The Battle for Jericho (6 page)

I was going to miss phenomenal girl butts.

Mac reached down and tugged me out of the locker opening. I desperately scooted away from him as if he were about to jab a knife in my chest. He stared at me for a second. “You’re really starting to scare me here, Jerry.” He closed the door to my locker and spun the dial, making sure it was locked.

“Don’t worry about me, Mac.” Holding my stinging left hand against my chest, I hefted my backpack onto my shoulder. My jaw ached. I wondered if that was punishment enough for me to forget about joining the gay team. Then I thought about the broken Dylan and knew I had not suffered nearly enough. I sighed. “I gotta go.”

“Hold on. Hutch has his mom’s car. He’s gonna give us a ride—”

“You dudes go ahead. I got something else to do. See ya.” I tossed the words over my shoulder as I ran for the exit. Mac started after me, I poured on the speed, and he gave up, knowing there was no way he could catch me.

I thought about Dylan again. I’d been thinking about him a lot today. Every time he crossed my mind, I felt sort of funny, anxious-like. It was a lot worse than the weird feeling I usually got when I let any notion of homosexuality into my head.

Chapter 6

D
AD
was happy to learn that I’d “found” my cell—so happy, in fact, that he took it from me. “Maybe I’ll just hold onto it for a while,” he said. “Maybe that will teach you to keep up with your things.”

Being without a cell would be no excuse for failing to follow the rules. I knew, as I ran down the steps outside the school’s south entrance two at a time, that I wasn’t going home just yet. That meant I had to let Mom or Dad know where I would be.

The only pay phone in town that I knew of was mounted outside the service bay door of an auto repair shop on Highway 72. The shop was run by the family of Gavin Coles, a guy I’d known since fifth grade. Gavin said the phone had been there since before he was born, and he’d never seen anyone actually use it. I wasn’t about to hike the seven miles to the shop to find out if the thing really worked.

Dummy! I was so out of my head I forgot all about the pay phones at school. By the time my memory kicked in, I was already three blocks from school, and I sure as hell wasn’t going back. Instead, I headed for the Webster’s Glen Library.

The afternoon was sunny, and it was warm for late October. That made it a great day for running. I spend a lot of my free time in the Popular Fiction section, hunting for newly released sci-fi paperbacks. The women who staff the desk there used to let me use the department’s phone to call home, back in those dark days before Dad broke down and got a cell for me. Despite my being sweaty and out of breath when I reached the desk, the woman on duty today, Mrs. Kingston, was glad to see me.

“Of course, you’re welcome to use the telephone, sweetie,” she said with a big smile, bending down to grab the phone from the cubbyhole beneath her desk. It was kept there to mute the sound when it rang. Mrs. Kingston is a graduate student in Library Science at the university. She has a soft, round face, is somewhere in her late twenties, and is what my mom calls “full-figured.” She was wearing a turtleneck. It fit her perfectly. For the first time in the two years since she started working at the library, I realized what nice lips she has. And eyes. And ears. Even her nostrils are cute.

I almost sighed when she put the phone in front of me.

I called Baptist Hospital first, which is perched on the eastern border of Webster’s Glen. Mom is a nurse there in the neonatal intensive care unit. Dad has degrees up to his neck, including a PhD in Business Administration. Professionally, he is Dr. London Jiles. Mom only has her bachelor’s degree, but there’s a nursing shortage across the country. RNs are in high demand and command some correspondingly high salaries. I think it bugs Dad that Mom not only has a shorter commute but earns more money than he does.

Of course, the shortage also means nurses work a lot of hours. Sometimes Mom misses dinner. And church. And little things like grade school graduation and basketball games.

The person who answered said Mom was with a patient and couldn’t come to the phone. I left her a message. To cover all my bases, I also called Dad’s cell. I knew he had a class from three to four on Monday afternoon, so I left a message on his voice mail telling him I’d be at the library until six. I thanked Mrs. Kingston and handed the phone back to her, forcing myself to look no lower than the delicate little dimple in her chin.

Actually, I was only in the library until four forty-five, during which time I finished my homework for American history. After loading up my backpack, I walked outside and down Baxter Boulevard, slowly, as if going to my own execution.

A
T
TEN
after five, Dylan parked his Camaro in the driveway and climbed out with a leather satchel in hand thick enough to knock down walls. He wore a gray suit, a gray dress shirt, and a black tie. His hair had been trimmed close to his scalp to blend in with the landing strip the doctors made when suturing his wound. The buzz cut and the suit made him look like a military recruiter, and it gave me a flutter in my chest. I was still a little scared of him.

He seemed surprised to find me sitting on the steps to his porch. “What’re you doing here?”

I stood up. “You told me to sleep on it and come back if I really want to go gay.” I spread my arms. “I’m back.”

He brushed past me wearily and started unlocking his door. “Go home, Jericho.”

“But you said—”

“This isn’t a game,” he snapped, turning to me, a scowl on his face. “And I’m not in the mood to play.”

“I’m not playing, Dylan,” I told him with a sudden seriousness that seemed to come from some part of me that was far older than my sixteen years. “I have to do this. I’m
going
to do this, whether you help me or not.”

The burden was back on him now, and I figured I’d give him a few seconds to decide what he was going to do. He glared into my eyes, looking for the slightest waver. I didn’t even dare blink. Maybe half a minute later, he got this sly look in his eye, and he said, “You’re telling me that you’re ready to give up girls?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes.”

“You realize that the ultimate goal of the gay agenda is to alter the institution of marriage as set forth by God and forever undermine society’s traditional moral values?”

“I do.”

“And by choosing homosexuality, you’re willing to risk not just the end of all sexual relations with the females you naturally desire, not just the loss of your family and friends, not just the condemnation of your church, not just discrimination by the local, state, and federal governments, but the everlasting wrath of the all-powerful and eternal Master of the Universe?”

Gulp.
“I am.”

He studied my face for another thirty seconds before he finally unlocked the door. “Follow me. There’s some paperwork involved.”

Paperwork?

Dylan led me through his living room and down the hall to a bedroom he had converted into a home office. There was a small, contemporary desk against the rear wall. Dylan pulled out the chair and told me to sit.

As I seated myself, he opened the filing cabinet next to the desk and hauled out a stack of white, legal-sized paper, which he plopped down in front of me.

“What’s this?” I asked, afraid to even look.

“That’s the standard membership contract,” Dylan replied. “You know, for joining WHO, the World Homosexual Organization.” He uncapped a pen and dropped it on the desk. “Read it over, then sign and date it.”

I read the contract. Or tried to. There were enough wherefores, in witness thereofs, agreed heretos and other legalese in that thing to scare the pee out of a Supreme Court justice. The gist of it was that I agreed to become a fully committed gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered individual (the form allowed me to take my pick) for life. The terms and conditions obligated me, as a guy, to get busy on a regular basis with at least one member of the male persuasion. My responsibilities also included, as Dylan had already pointed out, destroying all precepts regarding male/female relationships and the moral teachings of society, especially those established by the Bible, Quran, and all other holy books. This wasn’t just limited to fighting for same-sex marriage. WHO would also be pushing to expand the legal definition of marriage to include bigamy, adult/child unions, human/animal nuptials, and knot-tying between people and bacteria.

When I got to the end, my hands were shaking.

“It says here my signature has to be notarized,” I pointed out. I figured it would buy me some time.

Dylan opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out a notary stamp. “Not a problem,” he said. “I can also handle the oath and affirmation part.”

Damn it. Oh well. As Mom always said, in for a penny, in for a pound.

I signed. He notarized. Then he had me raise my right hand, and I took the oath of gaydom.

“Y
OU
have to start small. Take baby steps.”

We were sitting at the dining room table. Dylan had pulled a legal pad from his satchel and was jotting down pointers as he spoke.

“Right now, you have to concentrate on fighting your attraction to girls and getting yourself used to the idea of being with a guy,” he continued. “You have a girlfriend?”

“Uh-huh.” I closed my eyes because I knew what was coming next.

“Break up with her.”

I tried to swallow. My throat suddenly felt as if was lined with sandpaper. I looked at Dylan. “When?”

“Tonight would not be too soon.”

I didn’t say anything. I was afraid I’d start crying if I opened my mouth.

“You don’t have to come out to her,” Dylan continued. “At this point, you don’t have to come out to anyone who’s not in the movement. That’s a giant step you’ll get to down the line, when you’re ready to take up a cause—same-sex marriage, gay adoption, marginalizing the moral teachings of the church, running for political office—to shake up the status quo. But you have to cut off all emotional and physical contact with girls,
especially
your girlfriend. My recommendation is that you break it off over the phone. That way there’s no chance you’ll be tempted by hugs, kisses, or any other kind of touch. It’ll be easier for you. Got it?”

I nodded.

“When you’re around girls, don’t look at them. There is to be no flirting with them. And don’t let them flirt with you. Just walk away.”

I nodded again.

“No
Playboy
, no
Hustler
, no magazines featuring beautiful women. And don’t visit the websites. You can’t even look at a Victoria’s Secret catalog. No
Girls Gone Wild
and no movies with naked females. If you have any of the stuff at home, burn it. Tonight.”

That sent a pain straight through my heart. There was a stack of
Playboy
magazines hidden in a shoebox at the back of my closet that my folks hadn’t found. They’d been passed down to me by Mac, who slipped his dad’s mags out of the recycling bin when his mom wasn’t looking.
“
Did you say… burn?”

“Yes. Dig a little hole in the ground, burn the stuff, and cover up the ashes. Then spit on the grave.”

I put both hands over my chest.

Dylan’s hand flew over the legal pad, his writing so large that the cursive letters took up three lines on the page. Even so, the words were hardly legible. Looking down at the pad, I couldn’t make out a single one of the instructions he had jotted. Not that I wanted to.

“What kinda work do you do?” I asked.

“I’m a lawyer.”

“Oh. I thought maybe you were a doctor.”

He got it after a moment. “Funny. Here, take your own damn notes.”

He shoved the pad and pen at me.

Okay. Back to gutting my life. Whoopee. “And after swearing off girls, what’s next?”

“
While
you’re swearing off girls, you start turning onto guys.” Before starting our little session, Dylan had offered me a snack. He went to the kitchen and came back with a bowl of individually wrapped protein bars. I tried one. It had all the flavor of a piece of cardboard. Dylan seemed to find them exceptional. He reached into the bowl now and started on his third bar of the afternoon.

“Well, how do I do that?” The question came out of a throat suddenly so dry I thought dust would fly from my mouth.

“It’s simple,” Dylan answered, holding up a hand to hide his chewing. “You take everything you do with a girl and apply it to a guy.”

I paused with the pen hovering over the pad, gawking at Dylan as if he had just spoken in some ancient, dead language.

“Come on, Jericho. You know what I mean.” He leaned back in his chair, swallowing the food in his mouth. “When you see a really hot, sexy girl, what do you do?”

“Slap myself and walk away because I know she’ll never like me.”

Dylan smiled. “Fine. What do you do when you come across a girl who’s just average-looking?”

“Slap myself and walk away because—”