A Poem by Eden Streit Eyes Tell Stories But do they know how to craft fiction? Do they know how to spin lies? His eyes swear forever, flatter with vows of only me. But are they empty promises? I stare into his eyes, as into a crystal ball, but I cannot find forever, only movies of yesterday, a sketchbook of today, dreams of a shared tomorrow. His eyes whisper secrets. But are they truths or fairy tales? I wonder if even he knows. Eden Some People Never find the right kind of love. You know, the kind that steals your breath away, like diving into snowmelt. The kind that jolts your heart, sets it beating apace, an anxious hiccuping of hummingbird wings. The kind that makes every terrible minute apart feel like hours. Days. Some people flit from one possibility to the next, never experiencing the incredible connection of two people, rocked by destiny. Never knowing what it means to love someone else more than themselves. More than life itself, or the promise of something better, beyond this world. More, even (forgive me!) than God. Lucky me. I found the right kind of love. With the wrong person. Not Wrong for Me No, not at all. Andrew is pretty much perfect. Not gorgeous, not in a male model kind of way, but he is really cute, with crazy hair that sometimes hides his eyes, dark chocolate eyes that hold laughter, even when he's deadly serious. He's not a hunk, but toned, and tall enough to effortlessly tuck me under his arms, arms that are gentle but strong from honest ranch work, arms that make me feel safe when they gather me in. It's the only time I really feel wanted, and the absolute best part of any day is when I manage to steal cherished time with Andrew. No, he's not even a little wrong for me except maybe -- maybe! -- in the eyes of God. But much, much worse than that, he's completely wrong for my parents. See, My Papa Is a hellfire-and-brimstone-preaching Assembly of God minister, and Mama is his not-nearly-as-sweet-as-she-seems right-hand woman, and by almighty God, their daughters (that's me, Eden, and my little sister, Eve -- yeah, no pressure at all) will toe the Pentecostal line. Sometimes Eve and I even pretend to talk in tongues, just to keep them believing we're heavenbound, despite the fact that we go to public school (Mama's too lazy to homeschool) and come face-to-face with the unsaved every day. But anyway, my father and mother maintain certain expectations when it comes to their daughters' all-too-human future plans and desires. Papa: Our daughters will find husbands within their faith. Mama: Our daughters will not date until they're ready to marry. You Get My Dilemma I'm definitely not ready to marry, so I can't risk letting them know I'm already dating, let alone dating a guy who isn't born-again, and even worse, doesn't believe he needs to be. Andrew is spiritual, yes. But religious? Religion is for followers, he told me once. Followers and puppets. At my stricken look, he became not quite apologetic. Sorry. But I don't need some money-grubbing preacher defining my relationship with God. At the time, I was only half in love with Andrew and thought I needed definitions. "What, exactly, is your relationship with our Heavenly Father?" He gently touched my cheek, smiled. First off, I don't think God is a guy. Some Old Testament-writing fart made that up to keep his old lady in line. He paused, then added, Why would God need a pecker, anyway? Yes, he enjoyed the horrified look on my face. More laughter settled into those amazing eyes, creasing them at the corners. So sexy! Anyway, I relate to God in a very personal way. Don't need anyone to tell me how to do it better. I see His hand everywhere -- in red sunrises and orange sunsets; in rain, falling on thirsty fields; in how a newborn lamb finds his mama in the herd. I thank God for these things. And for you. After that, I was a lot more than halfway in love with Andrew. The Funny Thing Is We actually met at a revival, where nearly everyone was babbling in tongues, or getting a healthy dose of Holy Spirit healing. Andrew's sister, Mariah, had forsaken her Roman Catholic roots in favor of born-again believing and had dragged her brother along that night, hoping he'd find salvation. Instead he found me, sitting in the very back row, half grinning at the goings-on. He slid into an empty seat beside me. So... , he whispered. Come here often? I hadn't noticed him come in, and when I turned to respond, my voice caught in my throat. Andrew was the best-looking guy to ever sit next to me, let alone actually say something to me. In fact, I didn't know they came that cute in Idaho. A good ten seconds passed before I realized he had asked a question. "I...uh...well, yes, in fact I come here fairly regularly. See the short guy up there?" I pointed toward Papa, who kept the crowd chanting and praying while the visiting evangelist busily laid on his hands. "He's the regular preacher and happens to be my father." Andrew's jaw fell. He looked back and forth, Papa to me. You're kidding, right? His consternation surprised me. "No, not kidding. Why would you think so?" He measured me again. It's just...you look so normal, and this... He shook his head. I leaned closer to him, and for the first time inhaled his characteristic scent -- clean and somehow green, like the alfalfa fields I later learned he helps work for cash. I dropped my voice very low. "Promise not to tell, but I know just what you mean." It Was a Defining Moment For me, who had never dared confess that I have questioned church dogma for quite some time, mostly because I am highly aware of hypocrisy and notice it all too often among my father's flock. I mean, how can you claim to walk in the light of the Lord when you're cheating on your husband or stealing from your best friend/business partner? Okay, I'm something of a cynic. But there was more that evening -- instant connection, to a guy who on the surface was very different from me. And yet, we both knew instinctively that we needed something from each other. Some people might call it chemistry -- two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, voilà! You've got water. A steady trickle, building to a cascade. If Andrew Was the poser type, things would probably be easier. I mean, if he could pretend to accept the Lord into his heart, on my father's strictest of terms, maybe we could be seen together in public -- not really dating, of course. Not without a ring. But Andrew is the most honest person I've ever met, and deadly honest that night. Did you have to come to this thing? It seems kind of, um...theatrical. We had slipped out the back door, when everyone's attention turned to some unbelievable miracle at the front of the church. I smiled. "Theatrical. That sums it up pretty well, I guess. You probably couldn't see it in back, but..." I glanced around dramatically, whispered, "Brother Bradley even wears makeup!" Andrew laughed warmly. So why do you come, then? Pure entertainment? I shrugged. "Certain expectations are attached to the 'pastor's daughter' job description. Easier just to meet them, or at least pretend they don't bother you." It was early November, and the night wore a chill. I shivered at the nip in the air, or at the sudden magnetic pull I felt toward this perfect stranger. Without a second thought, Andrew took off his leather jacket, eased it around my shoulders. Cool tonight, he observed. All the signs point to a hard winter. He was standing very close to me. I sank into that earthy green aura, looked up into his eyes. "You don't believe in miracles, but you do believe in signs?" His eyes didn't stray an inch. Who says I don't believe in miracles? They happen every day. And I think we both knew that one just might have. It Was Unfamiliar Turf I mean, of course I'd thought guys were cute before, and the truth is, I'd even kissed a few. But they'd all been "kiss and run," and none had come sprinting back for seconds. Probably because most of the guys here at Boise High know who my father is. But Andrew went to Borah High, clear across town, and he graduated last year. He's a freshman at Boise State, where his mom teaches feminist theory. Yes, she and his rancher dad make an odd couple. Love is like that. Guess where his progressive theories came from. That makes him nineteen, all the more reason we have to keep our relationship discreet. In Idaho, age of consent is eighteen, and my parents wouldn't even think twice about locking him up for statutory. That horrible thought has crossed my mind more than once in the four months since Andrew decided to take a chance on me. Four Months Of him coming to church with Mariah, both of us patiently wading through Papa's sermons, then waiting for post-services coffee hours to slip separately out the side doors, into the thick stand of riverside trees for a walk. Conversation. After a while, we held hands as we ducked in between the old cottonwoods, grown skeletal with autumn. We joked about how soon we'd have to bring our own leaves for cover. And then one day Andrew stopped. He pleated me into his arms, burrowed his face in my hair, inhaled. Smells like rain, he said. My heart quickstepped. He wanted to kiss me. That scared me. What if I wasn't good? His lips brushed my forehead, the pulse in my right temple. Will I burn if I kiss you? I was scared, but not of burning, and I wanted that kiss more than anything I'd ever wanted in my life. "Probably. And I'll burn with you. But it will be worth it." I closed my eyes. It was cold that morning, maybe thirty degrees. But Andrew's lips were feverish against mine. It was the kiss in the dream you never want to wake up from -- sultry, fueled by desire, and yet somehow innocent, because brand-new, budding love was the heart of our passion. Andrew lifted me gently in his sinewy arms, spun me in small circles, lips still welded to mine. I'd never known such joy, and it all flowed from Andrew. And when we finally stopped, I knew my life had irrevocably changed. Day by Day I've grown to love him more and more. Now, though I haven't dared confess it yet, I'm forever and ever in love with him. After I tell him (if I ever find the nerve), I'll have to hide it from everyone. Boise, Idaho, isn't very big. Word gets around. Can't even tell Eve. She's awful about keeping secrets. Good thing she goes to middle school, where she isn't privy to what happens here at Boise High. I'm sixteen, a junior. A year and a half, and I'll be free to do whatever I please. For now, I'm sneaking off to spend a few precious minutes with Andrew. I duck out the exit, run down the steps, hoping I don't trip. Last thing I need is an emergency room visit when I'm supposed to be in study hall. Around one corner. Two. And there's his Tundra across the street, idling at the curb. He spots me and even from here, I can see his face light up. Glance left. No one I know. Right. Ditto. No familiar faces or cars. I don't even wait for the corner, but jaywalk midblock at a furious pace, practically dive through the door and across the seat, barely saying hello before kissing Andrew like I might never see him again. Maybe that's because always, in the back of my mind, I realize that's a distinct possibility, if we're ever discovered kissing like this. One other thought branded into my brain is that maybe kissing like this will bring God's almighty wrath crashing down all around us. I swear, God, it's not just about the delicious electricity coursing through my veins. It's all about love. And you are the source of that, right? Amen. Copyright (c) 2009 by Ellen Hopkins A Poem by Seth Parnell Possibilities As a child, I was wary, often felt cornered. To escape, I regularly stashed myself in the closet, comforted by curtains of cotton. Silk. Velour. Avoided wool, which encouraged my itching the ever-present rashes on my arms, legs. My skin reacted to secrets, lies, and taunts by wanting to break out. Now I hide behind a wall of silence, bricked in by the crushing desire to confess, but afraid of my family's reaction. Fearful I don't have the strength to survive the fallout. Seth As Far Back As I can remember, I have known that I was different. I think I was maybe five when I decided that. I was the little boy who liked art projects and ant farm tending better than riding bikes or playing army rangers. Not easy, coming from a long line of farmers and factory workers. Dad's big dream for his only son has always been tool and die. My dream is liberal arts, a New Agey university. Berkeley, maybe. Or, even better, San Francisco. But that won't happen. Not with Mom Gone She was the one who supported my escape plan. You reach for your dreams, she said. Factory work is killing us all. Factory work may have jump-started it, but it was cancer that took my mom, one year and three months ago. At least she didn't have to find out about me. She loved me, sure, with all her heart. Wanted me to be happy, with all her heart. But when it came to sex, she was all Catholic in her thinking. Sex was for making babies, and only after marriage. I'll never forget what she said when my cousin Liz got pregnant. She was just sixteen and her boyfriend hauled his butt out of town, all the way to an army base in Georgia. Mom got off the phone with Aunt Josie, clucking like a hen. Who would have believed our pretty little Liz would grow up to be such a whore? I thought that was harsh, and told her so. She said, flat out, Getting pregnant without getting married first makes her a whore in God's eyes. I knew better than to argue with Mom, but if she felt that strongly about unmarried sex, no way could I ever let her know about me, suffer the disgrace that would have followed. Beyond Mom, Indiana's holier-than-thou conservatives hate "fags" almost as much as those freaks in Kansas do -- the ones who picket dead soldiers' funerals, claiming their fate was God's way of getting back at gays. How in the hell are the two things related? And Anyway If God were inclined to punish someone just for being the way he created them, it would be punishment enough to insert that innocent soul inside the womb of a native Indianan. These cornfields and gravel roads are no place for someone like me. Considering almost every guy I ever knew growing up is a total jock, with no plans for the future but farming or assembly-line work, it sure isn't easy to fit in at school, even without overtly jumping out of that frigging closet. I can't even tell Dad, though I've come very close a couple of times, in response to his totally cliché homophobic views: Bible says God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and no damn bleeding-heart liberal gonna tell me different. Most definitely not this bleeding-heart liberal. Of course, Dad has no clue that's what I am. Or have become. Because of who I am, all the way inside, the biggest part of me, the part I need to hide. Wonder what he'd say if I told him the first person to recognize what I am was a priest. Father Howard knew. Took advantage, too. Maybe I'll confess it all to Dad someday. But not while he's still grieving over Mom. I am too. And if I lost my dad because of any of this, I really don't know what I'd do. So I Keep the Real Seth Mostly hidden away. It is spring, a time of hope, locked in the rich loam we till and plant. Corn. Maize. The main ingredient in American ethanol, the fuel of the future, and so it fuels our dreams. It's a cold March day, but the sun threatens to thaw me, like it has started to thaw the ground. The big John Deere has little trouble tugging the tiller, turning the soil, readying it for seed. I don't mind this work. There's something satisfying about the submission, dirt to churning blades. Submission, yes, and almost as ancient as the submission of one beast, throat up to another. One human, facedown to another. And always, always another, hungering. Hunger Drives the beast, human or otherwise, and it is the essence of humanity. Hunger for food. Power. Sex. All tangled together. It was hunger that made me post a personal ad on the Internet. Hunger for something I knew I could never taste here. Hunger that put me on the freeway to Louisville, far away enough to promise secrecy unattainable at home. Hunger that gave me the courage to knock on a stranger's door. Looking back, I realize the danger. But then I felt invincible. Or maybe just starved. I'd Dated Girls, of Course Trying to convince myself the attraction toward guys I'd always felt was just a passing thing. Satan, luring me with the promise of a penis. I'd even fallen for a female. Janet Winkler was dream-girl pretty and sweeter than just-turned apple cider. But love and sexual desire don't always go hand in hand. Luckily, Janet wasn't looking to get laid, which worked out just fine. After a while, though, I figured I should be looking to get laid, like every other guy my age. So why did the thought of sex with Janet -- who I believed I loved, even -- not turn me on one bit? Worse, why did the idea of sex with her Neanderthal jock big brother turn me on so completely? Not that Leon Winkler is particularly special. Not good-looking. Definitely not the brightest bulb in the socket. What he does have going on is a fullback's physique. Pure muscle. (That includes inside his two-inch-thick skull.) I'd catch myself watching his butt, thinking it was perfect. Something not exactly hetero about that. Weird thing was, that didn't bother me. Well, except for the idea someone might notice how my eyes often fell toward the rhythm of his exit. I never once lusted for Janet like that. I tried to let her down easy. Gave her the ol' "It's not you, it's me" routine. But breaking up is never an easy thing. Not Easy for Janet Who never saw it coming. When I told her, she looked as if she'd been run over by a bulldozer. But you told me you love me. "I do love you," I said. "But things are, well... confusing right now. You know my mom is sick...." Can't believe I used her cancer as an excuse to try and smooth things over. And it worked, to a point, anyway. At least it gave Janet something to hold on to. I know, Seth. But don't you think you need someone to...? The denial in my eyes spoke clearly. She tried another tactic, sliding her arms around my neck, seeking to comfort me. Then she kissed me, and it was a different kind of kiss than any we'd shared before. Swollen with desire. Demanding. Lips still locked to mine, she murmured, What if I give you this...? Her hand found my own, urged it along her body's contours, all the way to the place between her legs, the one I had never asked for. To be honest, I thought about doing it. What if it cured my confusion after all? In the heat of the moment, I even got hard, especially when Janet touched me, dropped onto her knees, lowered my zipper, started to do what I never suspected she knew how to do. Yes... No! Shouldn't...How...? The haze in my brain cleared instantly, and I pushed her away. "No. I can't," was all I could say. All Janet Could Say Before she stalked off was, Up yours! What are you, anyway? Gay? Not really expecting a response, she pivoted sharply, went in search of moral support. So she never heard me say, way under my breath, "Maybe I am gay." It was time, maybe past, to find out for sure. But not in Perry County, Indiana, where if you're not related to someone, you know someone who is. All fact here is rooted in gossip, and gossip can prove deadly. Like last year, little Billy Caldwell told Nate Fisher that he saw Nate's mom kissing some guy out back of a tavern. Total lie, but that didn't help Nate's mom when Nate's dad went looking for her, with a loaded shotgun. Caught up to her after Mass Sunday morning, and when he was done, that church parking lot looked like a street in Baghdad. After, Billy felt kind of bad. But he blamed Nate's dad one hundred percent. Not Nate, who took out his grief on Billy's hunting dog. That hound isn't much good for hunting now, not with an eye missing. Since I'd really like to hang on to both of my eyes and all of my limbs, I figured I'd better find my true self somewhere other than Perry County. Best way I could think of was through the "be anyone you choose to be" possibilities of online dating. Granted, One Possibility Was hooking up with a creep -- a pervert, looking to spread some incurable disease to some poor, horny idiot. I met more than one pervert, but I never let them do me. Nope, horny or not, I wasn't an idiot. No homosexual yokel, anxious enough to get laid to let any guy who swung the correct direction into my jeans. I wanted my first real sex to be with the right guy. Someone experienced enough to teach me, but not humiliate me. Someone good-looking. Young. Educated. A good talker, yes, but a good listener, too. Someone maybe even hoping to fall in love. Incredibly Unimaginably, Loren turned out to be all those things, and I found him in Louisville! He opened my eyes to a wider world, introduced me to the avant-garde -- performance art, nude theater, alternative lit. He gave me a taste for caviar, pâté, excellent California cabernet. After years of fried chicken and Pabst Blue Ribbon, such adjustments could only be born of love. Truthfully, love was unexpected. I've said it before, and I'll repeat, I didn't fall out of the tree yesterday. But that first day, when Loren opened his door, I took one look and fell flat on my face. Figuratively, of course. I barely stumbled as I crossed the threshold -- into his apartment, and into the certainty of who I am. Copyright (c) 2009 by Ellen Hopkins Excerpted from Tricks by Ellen Hopkins All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
