“What about Theo?” Cam asked. He was running his fingers up and down my back. His body felt so warm against mine that it helped ease some of the nausea I was feeling.
“I overheard my mom and Uncle Curtis talking about him a couple days after I… after I hurt him. Uncle Curtis had gone over there to try and convince Theo not to press charges against me but said Theo had left town. His parents had said Theo was okay but that they’d sent him to Oregon to stay with a relative for a while. They said Theo wasn’t interested in pressing charges and that he wanted to just forget the whole thing. I didn’t know what relative he was with so I had no way of reaching out to him. I wrote him a really long letter telling him how sorry I was but when I went to see his parents to ask them to send it to him, his father told me to leave and never come back… that Theo was getting the help he needed to be normal.”
Cam stiffened slightly beneath me and his fingers stopped moving on my back. “What kind of help?”
I could feel the tears threatening again but managed to stifle them. “Jimmy told me Theo’s parents sent him to one of those camps where they… where they teach you how to not be gay. He said my parents were talking about sending me to a place like that too.”
I felt Cam’s hand fist against my back, but when he didn’t say anything, I looked up at him.
“Did they?” he asked. His jaw was tight with suppressed rage.
“No. I went to stay with my Aunt Grace while the rumors about me getting into trouble with the police died down. A few weeks later, my parents said I had to go see this pastor who specialized in helping kids like me. My mother called it private bible study. I knew what places like where Theo was sent did to people to fix them. I didn’t want to end up somewhere like that so I agreed to stay with Reverend Page… he ran a ministry in Alabama. When I wasn’t working around the church, he and I studied bible passages and he told me all these stories about what happened to kids like me if they let the devil inside of them take over.”
“How long were you there for?”
“A year.”
“Fuck,” Cam breathed.
“It wasn’t so bad,” I said. “If Theo did end up in one of those camps, he had it worse. And it’s my fault—”
“No, it’s not,” Cam cut in. “You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
“I should have.”
I was glad when Cam didn’t argue with me. “Did you ever try to find Theo?”
I shook my head. “I ruined his life, Cam. He was the only one who ever accepted me for who I really was and I turned on him.” I turned my head so I could look Cam in the eye. “How do I make up for something like that?” I asked.
Cam sighed and caressed my temple. “Start by asking him if you did ruin his life. Then ask him what your punishment should be. Ask him if Jimmy just beating the shit out of you day after day is enough or if you need to let him take your life too. Because that’s what’s going to happen, Ford. I wish to God I was exaggerating, but I know in my gut it will happen. And I know that if this Theo kid cared about you as much as you say he did, he wouldn’t want this for you either.”
I turned my face back to watch the fire dance for a while as I considered Cam’s words. The idea of seeing Theo again made the shame inside me all the more overwhelming, but there was a little part that wanted to know that he was okay. Not because I needed absolution, though. I just wanted to know that the smart, sweet, sometimes awkward, always kind-hearted boy who’d been the first person to love the real me had gotten the life he deserved.
“Cam?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think you could find Theo with all the resources you have?” I asked as something inside my belly flared to life.
“I’m not sure.”
I turned to face him again. “Will you try?”
Cam nodded his head and pulled my hand to his mouth so he could kiss my palm. “Yes, absolutely.”
“Pish, that ain’t even hardly a scratch.”
I smiled as Walter moved his glasses up and then back down as he studied Cam’s stitches. “That wouldn’t have even gotten you a Band-Aid back in my day. In fact, Crowly would have shot you himself if you’d even stopped to ask for one for that… dot.”
“Crowly?” I asked. I was sitting on the edge of Walter’s hospital bed while Cam was on the opposite side sitting in the guest chair.