“I said, how are you doing with all this?”
“Me?”
Hannah’s gaze was direct and uncompromising.
“Not…well?”Tean said with an unsteady laugh.“I feel awful for Ammon.I’m worried about him.He’s in jail, which is bad enough in the first place—”
Hannah didn’t flinch.She didn’t even blink.But Tean remembered, too late, her own experience in the county jail.When she, for her own reasons, had refused to defend herself against a murder charge.
“He’ll be fine,” Hannah said drily.“I survived, didn’t I?”
“Hannah, I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”She waved a hand.“And we’re talking about you, so don’t try to change the subject.”
He didn’t want to say anything, but the words were there, and they came boiling up.“I know this isn’t about me.I know Daniel’s situation is different from mine, and I shouldn’t project.I’m talking about being gay, not the assault.I know his situation isn’t the same as mine was.But I look at him, I can’t help remembering what it felt like, to be a teenager, to start feeling things that you know make you different from the people around you, but you don’t know how yet, you don’t know why.You just know it’s bad.”Tean cleared his throat.“It might be bad.And so you’re careful.And you start hiding parts of yourself.And the longer it goes on, the clearer the differences are, and you start to figure it out, and then you have this whole new set of things you have to hide, things you didn’t even realize you were doing until someone said something, or—” He stopped and shook his head.“I’m not making any sense.It’s hard, that’s all.Hiding that stuff.And realizing there’s this person inside you that everyone hates, and you’re supposed to hate too, and every week you go to church and hear how you’re supposed to hate this person, and how wrong they are, and how evil they are, and how selfish and—and that person isyou.There isn’t some other person you’re hiding.It’s all you.And you can either deal with it, or—or not.”
The low-level background noise of an empty building registered as a white hiss at the edge of hearing.
“You dealt with it,” Hannah said.“Ammon didn’t, and look what happened.”
“I guess.I don’t know if it’s that simple.”
“Itisthat simple, Tean.Every day, he had a choice to be honest about who he was.He chose to lie to himself, to lie to his family, to lie to the people he’d promised to take care of.And he did it because he was afraid, and he wasn’t brave enough to face that fear.You were.”
Tean shook his head, but he didn’t pursue the argument.
After a moment, Hannah let out a relenting breath.In a milder voice, she said, “Whatever you want to think about Ammon, he really screwed up his son.Can you imagine growing up like that?Everyone around you telling you how sick and bad and evil you are, how messed up it is for anyone to feel the way you feel, and then one day, your dad—who has been feeding you that BS your whole life—tells everyone he’s gay, and he’s moving out, and best of luck, see you at Christmas.”
“He didn’t say—” Tean said, but he caught himself.To Hannah’s overly pleased grin, he said, “I don’t think it happened like that.”
“Not really the point.”
Tean shrugged, but when Hannah continued to stare at him, he finally said, “What?”
“I want you to say he’s a piece of shit!”
“Oh my gosh, Hannah.”He wanted to let it go there, but instead, he found himself saying, “You know what I kept thinking, the whole time Lucy was talking to us?I kept thinking Daniel wasn’t sick.They made him sick, or made him think he was sick, which is the same thing.He didn’t need Prozac or whatever else they were giving him.He just needed someone to teach him not to hate himself.And I kept thinking there should have been something—I should have seen it, or known, or said something.I mean, Jem says I don’t have much of a gaydar—”
“You don’t.”
“Okay, well, I’m not even sure gaydar is really a thing—”
“It is.And mine is much better than yours.And Jem’s is, like, eerily accurate.”
“The point,” Tean said with extra emphasis, “is that Daniel needed someone.And he found him.”
Hannah sat in the chair across the desk.After a moment, she said, “God.That’s awful.”
For a disorienting moment, Tean felt himself about to speak.Numbers and statistics floated up.Forty-five-point-three percent of LGBTQ youth between thirteen and eighteen seriously consider suicide.That was almost one in two.And more than one in five actually attempt it, compared to only seven percent—less than one in ten—of straight teenagers.And the fact that parental religious beliefs disapproving of homosexuality were associated with double the risk of attempting suicide.
He opened his mouth, the words already forming.
And then, instead, a wave of gray washed over him—not the physical weariness he felt from a sleepless night.Not even, necessarily, the emotional strain of the last few days.Something more.The best word for it was exhaustion, in the most literal sense of the word, like some indefinable resource inside him had been used up, and what was left was an empty shell.
He shut his mouth.He wasn’t even sure Hannah noticed.
“You can’t put that on yourself,” Hannah said.“He has parents.I mean, how often did you even see him?”