The Summer I Wasn't Me (3 page)

Over the next two months, as we waited for the day I was to leave, Mom’s mental state kept getting better and better. She still zoned out every now and then, and of course she still missed Dad terribly, but she was doing well enough to go back to work part-time and begin socializing with her friends again. She even went grocery shopping regularly, so we always had food in the house. She was happier than she’d been in a very, very long time. I’d given her something to hope for.

But the closer the summer loomed, the more freaked out I became. What were they going to
do
to me? Would it work? Did I even want it to?

I didn’t have a single answer, but I kept going forward, one foot in front of the other, telling myself to do it for Mom. For me. For our family.

And things started to piece together. As I sat in church, listening to Pastor Joe, I slowly began to feel less resentful about his teachings of homosexuality being sinful and more optimistic that, maybe by the end of the summer, when I heard talk like this, it would no longer be personal. It would just be another church teaching, holding no more significance than the rest. Maybe that teeny tiny chorus on my shoulder, the one that said, “Deny it all you want, but you
know
you’re disappointing God, Lexi,” would finally take up residence elsewhere. Because it would no longer have anything to taunt me about.

Junior year came to an end. I went to the prom with Josh Webb. Zoë was crowned prom queen. She looked amazing in her silver gown with her hair lifted off her neck, and I couldn’t stop myself from staring at her as she danced with the prom king, her body pressed against his, laughing like she didn’t have a care in the world, like she wasn’t perfectly aware that I was watching.

I turned away, brushed my thumb over my tattoo, and found myself thinking that I really
did
hope the de-gayifying worked—not only for my mom and my church, but for me too. So I could forget about Zoë once and for all.

And then the day arrived, and Mom and I were loading up the car and programming the GPS for the drive from South Carolina to Virginia, and the window for backing out was officially over.

I was going to go get fixed.

Whoa,
I think as I take in the girls’ dorm.
That’s a lot of pink.

The nine twin beds are dressed in identical pink bedding; the carpet is pink; the wallpaper is white with pink flowers. The curtains are pink lace, and the wooden furniture is stained a pinkish hue. I have never seen so much overt girlyness in one place in my life, and that includes the time my friend Anna dragged me to Princess Palace for makeovers when we were seven.

Beside each bed, a flowery sheet hangs from the ceiling. They’re pushed back against the wall right now, but they look like they can be pulled closed for privacy, like in a hospital. Each area also has a mirrored vanity and a dresser, and the dressers are labeled with girls’ names: Elizabeth, Olivia, Carolyn, Sarah, Melissa, Rachael, Jasmine, Alexis.

There is a crucifix the size of a car windshield on the wall and a shiny new New English Translation Bible is neatly placed in the center of each bed.

The ninth bed is perpendicular to the others and positioned against the opposite wall, in the middle of the room. It doesn’t have a name label. “Who’s that bed for?” I ask Brianna.

“The female counselor on dorm duty. We’re on a rotating schedule.” Brianna points back to the camper side of the room. “That’s your area, over at the end of the row.”

Some of the spaces are already strewn with personal items, while others are still as empty as mine. “Where is everybody?”

“Every camper has his or her own arrival time. It’s important to begin the summer in a place of solitary introspection, with no distractions. The campers who arrived before you have already begun the healing process. You’ll meet them soon.” I get the feeling she’s said this many times before.

I wonder how long Brianna has been working here. She’s probably seen dozens of girls come through this room and sleep in these beds. What happened to those girls? Could they really be straight now?

I head over to my spot with Brianna close behind. She sits on my bed and watches me carefully as I begin to unpack.

“What?”

“Don’t let me distract you,” she says. “I just need to make sure you haven’t brought any contraband with you.”

“Contraband? What, like drugs?”

“Drugs, alcohol, sure. But we tend to have a much bigger problem with campers sneaking in things that will directly hinder their therapy.”

“Such as?”

She shrugs. “Homosexual pornography, gay propaganda, cell phones used to communicate with people back home.”

I stare at her.

She stares right back, her eyes narrow and suspicious. “You don’t have any of those things, do you, Alexis?”

“They told me I had to leave my cell phone at home.”

“Good. And the other stuff?”

I shake my head. “All I have are clothes and toiletries. And this.” I hold up my copy of
The
Great
Gatsby
, my favorite book.

Brianna snatches the worn paperback from my hand. “Mr. Martin will have to approve this. Until then, you won’t be permitted to keep it. I’m sorry.” But she doesn’t sound sorry at all.

“I don’t understand,” I protest. “That book is a classic, and there aren’t even any gay characters in it.” Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve long suspected Nick’s infatuation with Jay Gatsby is something more than platonic, but I’m not about to tell Brianna that. “Why wouldn’t I be able to keep it?”

“You might be able to. I just have to check with Mr. Martin first.”

I suppress a groan of annoyance and go back to unpacking.

“There’s also a closet if you need to hang up any dresses,” Brianna says after a few minutes.

I glance at the motley assortment of clothes coming out of my suitcase. I like my clothes to reflect my mood, so I’ve got a variety of pieces, mostly one-of-a-kind items from secondhand stores and eBay—various band tank tops, off-the-shoulder sweatshirts from the ’80s, stone-washed skinny jeans, dark red cropped cargo pants, a couple of skirts of varying lengths and flowyness, flip-flops and Converse in every color of the rainbow. Except pink.

And no dresses.

“I’m good,” I say and open the dresser drawers. But I’m brought up short when I see that three out of the five drawers are already filled. With pink. I look at Brianna.

“Those are your New Horizons uniforms and sleepwear,” she says. “You’ll be required to wear them beginning tonight.”

What? I can’t wear a
uniform
. When people see my clothes, they’re getting a glimpse of who I am inside. It’s all out there—there’s no room for secrets or not saying what you mean. It’s not me being the girl who likes girls or the girl whose father died or the girl who doesn’t know where she fits in. It’s not about being different or edgy or challenging authority—for once, it’s just me being me. What you see is what you get. It’s honest. It’s freeing.

A uniform? No way.

“I can’t…I mean, I don’t—” But I stop. Brianna’s pinned me with a challenging, almost bored look that says
Go
ahead. Fight me on this. See what happens.

I could fight her on it—I
want
to fight her on it—but the words won’t come. And suddenly it hits me—I’m scared. Like that boy on the stairs.

Up until right now, I’ve had tunnel vision:
do
what
you
have
to
do. For Mom. For you. Get through the summer and everything will be better.
But now I’m here. I’m in it. And I’ve got no phone, no car, no options. I’m stuck.

Holy crap.

Somehow, all that comes out of my mouth is, “So why don’t you let us know that ahead of time? You know, so we don’t pack as much?” I cram my folded clothes into the remaining drawers and try really hard not to think about the uniforms awaiting me in the rest of the dresser.

Brianna presses her mouth into a hard line, as if she’s remembering something unpleasant. “We’ve found that the fewer details that are given out about our reparative therapy process ahead of time, the more open-minded our campers are when they arrive.”

It’s true. I tried to find out more about New Horizons online, but their website was just as vague as their brochure—another reason why it was easy to ignore the big questions about this summer and instead focus on the “coming home and everything being fixed” part.

“One more thing,” Brianna says as she opens the drawer of my vanity. She pulls out a long, skinny, velvet box and hands it to me. “This is our gift to you, Alexis.”

Inside is a thin gold chain threaded through a small cross with a tiny diamond chip in the center. Not exactly my style. I look up at Brianna. “Um…you shouldn’t have?”

Brianna beams, suddenly all sunshine and roses. “Of course we should have! It’s just a small reminder that Jesus will be with you, guiding you, every step of your journey this summer.” Without asking, she lifts the necklace out of its case and loops it around my neck.

Once the cross is in place, I slide my empty suitcase under my bed and study my area. This is it—home, for the next two months. A knot forms in my stomach. I know I’m here for change and everything, but still, it would be nice to have
one
thing here that’s mine, one small thing to keep me grounded, a reminder that when I leave here at the end of the summer, I’ll still be me. At least in some ways.

And since I don’t have my clothes to do that anymore…

An idea strikes me. “Do you have a pen?” I ask Brianna.

She walks over to the room’s only desk and produces a pen from one of the drawers. “Here you go. What do you need it for?”

I answer her by using it to scribble out the
A
and
S
on my name label. “That’s better. Thanks.”

Brianna looks put off but luckily she doesn’t comment. Instead, she says, “Are you ready to begin?”

I know from the seriousness in her voice what she’s talking about. She’s asking if I’m ready to begin the de-gayifying.

I think I am—I mean, I want to be. I’m really trying to keep an open mind. Who knows, maybe if I do what they tell me to do, it will work. It worked for Marilynn Chaney’s grandnephew, right?

I’m here for a reason. It’s time to get my head in the game.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

It’s one of my favorite lines from
Gatsby
and so true right now.

I take a deep breath and say, “Yes. I’m ready.”

We leave the big log cabin with its cool, comfortable recycled air and walk back to the gravel road. I didn’t realize it as Mom and I drove up here earlier, but the road actually continues past the building and through more trees, gradually narrowing into a walking trail. The only sound in these quiet woods is the crunching of my boots and Brianna’s sandals over pebbles and dead leaves.

After a few minutes, the path opens up into a massive, sunny field. Staggered on either side of the path are five more log cabins, though these are much smaller than the main building.

Four of the cabins have a counselor standing stoically out front.

“Alexis,” Brianna says, breaking the silence. “I will leave you here. You must continue the rest of the journey alone.”

She sounds like she’s sending me out on a vision quest or something. I slowly walk the fifty or so feet to the first counselor, a woman with thousands of braids all over her head, streaming down her back and curling at the ends. Her lips are dark red and shiny.

Even though I’m standing right in front of her, she doesn’t speak. Her face is blank, and I wonder if she even sees me at all.

“Um, hi,” I say awkwardly. “I’m Lexi?” I don’t know why it comes out sounding like a question.

“What is a woman?” she asks suddenly.

“Excuse me?”

“What is a woman?”

I don’t know how to respond to that. But she’s waiting for an answer, staring me down in that emotionless way of hers.

“Um, a woman is…a female adult?”

“What is a female adult?” she shoots back immediately.

I get the feeling that there’s a right answer here, something she wants me to say, but I have no idea what it is. “I guess…a human with female body parts? Who has reached the age of maturity?” This is so weird.

“And what is the purpose of the female body parts?”

Several not-so-G-rated answers cross my mind, and I blush. But I try to think reasonably here. I know the counselor doesn’t want me to mention sex, and I’m pretty sure she isn’t talking about peeing. So I say the only other thing that comes to mind. “To have children?”

She stares me down a moment more as if evaluating me and then says, “You may continue to the next station.”

I guess I passed the test. I walk to the next cabin and stop in front of another counselor. She’s young, maybe only early twenties, and though she’s wearing the requisite pink shirt, she seems cooler than the rest of the counselors somehow. She’s wearing a cute denim skirt and ankle-high cowboy boots, and her hair is dyed a brilliant red and cut into a sleek, angled bob. Her earrings dangle past her hair, and they’re silver and jangly and funky—definitely something I would wear.

“What is the role of a woman?” she asks.

“The role of a woman is exactly the same as anyone else’s,” I say with a shrug. “To live and learn and love and be happy.”

The counselor just clears her throat and repeats her question. “What is the role of a
woman
?”

Clearly this isn’t a very feminist bunch. I sigh and repeat my last answer, since that seemed to work last time. “To have children.”

“And?”

“And…take care of the children?”

She inclines her head a tiny bit. “And who else?”

I take a deep breath. It’s not hard to catch on to the general theme of these questions—I know what I’m supposed to say here. I make myself say it. “And her husband.”

“You may proceed.”

But I don’t move. Not yet. “Wait,” I say quietly. “Not everyone has to get married, you know.” I’m not trying to start a fight. I’d just like to talk more about this, and there’s something about this counselor that makes me think she’d be open to that. Yes, I signed up to become straight, and I’ll do whatever it takes, but everything I’ve seen so far—the uniform, the questions—is making me wonder if they’re trying to turn me into someone else completely. Some Stepford version of what a woman should be. I think I have the right to question it.

The counselor seems surprised. She’s probably used to people bailing the second she gives them the go-ahead. After a couple seconds, her face softens, and for the first time, I feel like she’s actually looking
at
me, not through me. “Most people get married,” she says.

“Sure. But I don’t see how being a woman equals being a wife. Or what getting married has to do with being gay or not gay.”

“It’s about gender,” she says simply.

Her eyes focus on something behind me. I turn and see the woman with the braids watching us. I doubt she can hear our conversation, but she still doesn’t seem happy. I turn back to the redhead. “Gender?” I repeat.

“Yes. A big part of our process here is clearing up the confusion you kids have about your proper gender roles. We have to start at the beginning and undo everything you’ve learned incorrectly. So, for our purposes, it
has
to be very cut and dry. We can’t have any gray area. That’s how you learn.”

So she’s agreeing there
is
a gray area but admitting they ignore it. It doesn’t make much sense, but the fact that she’s at least acknowledging the incongruity makes me feel better, like the counselors aren’t actually set on turning us into brainwashed clones after all, despite their tunnel vision about what a woman is. They’re just doing their job.

I nod, thank her, and move on.

The next counselor is a blue shirt. He’s got freckles all over his face and arms. He asks a question I can actually answer confidently. “Are you a woman?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

Really? “Um…because…I have all the corresponding parts…” I can’t
believe
I’m talking about my “womanly parts” with some guy I don’t even know.