with their father on the road for business more often than not, Susannah and Justin had taken to raising themselves. Eileen didn’t say anything as she sat across from Justin watching him eat breakfast. He made eye contact with her a few times, but quickly broke it, unsure if he was ready to continue their conversation from the previous day. Finally, his plate was clean and he couldn’t delay any longer. His mother stood and cleared his plate and placed it with the rest of the breakfast dishes in the sink. She sat back down, this time next to Justin and took his hand in hers.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before now?”

“I…I don’t…” Justin sat there, unsure what to say. He was finally talking with his mother again after so long and he was worried he was going to say something to mess it up. In truth, because she had been so absent, Justin had been forced into independence, and had started to stop looking at her as someone who was available to help. She had made a few efforts to reconnect after “the incident” but Justin’s plan was in full effect at that time and he wasn’t interested. She had made the decision to give him time to recover, but things had fallen into a routine after the move to Shiloh Falls and with her job keeping her busy, days had turned into weeks and into months and Justin had been left all alone with his nightmares. “I wanted to, I really did. Well, maybe not at first, but I did after a few weeks, but you were always gone and Dad wasn’t ever here and I was so scared.”

“Scared? About what?”

“That you would think I was broken. I mean, look at me? I’m gay for fuck’s sake!”

“And why do you think that means you are broken?”

“Because that’s what I was told every single Sunday for 4 years! And you never said anything against it! How was I supposed to know the truth? How was I supposed to know you wouldn’t HATE ME?” The anger, sadness and abandonment Justin had been feeling for months came rushing to the surface, and he pushed his chair back from the kitchen table and stood up, now screaming at his mother. “You weren’t there when I NEEDED you! I HAD NO ONE!” Justin was so lost in his rage that he hadn’t noticed his mother’s reaction. When he stopped talking, he looked down and saw that she was sitting with her head in her hands, crying.

“I’m so sorry, Justin. I failed you. You’re right. I don’t know what to say.” Seeing his mother so upset by his words, Justin’s anger began to fade.

“I didn’t mean to yell.” Wiping her eyes, Eileen looked up at her son.

“No, you have every right to be angry with me. I was supposed to care for you. I gave you a house, fed you, kept you clothed. But I didn’t give you what you needed most of all. I didn’t give you a mother when you needed one most.”

Justin sat back down at the table and took his mother’s hand in his.

“You’re here now.”

“You’re right, I am. And I want you to tell me everything.”