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  Surrender Your Sons © 2020 by Adam Sass. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from Flux, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Edition

  First Printing, 2020

  Book design by Jake Nordby

  Cover and jacket design by Jake Nordby

  Cover and jacket images by aarrows/Shutterstock, Yuliya Shora/Shutterstock, xpixel/Shutterstock, Brusheezy.com

  Flux, an imprint of North Star Editions, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover models used for illustrative purposes only and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (pending)

  978-1-63583-061-3

  Flux

  North Star Editions, Inc.

  2297 Waters Drive

  Mendota Heights, MN 55120

  www.fluxnow.com

  Printed in Canada

  To my husband:

  you never stopped believing in me.

  To my parents:

  my coming out only made us stronger.

  To the surrendered:

  find each other, and survive together.

  Author’s Note

  with Content Warnings

  This book is a thriller. But just like with any thrill ride or roller coaster, there are some safety precautions we need to go over before we can all have a good scream. First, I want to acknowledge that you’ll find queer pain in this book. However, it’s not about queer pain. It’s about what queers do with pain. Queer pain is something we’ve seen either too much of in the media or bungled in some way. Pain is something queers deal with regularly, even if it’s just occasional feelings of isolation and otherness. In my experience, queer people process pain in many ways, but a big one is through humor. In Surrender Your Sons, you’ll find queer kids put through bad experiences, and then sometimes, they’ll make a joke about it.

  Yet there’s no universal queer experience. That’s why I wrote a variety of different kids into this book. Being part of the queer community is like the ultimate group project in school. Don’t be the one who lets the others do all the work! No one likes that person!

  One last thing to acknowledge is the “S” word. Feelings of self-harm can be upsetting to even hear about. As badly as I wanted to make Surrender Your Sons a suicide-discussion free zone, I was committed to showing the consequences of conversion therapy and I couldn’t fully tell that story without bringing up suicide. It’s not the whole book, but it does come up.

  I promise you, the reader: in the pages of Surrender Your Sons, there’s light in the dark.

  You’ll find scary things in this book, but just like in life, when the trouble hits, you’ll also find humor, good friends, and courage you couldn’t imagine in your wildest dreams.

  Now that that’s out of the way, I am happy to present Surrender Your Sons.

  —Adam Sass

  CHAPTER ONE

  MOM’S ULTIMATUM

  This war has gone on long enough, but not for my mother. Even though she’s been in an upbeat mood since she arrived home from work, I know better than to drop my guard. It’s a trap somehow. Her cheeriness lingers over our home-cooked meal like the Saharan sun—omnipresent and pitiless. She thinks I don’t have the guts to ask the question that will blow apart our fragile cease-fire—the question that has dogged me for over a week—but I very much do have the guts:

  “Hey, so…when do I get my phone back?”

  I ask calmly, without demands or tantrums. Nevertheless, the question ignites a fire in my mother’s eyes that has been kindling underneath our brutally pleasant dinner. Mom shoves away her plate of half-eaten chicken and asks, “Your phone?” My question is the scandal of the century, apparently. “Are you serious?”

  I’m dead serious, but I shrug: it’s crucial that I project an aura of casual indifference, even though my heart sinks with each day I’m cut off from Ario and my friends. Mom would keep my phone forever if she could. Last Thanksgiving, my uncle scolded me, “You treat that thing like it’s your second dick!” He’s not wrong, but I’ve been phone-less for almost two weeks and this battle for my sanity has reached D-Day levels of slaughter.

  “It’s just that…” I begin cautiously, remounting my defense,

  “…could I get a time frame of when I’ll get it back?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Mom’s conviction grows as every muscle tightens in my neck. “You are being punished, Connor—”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong!” A reckless energy seizes me as I leap from my chair in a foolish attempt to intimidate her with my height (as of my seventeenth birthday, I’ve accepted the reality that I’m tapped out at five and a half feet).

  “Don’t come at me with your trash attitude! And you’re not excused.” Mom grasps the silver cross hanging outside of her nursing scrub top and kisses it—no, mashes it to her lips; her typical plea to Christ to help her out of another fine mess her heathen son has dragged her into. She fans her hands downward for me to sit, and—with an extra loud huff—I oblige. Mom and I take turns sneering at each other, a performance battle to prove which of us is the more aggrieved party. She blows tense air through “O”-circled lips, and I pissily toss a sweat-dampened curl from my eyes.

  Our clanking swamp cooler of an air conditioner doesn’t provide any relief from the latest heat wave tearing through Ambrose; however, the stench of hot July chicken shit from the farm next door manages to travel on the breeze just fine. I ladle peppermint ice cream into my mouth at a mindless speed until a glob of pink goo drips onto my shorts next to a hot sauce stain…which is from yesterday. It’s the same Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week-worthy outfit I’ve donned all summer: gym shorts and a baggy hoodie with the sleeves chopped off.

  What do I care how I look? Because of Mom, I might never see my boyfriend again.

  When I was closeted, all my boyfriend, Ario, squawked about was how important it was to come out: it would save my life; food would taste better; fresh lavender would fill the air. Well, I did that—I’ve been out for months, but I’m starting to think he was only repeating shit he heard from YouTubers who were either lying or lucky.

  If this is what being out is like, he can keep it.

  When I first came out to my mom, I didn’t mention having a boyfriend. I enjoyed a frigid—but unpunished—summer of Mom dealing with my queerness as nothing more than some unpleasant hypothetical. But then she found out there was an actual boy involved, with lips and stubble and dirty, filthy, no good intentions. That’s when she confiscated my phone. The rest came rapid-fire: laptop—gone, Wi-Fi—cut off. My friends have been banned from coming over—all except for Vicky, my best friend (and ex-girlfriend), aka my mother’s last hope for a straight son. Not that that matters. Vicky stopped having time to hang out as soon as her son was born—I don’t know how she’s going to handle our senior year while taking care of a newborn. The baby isn’t mine, but try telling that to my suddenly desperate-for-a-grandchild mother.

  Gay? Jesus wouldn’t like that.

  Knock up your girlfriend? Well, babies are a blessing, and at least you’re not gay.

  Scowling, I lick the drying peppermint off my fingers, where remnants of electric purple nail polish still hide under my cuticles. Mom stripped off my color when she took my phone—
it was a merciless raid. She was weirdly violent about it too. Plunged my hands into a dish of alcohol and voilà: no more purple fingers. Just manly, pale white sausages, as the Lord intended.

  If Ario were here, he’d repaint them. Ario makes everything okay again.

  “I forgot to tell you earlier…” Mom says, commanding her voice to soften. “It turns out I was right—your dad’s birthday present for you did get turned around in the mail.”

  I roll my eyes and scrape the last dregs of ice cream from my bowl. My birthday was Memorial Day, and we’re currently well past the Fourth of July. “Turned around in the mail.” Clearly, the man forgot. I’ve made peace with Dad missing, ignoring, and forgetting every single thing about my life, but, like…don’t try to trick me into thinking he gives a shit.

  A puffy, yellow envelope with my name scrawled across the face lies propped against a candle in the center of the table. Whatever Dad left for me in that envelope, it’ll be something half-assed. I’m ignoring it.

  “You know what probably happened, it’s that international shipping. You can’t count on it,” Mom continues, eager to sell me on this lie—whether it’s her own feeble creation or something Dad made her swallow.

  “Sure, yeah, international shipping,” I say. “Everything takes two months because it’s the 1900s. They still send mail across on the Titanic—”

  “Connor—”

  “You’ll believe anything, won’t you?”

  Mom’s smile freezes and then dies. Victory. An evil warmth fills my lungs as I savor finally landing a hit. Unfortunately, as usual, guilt follows. Dad put Mom through the wringer for years—lying, raging, drinking, disappearing—and I just squeezed lemon juice into her most painful wound. I don’t relax my scowl, though. If she stays vulnerable, there’s a decent chance she’ll give up and return my phone.

  “This is too much fighting,” Mom says, swallowing another bite off her trembling fork. “I’m trying to be civil with your dad. Can’t you just…be my buddy on this?”

  A fire grows in my belly. More guilt. She does this: she makes herself pathetic, and I end up feeling like a bastard for asking for any kind of decency or dignity. In the end, the guilt is too overpowering and I’m forced to nod. “I’m your buddy, Mom.” She laces her fingers under her chin and, on the crest of an enormous sigh, weeps into her meal. Guilt consumes my entire being like an inferno. “Come on, don’t cry…”

  “It’s so hard raising a boy on your own,” she squeaks, dabbing a napkin under her eyes.

  “Momma, not this again,” I groan, my guilt evaporating from a renewed rage.

  “You don’t know what you’re putting Vicky through, not making it right—”

  “I’m not the dad!”

  “Then who is? It’s a miracle birth?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not my business—”

  “You were her boyfriend for a year. Suddenly, she’s got a baby and you tell me you like…men…”

  “You think I made up a boyfriend so I could duck out on her—?”

  “Did you?”

  “Gimme my phone and I’ll show you pictures; my boyfriend’s real.”

  “Your dad didn’t want the responsibility of a child either. Not that I blame either of you. It’s a hard, hard thing, being a parent. You’re constantly over a barrel—”

  “Mom, STOP. You’re like a broken record!” I growl under my breath and poke at the coagulated remains of ice cream in my bowl. Nothing will ever convince her because she doesn’t want to be convinced. I could put that baby through a paternity test and wag the results under her nose, and she’d think I faked them in Photoshop. This baby thing of hers is just a fancy coat she’s wearing over her total discomfort with who I am. It’s not even the same situation as Dad; Dad didn’t deny I was his. He stuck around eleven years, then blew off to England to be with his ex-girlfriend. He sucks, but to my mom, me coming out is just as unforgivable.

  These last few weeks have been torture for both of us. I miss Normal Mom.

  “All this fighting’s no good,” she says, mopping her wet cheeks with a third napkin.

  “We’re buddies, okay?” I close my hand over hers, anything to quiet this storm. She shuts her eyes and smiles.

  Now’s the time, Connor.

  A lump rises in my throat as I ask, “Can we just get past this? Can’t I get my phone back, and then the fighting’ll be over?”

  “CONNOR,” Mom moans and yanks her hand out from under mine, suddenly disgusted like I sneezed on her. The unexpected obliteration of our truce sends pins and needles of anxiety up my spinal column. She presses prayer hands to her mouth. Prayer hands! Marcia Major, bringing out the big guns. “Please fix your priorities. If I were you, I’d worry less about my phone and more about these grades I’ve been seeing. Retake the SAT. Prep your application essays. You should be sick to your stomach thinking your friends’ll go off to good colleges while you end up at home, watching TV, giggling, or whatever it is you do all day while Vicky goes it alone raising Avery. I’d worry about being twenty-five someday, doing that same thing. Thirty. Forty years old, mouthing off in my kitchen about some boyfriend you think you got—”

  “I do got a boyfriend—”

  “You do not. If you live in my house, you do not.”

  When Mom finishes, I whip my head away with a flourish not seen outside of a telenovela—she doesn’t deserve my eye contact. My neck is boiling, and I can’t summon the breath to yell back at her about how much everything she is saying sucks. I stare out of our enormous picture window onto a country road and the vast farmland where I’m trapped. The only two houses on our street are ours and the Packard Family chicken ranch. The man who runs the farm is also our local reverend…and my mom’s only friend. She refuses to hang out with the other nurses after work. She excludes anybody in her life who might warn her about what an out-of-control zealot she’s turned into.

  Above Reverend Packard’s soybean fields, storm clouds mutate into a single, nauseatingly yellow mass. The Packard farmers rotate crops each year—one year corn, one year soybeans. Corn, soy, corn, soy. On corn years, there’s a hint of magical possibility in the air. When I was a kid, I’d imagine blue, scaly creatures and elves hiding between the massive stalks, plotting mischief. But on soy years—this year—the view is low and clear, and Ambrose, Illinois, is exposed for what it really is: grain elevators, churches, and that’s it.

  While I gaze, hypnotized, at the road separating our home from the endless soy fields, a black minivan sails past. It’s the only car I’ve noticed since dinner began, but this is the third time I’ve seen it. The black van—its windows also blackened—has been circling our street like a buzzard. Probably lost. Nobody comes to Ambrose on purpose (except for me and my duped mother).

  “This came for you,” Mom says, tapping the yellow envelope on the table.

  “From Dad,” I say, sneering. “You told me already.”

  “No, his present is still stuck in the mail, like I told you already. You remember Ricky Hannigan? You delivered his Meals on Wheels?” Pins and needles swarm into my fingers like fireflies over a marsh. Normally, I’d be grateful for the subject change, but it squeezes my stomach just to hear Mr. Hannigan’s name. Ricky Hannigan was an older client who received hot meals at home from yours truly every weekend since school let out.

  But that’s all over.

  “I remember Mr. Hannigan,” I say, shaking my head out of a stupor.

  “Well, he died.”

  “I know he died. Hi, that’s why I haven’t been going on deliveries. You think I want to hang out here all day, getting under your skin?”

  “Anyway, it looks like he left you something in his will.” Mom taps the bulging envelope again. “Isn’t that kind? The Reverend brought it by. He wanted to give it to you himself, but you were busy in the shower for a long time.”

  My che
eks burst into flames that my mom would inform the frigging Reverend about how long I’d been in the shower. So what if I was in there for a while, imagining Ario next to me, our bodies pressed tightly in the rushing water? I have no phone, no friends, and nothing to do all day but look forward to a pathetic shower wank—dreaming of Ario’s perfectly furry chest…his curly hair…his feet up in the air…

  “Thanks,” I say, plopping the envelope beside the sweating ice cream carton. Ricky’s package is feather light—is it cash? A check? Rare stamps? Ricky Hannigan lived in a shitbox home and every spare cent went to his medical care, so I shouldn’t get too excited. Still…he didn’t have to leave me anything. I’m kind of embarrassed he did; I barely knew him.

  “You’re not gonna open it?”

  “I’ll wait ’til I’m alone.” I turn to her, hands folded, and don’t dare to blink. She’s not getting one iota of whatever is in here. It’s all going toward Connor Major’s New Phone Piss-Off Fund. “Mr. Hannigan was a nice guy, but he was private. He wouldn’t want me opening this in front of anybody.”

  That’s a lie. Ricky Hannigan was best friends with anyone who walked in his door. A few weeks before my junior year ended (and I unwisely came out), Mom arranged with the Reverend to get me into the Meals on Wheels program, so I’d waste my summer doing Christian things for Christian people. Most of my customers were cranky old dickheads, but not Ricky. He always smiled when he saw me.

  I don’t get smiled at a lot.

  Ricky wasn’t any older than the Reverend, but he needed meals delivered because he’d been in an accident forever ago. He could barely talk, so I never pried much about his injury. Then last weekend, I showed up at Ricky’s house with his usual tray, but his hospital bed was empty. He was gone. After that, the Reverend stopped my deliveries altogether, as if Ricky had been the only customer who mattered.

  Outside our window, the black van cruises by for a fourth round. This time, Mom and I both spot it. Startled, her hand jumps, her fork and plate clattering, and the sudden noise stops my heart. Clearly, I inherited the panic gene from her, so thanks a bunch, Marcia. When she finishes blotting the gravy stain out of our plastic tablecloth, Mom pulls back a curtain of dark hair and announces, “Connor, your punishment’s over.”