It wouldn’t help. As much as he’d tried to convince himself that his shameful desire was somehow the result of Wyoming, he knew it wasn’t true. When he finally sat back and looked at it objectively, he could admit he’d never really been attracted to a girl at home, either. He’d watched other boys in the locker room on occasion. Usually, there hadn’t been anything erotic about it, but looking back, he began to take note of the times his heart had raced and his palms had grown damp at the sight of some boy undressing next to him. At the time, he’d chalked it up to nerves and self-consciousness. It had never progressed to anything more than that. But now, when Nate thought about those boys, and thought about how it might feel to touch them, he couldn’t deny the way it made him feel. In the clear, cold light of morning, he was able to admit something to himself he’d never realized before.
He was gay. Or queer. Or homosexual. He liked that term a bit better. But whatever anybody called it, the fact remained: he was far more attracted to males than to females.
And from there, it was easy to take the final leap.
He wanted Cody.
It was that simple. He was obsessed with Cody. Enamored of him. Maybe even in love with him. He fell asleep every night thinking about him, remembering how it had felt to kiss him, wondering if he’d ever have the chance to do it again. The thought of never again sharing that kind of intimacy made his heart ache.
But he didn’t have the faintest idea what to do about it.
Homecoming week arrived, and it seemed to be all anybody was talking about. Nate found himself avoiding Christine, as well as the Grove residents. He once again switched seats in social studies, choosing a desk in the front row on the right-hand side. He’d planted himself squarely in the middle of the Mormons, who all smiled nervously and said hello. He had classes with many of them, and they were always polite but distant.
Polite but distant suddenly felt like the greatest kindness in the world.
He heard the disturbance behind him as Cody and Logan came in. He’d bumped Logan’s entire row back a seat, which meant he’d have a harder time talking to Cody. That wasn’t why Nate had done it. He’d just wanted to get away from anybody who might talk to him about homecoming and sit in a place where he wouldn’t be tempted to stare at Cody the entire period but he figured breaking up Logan and Cody was an added bonus.
But he couldn’t bring himself to initiate contact with the object of his desire. He sat tense in his seat, listening to the quiet cadence of Cody’s voice as he talked to Logan. He secretly wished Logan would come down with a bad case of the mumps. He wasn’t even sure if the mumps were still a thing, but he didn’t care a bit. Anything that would ruin Logan’s perfect face for a few days at least, and get him away from Cody.
By Wednesday, the Mormons were talking to Nate, and inviting him to sit with them at lunch as if he were one of their own.
Nate had been vaguely aware of Mormonism back in Austin, but he’d always thought of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as an odd little cult. The people he knew talked about Mormons with the same confused contempt they used when talking about Jehovah’s Witnesses or Hare Krishnas. But in Warren, Mormons were the majority. Easily more than half the town’s residents were technically members of the church, but most of them, including Cody and his mom, were what Cody called “Jack Mormons,” meaning they belonged to the church in name only.
The ones who were true Mormons—the ones who actually followed the church’s many rules—formed their own little clique. There were four of them with him in social studies: Stacy, Lisa, Grant, and Nephi. Nate was surprised to find they weren’t anywhere near as weird as he’d been led to believe. They didn’t drink, or swear, or smoke, but other than that, they seemed to be into all the same things the other teenagers were.
That night, Nate’s dad knocked on his bedroom door. “Seven o’clock,” he said as he poked his head in. “Time to call your mom.”
Nate was at his desk, doing math homework. His heart clenched. He couldn’t meet his father’s eyes. “I don’t want to talk to her.”
His dad didn’t respond. For several seconds, there was only silence, Nate staring blindly at his math book, his dad like a statue in the doorway. Finally, his dad spoke, his voice gentle. “I talked to her on Sunday, Nate. She said you called late Saturday night. She said—”
“I don’t want to talk to her!”
“You can’t avoid her forever, son.”
Nate put his pencil to paper, biting his lip, trying to direct his attention back to limits and differentiation. Trying not to think about whoever had answered the phone at his old house in Austin.