Chapter 1
Tyler
I just sat there, at the foot of the bed in my dorm room, staring at the floor, waiting. I didn’t have long to wait. Coach Chris walked down the hall at 8am on the dot, hollering and banging on the doors.
“Wakey, wakey, baseball and bacy!”
Every other morning, I would have at least smirked at his lame attempts at humor. Not this morning though. This morning, I was tired, stressed, and anxious about the day rearing its ugly head.
Last night was a nightmare, and not the kind you could wake up from. I was living mine. I’d been playing ball with this same team for four years. Many of them, even longer than that. One of the joys of small-town living, everyone knew everyone.
And all the dirty little details.
Coach Allen, our head coach, worked hard these last few months and made a deal with the baseball coaches at Seattle University. This year, our summer ball camp was not at home. Well, not entirely at home. We spent the last three days living in the dorms, using the visiting team’s locker rooms, using the team gym, and practicing on their field.
At first, it was the best. Then, slowly, things started to change. And last night, it all came to a head.
Last night, we were all hanging out in the Union Center. While Summer sessions were not as busy as the other semesters, there were still quite a few people hanging around. Including women. College women.
As was common, teenage boys would be teenage boys. But I guess I was not one of your typical teenage boys. Unlike the rest of them, I had always been solely focused on two things: baseball, and my studies. And I only focused on the last so I could stay eligible for the first. Baseball had always been like air to me.
Growing up, I was teased for it occasionally. Nothing serious though.
That changed when we hit puberty, they began teasing me about being shy with girls, and then trying to push me into “dating.”
Hanging out on a college campus, things… intensified.
I’d never given much thought into my preferences. I’d never been swayed one way or the other. My mom raised me to believe that all genders were beautiful. My best friend, Clay, had a preference, and was open about it. Of course, once he came out of the closet, they all assumed I was the one he was hiding there.
He was my friend, that was it. Always had been. Always would be.
With so many people asking, assuming, stating, and yes, harassing, I started to wonder myself. Was there a reason I didn’t care to look at the full-page spreads from the magazines they sometimes brought to practice with them?
Did I prefer something else? Maybe they all knew something I didn’t.
Last night, we were just sitting there in the Student Union, eating dinner, and this group of girls walked in. The guys started flirting and acting like they were older than they were. They dared each other to go over and talk to the girls. A few even tried. And failed.
I admit that part was funny.
Then a group of guys walked in. Clay didn’t hide the fact that he was checking them out. It was obvious they were some type of athletes. Based on the width of their shoulders, I was thinking football.
The others started asking me if I was going to go talk to them. Daring me to do it. Even pretending to call the guys over.
Ok, so maybe some weren’t pretending.
It was embarrassing. Even to the point that the football players told them to lay off.
The whole way back to the dorm, they kept going. Telling me I needed to just admit it already. They were calling me weak for not accepting who I was. Clay tried to tell them to back off, but that just seemed to make it worse. Suddenly my “boyfriend” was sticking up for me.
The actual worst part was when we passed a couple making out on a bench.
“So, tell me Ty. Which one of them is turning you on more, the guy or the girl? Or is it both? Maybe that’s your thing. Maybe you’re into both. Are you thinking of changing your gender to get what you want?”
They got pretty ugly after that. Coach Chris put a stop to it not long after we walked into the common area of the dorms. I went back to my room and stayed there. I was in no mood to play games with everyone else. We were supposed to be bonding as a team. But the thing they seemed to bond over the most was messing with me.
This last year had been hard enough as it was. Their comments and teasing made me doubt so many things about myself. On top of all that, mom got married again.
Lincoln was alright, I guess. He was nice to me. I didn’t care much about that though. He was good to mom. She was happy. That was the important part. Even though it made me miss my own dad more.
Maybe if dad were here, I could talk to him about all this. I didn’t know Lincoln well enough for that. They’d only been married for a year. They dated for about a year before that. He and I had talked a few times. I guess you could say he had tried to get to know me, I just never cared enough to help him out.
I had one year left of high school and then I was gone. We didn’t need a relationship of our own. As long as he was good to my mom, we’d be cool.
Besides, he already had a kid. A daughter that was, like, six months or so younger than me.
I remembered when mom told me they were getting married. She tried to laugh and tease me about being a big brother now. I didn’t find it funny. I only met Trixie once, at the wedding. We hardly spoke to each other. Hardly even looked at each other.
I guess she was pretty. I didn’t really pay any attention to her. I was thinking about the bad practice I had the day before. The guys who messed with me were starting to mess with my game. I was starting to have a harder time pulling my head back on straight lately.
Maybe that was my problem. I hyper focused on either school or baseball. I didn’t really pay attention to anyone else.
Mom knew things had been rough at practice. Coach Chris called her. He didn’t tell her what they were saying, just that it wasn’t pretty. I wouldn’t tell her either. I was too embarrassed.
I jumped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I looked up, I expected to hear Clay laughing. He wasn’t. He looked more worried than happy.
“You all right, Ty? You’ve been really quiet since last night.”
My voice came out rough when I answered. “I’m fine.” Guess I hadn’t spoken in a while.
“You know they aren’t trying to be mean, right? They just get out of hand once in a while.”
I nodded. On some level I knew that. I was the starting pitcher on the team for the last two years. They wouldn’t dare push me too far. The problem was, I wasn’t sure how far too far was anymore.
My head was spinning, and I didn’t know where to make it land.
I could just say I was gay, and it would stop. They all accepted Clay. But I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted. I could also say I was straight and look at all the pictures with them. But was that what I wanted?
How did I decide?
Clay sighed and walked over to the door, opening it for us. He walked by my side, making sure I didn’t run into any walls since I refused to lift my head up. I couldn’t.
My arm was off all morning. Both pitching and swinging. Something Coach Chris obviously noticed.
“You alright? You want me to talk to them again?”
I shook my head, that never helped. It only made things worse. I didn’t know why adults thought shining a light on bullying made it better. The bullies just got revenge later and got better at hiding what they were doing.
“No. I’ll find a way to shut them up. No idea how, but I’ll figure it out.”
He looked toward the bulk of them at the water table. “Look, this is our last day. Everyone is headed back in the morning. Why don’t you leave now? Take some space. Think things through. Maybe by practice on Friday, you’ll have an idea. If not, tell me. I’ll do what I can.”
“Thanks, Coach.” I shook his hand and went to the locker room to grab my gear. Then went back to my dorm room.
I sent Clay a quick text, telling him I was leaving, before jumping in my truck and catching the next ferry headed for home.
My truck wasn’t new by any means. It was old. Like 1990s old. Mom said it was my dad’s first truck. She kept it running until I was old enough to take over. I loved my truck. It was all I had left of my dad.
Well, besides the strong resemblance. For some reason, all the men on my dad’s side of the family all looked a lot alike. No one ever doubted our connections. We all had the same mop of curly brown hair, the same mocha eyes and facial structure, even the same height. It never mattered what the mom looked like, or if she had a different skin tone, we all came out the same. Some just a shade darker than others.
My hair was another thing the guys like to make fun of. It was too nice. Too curly. Which made me look girly. I kept it cut short, but those curls were stubborn.
As soon as I was off the ferry, I headed up the mountain. There was this spot my dad used to take us too for picnics all the time. I didn’t know how he got the code for the gate lock, or who even owned the land, but I’d never seen anyone else up there but us.
I pulled up to my normal spot, a large clearing that looked over our small town of Langley. I did my best to meditate and dump all my stress and anxieties. Out there, on my own, it was easier to think about what mattered most. To ignore the taunting of the others. To just be me.
But today, I didn’t know who that was.
Clay’s suggestion, more than once, was to find a girl, or guy, and just go for it. See if it struck my fancy. I cringed. Neither were appealing. Then again, I’d pretty much known all the same people my whole life. I was willing to acknowledge that they had improved over the years. But that went for both guys and girls. And none in a way that made me want anything.
I was a guy, so obviously I have had to deal with certain issues, especially in the mornings. I took care of it, and then moved on. I hadn’t thought about anything or anyone while doing it.
Clay tried questioning me about it once, to see if that answered the question.
He even volunteered to kiss me the other night. I just glared at him. He raised his hands and backed off.
I turned seventeen a few months ago, about to start my senior year of high school, and I still didn’t know whether I liked guys or girls. I remembered liking girls when I hit puberty. And then I lost interest in them.
Was it because I knew all of their unique personalities? Or was it because I was already over girls in general?
I waited out the sun. I waited until it was late enough that I wouldn’t have to talk to mom or Lincoln. I didn’t care that I could have been home for dinner. Or that I could have even grabbed something on the way home, or even on the way up the mountain. I wasn’t hungry.
I just… was.
I pulled up to our house nearly ten hours after I left the school, still with no answers. I sighed as I saw the home I had lived in for as long as I could remember. I did feel a smidge of gratitude that Lincoln offered to move in with us here, instead of expecting us to move with him to Seattle.
Lincoln worked as a Public defender for the great state of Washington. I once asked why he didn’t go into private practice, he would make a lot more money if he did. He said he wasn’t in it for the money. He just wanted to help people that were going through a rough patch in their lives.
This house was the same house my mother grew up in. My parents moved in after my grandparents decided the rain was making grandpa’s arthritis worse. I was five when they moved to Florida. Where they still were.
The house was a two-story cottage style home. We even had one of those wide porches that circled the house. As a kid I would play there when it rained, riding my bike in circles around the house. Mom even rearranged the patio furniture so I could ride up close to the living room window and pretend it was a McDonald’s Drive thru. Mom sat on the couch on the other side of that window, handing me anything I asked for.
Instead of burgers and fries, it was generally some type of snack food. If I was really lucky, it would be mom’s famous oatmeal raisin cookies. She’d make them really small, like popcorn.
I crept up the darkened stairs, headed for my room at the end of the hall. I wanted to just crash, but then I remembered sweating at practice, and then lying in the dirt for hours. I needed a shower first. Knowing how my mom was, those were clean sheets waiting for me.
Without a second thought, I stripped my t-shirt off and headed for the bathroom that was connected to my room. I noticed the light coming from under the door, which confused me. Had it been on, this whole time?
I stepped into the bathroom at the same time the shower curtain opened. Quickly followed by a screeching sound and the curtain being ripped closed again.
All I saw was a flash of something that looked a lot better than any of the pictures the guys were always looking at. I felt a twitch, something that had rarely ever happened before.
Maybe Clay was right, maybe I needed to just try. Or at least see, and not through a photoshopped picture.
