The Battle for Jericho Read online

  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.

  “YOU 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—”

  “Work with me, kid. You do have a girlfriend. I assume you kiss her, take her out on dates, make out with her. That’s what you have to do now with guys. Just start by picturing yourself kissing another boy.”

  A shudder went through me so violently that the pen flew out of my hand.

  “Yeah, I know,” Dylan said, getting up to retrieve the pen. “The idea turns your stomach at first. I went through that too, when I made my choice to join up. You just have to hold your nose and tough it out. A good way to start is to replace all your girlie porn with gay porn. Playguy. Guys Gone Wild. Stare at pictures of naked guys and tell yourself, ‘Bare boy butt, good. Bare girl butt, bad.’ Do that for at least two hours, every day.” He tossed the pen onto the table. “Oh, you’ll be relieved to know that making out is as far as we encourage teen recruits to go. Full-fledged sex at this stage is a no-no.”

  “Uh… but I thought degeneracy was the whole point of being gay.”

  Dylan looked stunned for a moment, but I couldn’t figure why. He recovered quickly, saying, “Yes, we want degeneracy. But right now, the movement’s focused on destroying the traditional concept of marriage worldwide. We want members to save themselves until they find someone they want to settle down with. That will make our cases more legitimate when we press governments for same-sex marriage.”

  “Oh.” Silly me. I should have figured that out myself.

  “We have finally subverted the media to our side. Reporters and commentators are constantly spreading the word that gay is okay and all opposition to homosexuality as immoral or sinful is just plain bigotry. We have a team that writes the scripts and makes sure the talking heads recite them word for word. We rock, kid, and the church is on the run. But we all know what happens when a society turns its back on God’s laws. Pretty soon, we’ll have the Lord sending hurricanes, earthquakes, and asteroids our way. So brace yourself.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  Dylan nodded, grinning maniacally. The only thing missing from the moment was him wringing his hands and making that evil bwah-hah-hah-haaah laugh. “It will be our ultimate achievement, the utter destruction of the world as we know it.”

  Yeah. Can’t wait for that one.

  “Are you aware of any gay guys at your school?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered, coughing to clear my throat. “I mean, there are a few rumors going around, but nothing I’d be willing to bet on.”

  “Well, just go up and ask one of those guys to make out with you.”

  “No way. If the rumor isn’t true, then my business is out for everybody to see. And I know I’m gonna have to come out to the rest of the world sometime, but not while I’m still in high school.” I studied Dylan’s face for a moment. He wasn’t a bad-looking dude. Being around him made me feel sort of excited and anxious inside. In fact, it was like the feeling I get around a really hot girl. Then, a sudden, panicky burst of embarrassment hit me out of nowhere, and I told myself I’d sooner swap DNA with my grandma’s toothless, eighteen-year-old beagle than put my lips on Dylan’s face. Still, I had to start somewhere. “Why can’t I sort of, like… practice with you?”

  “Because you’re not my type.”

  “Oh. You’re not into black guys.” I was surprised at how disappointed I felt.

  “No, I’m not into kids, of any race or gender.” He picked up his satchel and began rummaging through it. “I know, I know, all adult gay men are suppose
d to molest boys, whether or not the boys themselves have ‘decided’ to be gay. It’s in the contract. I’ll have to work on that at some point. But not now. I’m still trying to get the whole marriage-to-another-man scenario down before I start with boys. I do have a cousin who’s ten. I thought I’d make a go at him when he’s twelve or thirteen.”

  “Oh, I get it.” I had to fight back a little shudder of disgust, remembering one of the terms I’d read in the contract. “Catch him right at puberty. Then maybe you can recruit him to the gay life before he even starts with girls. Kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Exactly.” Dylan pulled his hand from the satchel and slid a folded sheet of paper across the table to me. “That’s a list of the social clubs and community centers in our area that have activities for gay and lesbian teenagers. Any one of those organizations will be happy to help you get started coming to terms with yourself. You’ll meet gay guys your age. Talk to them. Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two. You may even find yourself a boyfriend.” He winked at me.

  “Great, thanks,” I said with a singular lack of enthusiasm. I took the list and tucked it into the pouch on the front of my backpack.

  “There’s just one little rule I want you to follow. If you meet a gay guy who hasn’t come out yet, don’t reveal him to anyone who’s not in the movement, got it? If you do—and I’m not kidding about this—you’ll be made to disappear.”

  If only.

  “I’m starved,” Dylan announced, getting to his feet. “I’m going to make myself a sandwich for dinner. You want one?”

  “Yes, please,” I replied quickly. The only sandwiches I liked were hamburgers and grilled cheese. I couldn’t stand anything that included cold, slimy meat—shaved ham, sliced turkey, bologna, etc. At that moment, I didn’t care what Dylan brought out of his kitchen for me. I was just glad to have a reason to hang around.

  “I haven’t had a chance to get to the supermarket. Is a fried egg sandwich okay with you?”

  Yuck! “Yeah, that’d be great.”

  After he walked into the kitchen, I looked down again at his satchel, which lay open on the table. For some weird reason, I wanted to know more about him. Peeking out from inside the satchel were a few manila file folders and a paperback book. I pulled out the book. It was a worn copy of The Return of the King.

  Highfalutin fantasy. Wow. I admired anyone who could read stuff by Tolkien. I’d tried but never made it past The Hobbit. It was good to know that Dylan and I had a couple of things in common. I liked fantasy, and I also did most of my reading from real books. Not that I had anything against e-book readers. I actually wanted one of the things, but Dad was too cheap to shell out for one. Dylan obviously had the means to get an e-book reader, but he must have simply preferred reading the old-fashioned paper kind.

  Tucked about two-thirds of the way into the novel was a folded sheet of paper that was apparently being used as a bookmark. Handwritten at the top of that paper was the following: My MLGBT Teen Society Roster. This was something personal about Dylan. The realization excited me.

  “You want some milk to drink with your sandwich?” Dylan called out from the kitchen.

  Milk with eggs? Ugh! I could feel my stomach turning itself inside out at the idea. “Hey, that’d be awesome. Thanks.”

  I slipped the sheet of paper into my backpack.

  I WAS home by six, just as dusk settled into night and the street lamps flickered on. I tossed my backpack onto the table and stuck my head in the fridge, hunting for a quick snack. I was starving. I hadn’t been able to force myself to eat much of the dinner Dylan served up, and most of it had wound up in the trash.

  “Hey, son.” Dad walked into the kitchen with a sheaf of student test papers in his hand.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “How was school?”

  “It stank. How was work?”

  “It stank too.” He pulled out a chair and sat at the table, where he made ready to begin grading the tests. Such work was usually done at his desk in the little office over our garage. He only worked through dinner when he had a boatload of papers to shuffle. “Your mother called, by the way. There was some type of emergency in her department, so she’ll be in late.”

  “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

  “Are you getting something out of there or just cooling the whole house?”

  “Sorry.” I grabbed a banana, peeling it even as I shut the fridge door. The banana was so cold it made my teeth hurt. I’d read somewhere that fruit should be stored at room temperature but could never convince Mom of that. Snagging a box of raisins from the cabinet, I sat across the table from Dad.

  He was studying my face. “You look worried. Is something going on?”

  I widened my eyes to fake innocence. “No. Nothing going on.”

  He returned to his papers. I watched as he immediately checked off the first six answers on the top page, marking them as incorrect. He didn’t even bat an eye in sympathy. “Any ideas about dinner?” he asked.

  We both had cooking skills, developed out of the necessity created by Mom’s work schedule and Dad’s refusal to spend money on fast food. “Sloppy Joes would be good,” I replied. “And a little coleslaw on the side.”

  “That does sound good. Use the ground turkey. You know how your mother worries about my cholesterol levels.”

  “Uh. I was hoping you’d do the cooking.”

  “Now why the hell would I do that when I’ve got you here?”

  Yeah, why indeed. Damn it.

  WITH dinner finished and the dishes done (by yours truly, of course), I retreated to my room. I called Lissandra. Her father answered and said that she still wasn’t feeling well. She was asleep, and he didn’t want to wake her. He offered to take a message. I decided the breakup could wait. With my girl sick, it would be a while before I’d see her again, anyway. I asked Mr. Ackerman to just tell her that I’d talk to her later.

  On to Step Two. I was reluctant to look at the roster I’d filched from Dylan’s satchel. Aside from the guilt I now felt for taking it, deep down I was afraid I’d discover something that I really didn’t want to know. I’d figured out on the walk home that the “MLGBT” on the roster stood for the Mid-Tennessee Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Society. (Actually, it was spelled out on the business card that was stapled to the other side of the page.) It seemed that Dylan was a member of the MLGBT Society, and the page I’d taken was a list of some of its teenaged members. Sitting on the floor with my back against the bed, I slipped the list from my backpack and unfolded it. Sure enough, there was a name on the paper that made my eyes bug.

  Midway down the list was one Barry Nathaniel “Hutch” Hutchison.

  Chapter 7

  YOU share classes with a guy for more than a year, have lunch with him five days a week, hang out at each other’s homes on the weekends. You think you know the guy after all that.

  On the list were four other dudes from Gordon Browning High, as well as a couple of girls. I didn’t know any of them all that well. But Hutch? He had become my second-closest friend, after Mac. His parents were just as strict and religious as mine. We both loved math class and hated English class. We exchanged embarrassing anecdotes like sinners at confession. Hutch—who was deathly afraid of all dogs, big or small—told me he screeched like a girl in the middle of a church picnic two years ago when a six-month-old stray pup ran up and licked him on the ankle. He once stuffed a rock up his nose on a dare and got it stuck in his nostril. There was the time he got sick while riding the roller coaster at the Middle Tennessee State Fair and sprayed upchuck all over the crowd waiting in line below.

  But there hadn’t been a single clue, not a passing hint, that he’d gone gay. He went by “Hutch” because he hated his name; he said Barry Nathaniel was “freaking faggoty.” He was the one who started calling the broken-nose freshie “gay boy.”

  My God. For weeks we’d been showering together, naked, in the school locker room.

  Suddenly, I felt so viol
ated.

  I grabbed the phone off my nightstand and punched in Hutch’s telephone number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hutch, man, it’s Jerry. Can you get out for a minute?”

  “Why? I’m in the middle of—”

  “Just find out if you can get out for a minute.”

  He must have put his hand over the mouthpiece; there was a brief, muffled conversation on his end. Then he came back on the line. “My mom says it’s okay. What’s up?”

  “Meet me at the basketball court in the park. Be there in ten minutes.”

  I hung up, grabbed my jacket, and walked back to the kitchen.

  Dad was still grading papers. He looked up at me as I entered. “Jericho?”

  “I have to meet Hutch about a… project we’re working on,” I said, sliding into my jacket.

  “It’s after seven, boy.”

  “But my curfew’s not until eight tonight. I’ll be back by then.”

  Dad wasn’t crazy about the idea. I knew this because his harsh gaze promised me misery if I were even one minute late.

  HUTCH lived closer to the park than I did, and he was already at the court when I arrived. The park was empty, and the temperature had dropped considerably. With his jacket zipped to his neck, he was leaning against the lamppost, arms wrapped around his chest for warmth.

  “Hey, man,” he said, annoyed. He was a few inches shorter than me, but more solid and muscular in build. His hair was sort of sandy brown, straight and thick, and he wore it long. He really did have nice eyes; they were green with long, thick lashes. He was cute for a guy. No, I mean… he was good-looking. Wait, I mean, he looked okay. Yeah, he was okay looking. “What’s up with all that guff you were giving me on the phone?” he asked.

  The question only made me angrier, and I had to fight a sudden urge to swat him in the head. “You want to know what’s up? What about this, you little bastard?” I growled through my teeth, shoving the list in his face.