Destiny (Waiting for Forever) (2 page)

As I watched the miles ticking past, my thoughts turned to Jamie. Being ridiculously optimistic, I allowed myself to believe, just for a moment, that I would be seeing him in just two days. With a smile, I imagined the look of shock and happiness on his face when he saw me for the first time in over a year. His hair would be lighter from the California sun and maybe even a little longer like mine, but his eyes would be the same. That one look of love and excitement would be worth every minute of the two days I’d spend trapped on the bus, and everything that came after.

Shifting in the uncomfortable seat, I allowed myself to daydream for a long time about seeing Jamie again. I sat with my eyes closed and my arms around my backpack as I imagined his arms around me and his soft, tender kisses. His face was clear in my mind as I thought about what we would do after I found him, what our apartment would look like, what jobs we might get. At night, we would come home to each other and eat pizza on the couch while we watched television; then later we would make love. The memory of our lovemaking flashed through my mind, and I savored it for just the briefest moment, feeling my body respond before pushing the thought away with a sigh.

In order to have that kind of reunion, that kind of life, I first needed to find Jamie.

Opening the largest compartment on my backpack, I pulled out the folded papers Richard had handed me that morning as we had packed my stuff into the car. As I unfolded the small stack, I smoothed the printed pages on my knee. The first few pages were from The Sunshine Center’s website.

The Sunshine Center

Curing homosexuality in a safe and nurturing environment

Director: Reverend Peter J. Carmichael

The Sunshine Center provides a safe and supportive place for men who wish to denounce their sinful and abnormal homosexual lifestyle choice, avoid the judgment of their creator, and come back to the light and love of Jesus Christ. The program is structured using a balanced regimen of masculine reaffirmation….

Jamie’s parents had forced him into a program to make him straight. From everything I’d ever read about homosexuality, I’d never thought a cure was possible. “A balanced regimen of masculine reaffirmation….” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but almost at once, sick images filled my head. A boy, who looked disturbingly like Jamie, was strapped to a chair with electrodes stuck to his skin as he watched a screen flashing images at regular intervals. The first image was a naked woman with bare breasts and a knowing smile. Nothing happened to the boy. The second was a naked man masturbating, and the boy received an electric shock. His thin body went rigid in pain, and his eyes were wet with humiliation and despair.

Other images came, ones I could barely think about, like those people forcing Jamie to have sex with girls. I didn’t think it was even possible. If he couldn’t get hard, couldn’t perform, then they couldn’t force him to have sex that would make him feel ashamed. Maybe then, they sent him back to the room with the shocks.

Desperate, I went back to the papers and continued reading.

The program is structured using a balanced regimen of masculine reaffirmation, counseling sessions, and social activities. One of the main goals of the program is to allow our participants the opportunity to bond with other men in healthy and non-intimate relationships that help to replace one lacking between the participant and his father. Another goal of the program is to introduce men to social activities without the distraction of sexual attraction. Extensive bible study and prayer is also strongly encouraged.

At first glance, it didn’t sound as horrible as I’d been imagining, but it still had to be a nightmare, spending all his time being told he was wrong, sinful, and abnormal. As I continued to read all the ignorant, hateful things those people, those so-called Christians, had to say about Jamie and me, I got angry. It would kill me if their brainwashing had robbed Jamie of who he was and turned him into some kind of soulless pseudo-heterosexual.

When I wadded the papers up and threw them back in my bag, I saw the envelope with Jamie’s letter tucked safely into an inside pocket. His letter said that he loved me and that he thought of me every day he was in that place. Obviously, their perfectly balanced crap hadn’t worked on Jamie. It made me feel torn, though. I was ecstatic that he’d fought and hadn’t let them change him. Jamie was perfect just the way he was, but it hurt to think he’d spent almost a year alone with so-called Christians telling him he was going to burn in hell.

Setting my backpack on the floor at my feet, I sighed and ran through the letter again in my head. He had written that he was leaving the center the day before because I’d turned eighteen. I didn’t understand the connection, but that made me wonder if he would go back to his parents. If he did, Mrs. Mayfield probably wouldn’t be pleased that the center’s cure hadn’t worked on her son. Maybe Jamie would pretend to be straight for them until he could get out on his own. Somehow, I didn’t think that would be the case. Jamie had never been able to lie to his mama. No matter what trouble we had gotten into, she could always read it on his face. The face I wished, with almost a physical need, I could touch right then, just to know that he was safe.

Suddenly, the world seemed to fall away in a huge chasm, and I heard the boy from the seat in front of me telling “Mommy, Mommy” to “lookit, lookit.” The sun was riding low over an enormous body of water, not quite setting, and I watched the beauty of the undulating ripples. A sign caught my attention as we passed, naming the surrounding body Lake Pontchartrain. The voice came over the internal speakers to tell us about the newly reinforced bridge we were crossing courtesy of the state of Louisiana after the last devastating storm. While I was musing about Jamie, I had missed the fact that we’d left Mississippi and entered Louisiana. The terrain was all starting to look the same.

The bridge spanned miles of the massive lake. It was nothing like the rivers I’d been to with Jamie. It never seemed to end. The water just fell off the earth at the edge of my line of vision, and I stared in wonder at its blue depths, distracting myself from the fact that I had spent the last few hours alternating between terrified and merely scared.

After a while, the trees and greenery started to give way to the neighborhoods that signaled an approach to civilization. We were coming up on the New Orleans station, and in a way, I was glad because it would give me a chance to stretch my legs. My butt was numb from the constant vibrations of sitting on the bus for three hours, and I really wanted to use a toilet that wasn’t moving. My stomach rumbled, as if it knew a stop was close, reminding me that I also needed to eat. Carolyn had packed snacks in the cooler, but I wanted real food. Plus there would be long stretches with no breaks, and it’s silly but I wanted to make her last meal for me stretch a while.

I was a little more than paranoid about missing my return time. It was just past six in the evening local time, and we would have forty-five minutes before the bus left for its next destination. Still, when the bus finally rolled to a stop, I couldn’t make myself get up.

“Kid, you don’t have to stay on the bus,” the gruff driver said as he stood up and stretched. “I’m going to be right outside; no one’s going to take off with your stuff.” He ran a dirty white sleeve over his forehead and took a step toward the stairs. I wasn’t sure I could put into words just how scared I was, but he seemed to understand. As he ran a hand through his short brown hair, his eyes grew kind. He walked back to the middle of the bus where I was, hitched up his ill-fitting polyester pants, tucked the uniform shirt back in, and sat down across the aisle from me.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re running from,” he said quietly.

“I’m not—” I tried to protest, but he cut me off.

“I drive a bus, kid. I’ve seen enough runaways to know that you’re freaking terrified of somethin’. You’re going to have a hard enough time once you get to wherever you’re going. There’s no reason to make this part hard. Go get something to eat, use the john, be back here five minutes early, and you’ll be okay. Don’t talk to anyone, and if anyone gives you crap, just walk back to the bus. Christ, I got a kid your age, and I wouldn’t want him to be out on his own like this,” the driver said, shaking his head. “Take your bag; it’s probably all you have in the world.” Nodding to my backpack that was resting in my lap, he stood up and walked back to the stairs, descending them without another word. I got up and noticed I was the only one still on the bus. My hands shook as I followed him to the door.

As I walked up to the station, I saw a huge building beyond, bigger than anything I had ever seen. It was still daylight, and the sun was gleaming off it, making it look like a flying saucer, but the top was white and the bottom sort of gray. I stood there for several minutes, even though my time in the station was limited, just looking at this huge structure and thinking how very big the world was outside of Crayford, Alabama.

The inside of the bus station was only slightly organized chaos, an overwhelming confusion of people and noise. Passengers carrying ungodly amounts of luggage rushed all around me, trying to get to their terminals or meet family or friends to go home. One guy whose pants were dangerously close to revealing something I didn’t need to see was struggling under the weight of a backpack strapped to his shoulders, a bulging duffel across one shoulder, a green grocery bag dangling uselessly from one arm, and a large orange-and-white cardboard box. He looked like some kind of child’s game whose objective was to stack as much onto the cartoon figure as possible before watching him topple to the ground. This passenger didn’t topple, but he did lose the box once or twice before getting to the door. Again, I was wasting time while I watched. Standing off to the side so I wouldn’t be in the way, I looked around the station, trying to find somewhere I could eat. To my left I saw a sign with an arrow pointing to the food court, so I hoisted my bag higher on my back and made my way toward it. Richard had instructed me to put my wallet in the bottom of my backpack and just carry a bit of cash in my pocket in case someone tried to rob me. He said walking around with a wad of cash was just asking for trouble, and I was glad I had taken his advice when I got to the zoo-like atmosphere surrounding the food stands.

There were easily a dozen different places, from Creole specialties to standard fast-food chains. Since I was small and my luggage was on my back, I navigated through the crowds much easier than most. Looking over my options, I decided on a pizza chain I’d heard of and made my way through the crowd of people standing like sheep, almost as if they were waiting for someone to help them decide. I saw parents shooing teenagers off to the burger place while they went for Chinese, and one elderly couple who looked at their choices as if there was nothing digestible in sight.

The greasy pizza slid down almost as well as the overly sweet Coke, but finishing up my food, I checked the time on my phone and saw I had about fifteen minutes before I had to be back on the bus. I still needed to use the bathroom before I reboarded. Looking around quickly, I finally saw the signs for the restrooms and headed that way. The men’s room was much less crowded than the food court.

I noticed the strange man in the restroom almost immediately because he was hanging out near the urinals, not using one, just standing there. He wore an old, stained hooded sweatshirt that at one time had probably been blue but had turned more of a muddy brown. His ripped and frayed camouflage pants barely came down to his worn tennis shoes. As I watched him, warning bells went off in my head, and all those lectures from Richard about staying safe began struggling to the surface. I’d never seen a junkie before, but with the way he was only partially conscious of his surroundings, he definitely appeared to be strung out on something.

With one final look at the disheveled man, who had started to shuffle forward toward me, I decided to use the toilet on the bus. Turning quickly, I headed for the door just as the junkie asked another guy for spare change. The guy made some comment I didn’t catch as I walked quickly back toward the waiting bus.

By the time I’d finished in the tiny closet of the bus bathroom, we were moving again. I made my way back to my seat as long, desolate patches of flat land changed slowly into swampland. I’d never seen a swamp, though we’d read about them in school, and I had a feeling I would see a lot of things over the next few days that I’d only read about. Lifting my backpack up off the seat, I pulled out my cheap, battered nylon wallet and ripped open the Velcro. I dug behind my state ID and stroked Jamie’s picture before pulling it out. Still scared about being on my own so far away from home, I let Jamie’s shining sapphire eyes comfort me as I stroked the contours of his two-dimensional face. We had been so incredibly happy in the picture, and his eyes were full of light, joy, and love. I missed him so much it hurt.

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