The Summer I Wasn't Me (11 page)

“Why is no one up?!” a voice pierces through the depths of my sleep.

I squeeze my eyes more tightly shut and pull the blanket up over my head. It took a long time to fall asleep last night; my head was too busy revolving with thoughts of Mom and Dad and Carolyn and Zoë. I couldn’t have gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep at the most.

I wish I were back in my bed at home, in my own clothes, wasting my summer vacation by sleeping until noon every single day.

“We’re already running late,” Brianna says, her voice even more irritated than usual. “Chop, chop.” She claps her hands.

I rub my eyes and sit up. Brianna and Carolyn are the only ones up and dressed. I check the time—it’s 8:10 a.m., forty minutes after we’re usually woken up by the counselor on dorm duty. But I guess Barbara slept through her alarm. Three cheers for old people—I really needed the extra sleep today.

We get dressed in a hurry and head downstairs to meet the boys. But Brianna asks me to hold back a moment. “I noticed there were some missing pages in your journal,” she says once we’re alone.

Wow, that was fast. What did she do, stay up all night reading them? I try to stay cool. “Oh. Yeah.”

“What happened to them?”

“To the missing pages?”

“Yes, Alexis,” she says impatiently. “What happened to the missing pages?”

“I tore them out.”

“I realize that. What I would like to know is why.”

I use the one lie I was able to come up with last night that didn’t sound completely unbelievable. “They were drawings I started, but they weren’t coming out right, so I threw them out.”

She purses her lips. “That’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. The journal is not a sketchbook. It’s for writing and writing only.”

“Oh. Why?”

“Because we use the journals to track your progress, and we can’t do that if you don’t actually write anything.”

Actually, you
can
tell a hell of a lot from looking at a drawing—that’s how Mom found out about me, isn’t it? But I’m so relieved that Brianna’s dropped the whole torn-out-pages thing that I’ll go along with anything. “Of course.” I nod. “I understand.”

“Good. Now let’s catch up with the others. We have a big day today.”

***

“Do you guys know what free association is?” Kaylee asks us. We’re in the carpet cabin again, but today we’re split up into our groups of four. Kaylee’s standing in front of an easel with a large white pad on it, an uncapped marker in her hand. There’s an oversized beanbag chair sitting in the middle of our circle.

“Isn’t it when you blurt out the first thing that comes into your head? Like: Abs! Lube! Ryan Gosling!” Matthew says.

Kaylee sighs. “Sort of. It’s a psychoanalytic technique which encourages patients not to censor their thoughts and to say whatever they’re thinking based on different prompts. So, for example, if I say ‘dog,’ what is the first thing that comes into your mind, Carolyn?”

“Um, cat?”

“Good! And, Daniel, if I say ‘apple,’ you say…?”

“Pie!” Daniel shouts out, excited.

Kaylee laughs. “Nice. So we’re going to use that concept as the jumping off point for today’s exercise. We’ll use the free association to try to access your deep-rooted hopes and dreams, and then we’ll take that foundation to build a vibrant, clear picture of what your lives can and will be like after you graduate from the program at the end of the summer. So as the exercise goes on, I may start asking you more specific questions. Sound good?”

Carolyn, Daniel, and I nod. Matthew laughs.

“Let’s start with you, Lexi. Go ahead and lie down on the beanbag. Get as comfy as you want.”

She doesn’t have to tell me twice—I love beanbag chairs. I had a bunch in my playroom when I was a kid. I used to lie there all day long, drawing and painting. Mom and Dad were constantly picking little Styrofoam balls off my clothes.

I fall butt-first onto the beanbag and then shimmy around to get the stuffing to mold perfectly to my body. It feels safe, familiar. I close my eyes.

“So, Lexi,” Kaylee says. “I’m going to write down everything you say on this pad, so don’t worry about keeping track of your thoughts. Just let your mind roam as uninhibited as possible and then, once we’re done, you’ll have time to look at what we’ve come up with.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Place,” she says, beginning the exercise.

“The beach,” I say immediately, and I hear the squeak of Kaylee’s marker on the easel.

“Which beach?”

“The beach at home.”

“How does the beach make you feel?”

“Happy,” I say.

“Name three things about the beach that make you happy.”

“Sitting in the surf and not being able to hear anything except the rush of the waves; staring at the point where the world disappears off the horizon; watching the fat seagulls scavenge for people food.” I’ve been thinking about the beach a lot lately. I miss it.

“Is the beach where you see yourself living after you’re done with school?” Kaylee asks.

“Definitely.”

“In South Carolina?”

“Or Florida,” I say automatically. But wait—the point of this exercise is to think big, right? I sink further into the chair’s squishy beans and let my mind expand. “Or maybe Hawaii. Or the South of France! It would be cool to be fluent in French.”

“Where will you learn?” Kaylee asks, a smile in her voice.

“I take French in school already, but maybe I could start taking extra classes on the weekend too.” That’s not a bad idea actually.

“What kind of home will you live in?” Kaylee shoots back.

“A loft,” I hear myself say. Strange that’s the first thing I thought of. I’ve never even seen a loft apartment in real life before. “With lots of open space and four walls of floor-to-ceiling windows and a terrace where you can open the doors and let the ocean air come in.”

“When will you move?”

“After college.”

“Where will you go to college?”

“Paris.” That one I knew already.

“And what will you study?”

“Fashion design.”

“What type of fashion design?” The quicker Kaylee’s questions come, the more I’m lulled into a rhythm—instead of thinking with my head, I’m answering with my heart.

“Women’s street wear, retro eighties meets twenty-first-century technology.”

“What will you do with these skills once you graduate?”

“I’ll start my own line.” Whoa. I hadn’t known I wanted to do that until the words popped out of my mouth. I always imagined myself working for an established designer or label. But now that I’ve said it, it feels right.

My eyes are still closed, but I pick up on Kaylee’s slight hesitation before throwing out the next question. Oh right, women aren’t supposed to work out of the home. We haven’t gotten to the gray area yet. “Let’s move on,” she says. “What will your family life look like?”

“It’s just me and my mom,” I say.

“Right now, yes. But in the future, who will be by your side?”

“I would love to have kids,” I say. Again, something else I never gave a whole lot of serious thought to—at least, not before New Horizons, not before Carolyn admitted that’s what she wants. An image pops into my mind unbidden. “Two boys and a girl. My mom will live with us too, and she’ll be happy and laughing all the time and spoil her grandkids rotten. The kids will all have cute little French accents and play soccer and have bright blond hair, like their mo—”

I clamp my mouth shut and propel myself out of dreamland and back to the land of rational thought. I was going to say, “Like their mother.” But I’m clearly not blond. In this perfect little fantasy, these kids had two moms, and one of them was blond haired and blue eyed.

“Like their dad,” I say instead. Matthew clears his throat, acknowledging my slipup. Does nothing get past this guy?

“What is their dad like?” Kaylee asks.

I go on to describe my perfect man, the handsome Frenchman who owns a five-star restaurant and is an Olympic rower. But for all intents and purposes, the exercise is over. I’m giving Kaylee the answers I know she wants to hear. I stopped being true to myself the moment I forced the image of Carolyn out of my mind and replaced her with some cookie-cutter French dude.

When I finally run out of steam, Kaylee asks me to open my eyes and take a look at the list we made. “This is not just your utopia, Lexi,” she says. “If you want it badly enough, it can be your actual future. God gives us the tools to live our very best lives—we just have to use them.” She tears the pages off the giant pad and hands them to me.

Daniel, Matthew, and Carolyn take their turns on the free association beanbag, but I only half listen. I stare at the pages in my hands, covered with Kaylee’s bubbly handwriting.

Wow. France, a family, my own line…and my mom there for all of it. I suddenly realize this
is
what I want, what I’ve always wanted, even through all that time back home when all I’d been able to think about was keeping my secret. This is my utopia.

I mean, yes, there’s the tiny issue of a husband in the place where I’d rather see a wife, but if having a husband is the key to having my mother back—happy, healthy, and alive—and to living my dream…well, then I just need to work harder at this whole becoming straight thing, don’t I? Boys aren’t
that
bad when you think about it.

***

After lunch, we go to the classroom cabin for Bible study.

People back home quote the Bible like it’s a pop song constantly stuck in their heads. And most of it’s actually pretty decent: thou shalt not steal; love thy neighbor as thyself; honor thy father and mother; a merry heart does good like a medicine but a broken spirit dries the bones.

But those aren’t the passages Mr. Martin chooses to focus on.

“Leviticus eighteen, verse twenty-two,” Mr. Martin says. “Luke, would you please read aloud?”

“‘You must not have sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman. It is a detestable act,’” Luke mumbles.

“And, Daniel, would you read Leviticus twenty, verse thirteen to us?” Mr. Martin asks.

Daniel does him one better—he recites it from memory. “‘If a man has sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman, the two of them have committed an abomination. They must be put to death. Their blood guilt is on themselves.’”

Put to
death
? I thought God was supposed to be all about forgiveness, not the death penalty.

“Very good, Daniel,” Mr. Martin says.

While Mr. Martin explains the verses—even though we’re already aware of
exactly
what they mean—Matthew passes a note to me.
What do you think would happen if a guy and a girl got caught having sex here?

I smile and write,
Sorry, you’re not exactly my type.
I pass it back.

His eyes bug out of his head, and I have to stifle a laugh. He scrawls a long response.
That wasn
’
t an invitation, you crazy person. And believe me, I know who your type is.
I glance at him and he nods his head in Carolyn’s direction. My face gets hot and I quickly turn my attention back to his note.
I just meant what do you think would happen? I bet they
’
d give us a hundred gold stars.

He’s probably right. Even though I’m pretty certain that the Bible condemns any kind of sex before marriage, I get the feeling that if a guy and a girl got caught in the act here at New Horizons, the counselors would never be prouder.

“Corinthians six, verses nine through eleven,” Mr. Martin says. “Rachael, would you please read aloud?”

“‘Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?’” Rachael reads. “‘Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God. Some of you once lived this way. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.’”

“Yes!” Mr. Martin shouts, his palms raised to heaven. Suddenly he’s turned into a Baptist preacher. “Yes! That’s exactly it!
That’s
what we’re here for! The homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. But if you wash yourselves clean, if you
reject
those impulses, you will be
justified
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!” Mr. Martin sinks into a chair with a deep sigh and wipes his forehead. “You know,” he says, talking in his normal voice again, “in many ways, I envy you all.”

“
You
envy
us
?” I say before I can stop myself. “But you just said we should all be put to death!”

He shakes his head. “No, no, Lexi, you misunderstand me. The Bible says that those who are sanctified are exempt from that punishment. You’re all here for that very reason—to be saved.
That’s
why I envy you. You’re changing your paths at such a young age. I wasn’t so lucky. It took me a long time to find my way.”

He seems like he’s in a mood to talk, and I’m curious. “What happened?” I ask.

He glances at Brianna. It’s almost like he’s asking her for permission to continue. But that doesn’t make sense.
He’s
the one in charge here, not her. But only after she nods slightly does he continue.

“I lived the homosexual lifestyle for a long time,” he admits. “I refused to listen to my parents when they tried to talk to me about right and wrong and my responsibility to God. I thought I had it all figured out. I left home when I was eighteen years old and didn’t return until I was thirty-five.”

Whoa.
Mr. Martin was out and proud for
seventeen
years
?

“So what changed?” Matthew asks.

“I was saved by Jesus. He spoke to me, and his voice was so clear, it was as though he was right there in the room with me. He told me he had a bigger plan for me. I went home to my family, and they reintroduced me to the church. Two years later, I married Nancy and started New Horizons. I don’t want you to make the same mistake I made. Don’t wait seventeen years to make the right decision. Make the choice to inherit God’s kingdom
now
.”