September 20, 1999
Blaine loved going to school. He loved that he got to be just like Cooper, grab his bag and his lunch and get buckled into the car with daddy. He loved his teachers, Miss Margo and Miss Amanda. He loved days when they did finger painting and when they got to go to the park around the corner and play on the big jungle gym. He loved when they got to eat dirt pudding at snack time. He loved that they sang a funny song whenever someone got new shoes and he always begged his parents for new shoes just so he could do the fun dance (even though he only liked to wear his Barney sneakers).
Blaine ran into the classroom without looking back at his father because he was so excited to hang his bag in his cubby and get a green square on the rug for circle time. They were supposed to be going to the park today, and he could barely contain his enthusiasm.
James Anderson had laughed when Blaine ran off, and Blaine could hear his father's deep voice as he took his spot on the carpet. He turned around at the last second to wave good-bye to his dad for the day.
At the park, the kids quickly spread out across the equipment. Margo and Amanda were a well-oiled machine who had been working together for several years. They had perfected the methods of watching ten excitable four-year-olds across playground equipment.
There were several mothers, fathers, and nannies at the park with a few other kids. It was slightly less crowded than usual, maybe because the school year had just resumed. Margo watched as Blaine sped down a slide and used the momentum to keep running towards the trees at the edge of the park.
"No climbing trees, Blaine!" she called after him as a reminder.
"Yes, Miss Margo!" he said, but she could tell by the look on his face that his plans had been thwarted. Blaine was what she classified as a climber. There were usually a couple of them in each class. They preferred to climb over the playground equipment rather than play on it as intended. Luckily, Blaine was also the kind of kid who didn't know how to break a rule, so he only needed one reminder to get off the equipment. Other kids weren't so easy.
She turned her head to monitor another climber and continued her patrol of the park.
Blaine found a spot under two of the big pine trees. Last time they'd been here, he'd gotten an idea to make a fairy house. This had to be the sort of place that fairies lived because it looked just like a picture from one of his books. If he built them a house, maybe they would come and play with him.
Blaine was so intently focused on gathering the rocks and twigs that he'd need that he didn't even notice the lady standing on the other side of the fence, behind the trees.
"Hello," she said, startling Blaine. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's okay," Blaine said quietly. He didn't know what to do. Mom and dad always told him not to talk to strangers but they also told him to be polite and answer grown-ups when they asked him questions. It was very confusing.
"What are you making over there?"
"It's a fairy house."
"Oh, do fairies live over here? I've never seen them here before."
"They will once they see the house I made them."
The woman laughed quietly. "You know," she said, "I think I've seen fairies over by my house. I bet they'd love a house like the one you're building right now. Would you want to come and build one for my fairies?"
Someone who could see fairies couldn't be bad, Blaine decided. "I'd have to ask my mommy," he said, but he really wanted to meet her fairies.
"I think your mommy would want you to get to meet the fairies, right Blaine?"
She made a good point. Blaine's mom always encouraged him in his play. And the lady knew his name! Maybe the fairies had told her. Maybe she was a friend of mom's. She talked about her like she was.
"I guess so," Blaine answered. He looked back over at his class and waved when he saw Miss Margo looking at him.
"Why don't you come home with me now to meet them? You can tell them all about the house you're building here?"
Blaine bit his lip in concentration like he'd seen his dad do before. It would be so cool to get to talk to the fairies.
"We'll be back before you need to go back to your teachers."
Blaine nodded and walked down to the gate in the fence. He took the woman's outstretched hand and was a little surprised at how fast she was walking.
Blaine couldn't stop thinking about the fairy house and was disappointed when they came to a building with nothing more than a bit of dead grass for a yard and stopped.
"Where do the fairies live?"
"We have to drive a little bit to get to them," the woman said, and opened the door to her car.
Blaine started feeling uneasy. "I think Miss Margo and Miss Amanda probably want me back by now."
He tried to turn away, but the woman's grip on his arm became firm.
"No, Peter, you're coming with me. We're going to be together."
"I'm not Peter!" Blaine cried. "Let go! That hurts!"
No one was on the street to see, and she quickly shushed him and got him in the car. When Blaine heard the locks click, he started crying.
It felt like they had been driving forever when they finally stopped. It was dark, way past his bedtime, and Blaine was hungry . All he'd eaten was a bag of Cheetos and all that had done was make him thirsty. He wanted to go home and see his mommy and daddy and Cooper.
"Peter, quit fidgeting!" the lady hissed.
"I'm not Peter!"
She slapped him across the face. Blaine froze. No one had ever hit him before, not for real at least. Cooper would sometimes hit him lightly if they were play-fighting but it was always soft, loving, gentle. This hurt .
"You will be quiet and you will follow me inside now!" the woman ordered. Blaine followed her into the hotel room and lit up when he saw the phone.
"I know my phone number!" he proclaimed proudly. "Can I call my mommy to say goodnight?"
"No!" Again, the venom in the woman's voice scared Blaine. "No, Peter, she's not your mommy. I am!"
They finally stopped driving three days later. They pulled up outside of a big, ugly building a lot like the one where there hadn't been a fairy house and the woman had told Blaine that they were home.
He tried crying and screaming, and some neighbors stared, but the woman just told them that they'd just moved and he missed his old friends, and they looked away.
He tried finding the phone and opening the door, anything to get away, but she was always there, always watching, always reminding him that he was Peter and she was mommy.
He cried himself to sleep every night for a month.
But eventually, he stopped. He started wondering if maybe before was just a dream and he was Peter and she was mommy. She was always telling anyone who'd listen that he had such a great imagination and told the best stories. Maybe before was just a story he told?
As Peter grew older, his mom told him the story about the night he couldn't remember. He didn't have a lot of memories from before they'd moved to Sacramento, and she'd said it was because of the fire. It had been so traumatic that they'd needed to uproot their lives entirely, move across the country, and start over.
He could remember wanting his mom and being so scared and alone and in the dark, so he figured that that was the night of the fire. The night their old home in Philly went up in flames and grandpa and auntie died.
Everything they'd owned burned up that night. There were no pictures, no keepsakes, no memories. Just the two of them.
Sydney Johnson had been Peter's best friend since she'd moved to Sacramento and been paired with him in reading class in the second grade. Even during the years when boys and girls thought the others had cooties, they'd been near inseparable.
When they were twelve, sitting on the swings in Sydney's backyard, they had kissed for the first time. They locked eyes after and Syd smiled. Pete looked down, biting on his lip like he always did when he was thinking about something.
"Yeah, that settles it," he'd said. "I'm definitely gay."
Syd's jaw had dropped and she made a squawking noise. "Excuse me? I let you be my first kiss and that's what you have to say! Why couldn't you have told me before ?"
"Well, I wasn't sure," Pete had said, but he grinned slightly.
Syd tried to glare at him for a moment before a grin broke across her face. Soon the two were falling over laughing in the backyard.
"Fine," she'd said, finally catching her breath. "Then if you're gay, that doesn't count as either of our first kiss. Got it?"
"Deal."
When Pete was 14, he'd decided it was time he came out to his mom. Well, really, he wanted to go on a school trip to Disneyland, but he figured that if he surprised mom with the gay thing, she'd be more likely to let him go.
She'd just gotten home from a long day at work. Mom was checking people out at the local Wal-Mart these days. She never seemed to hold a job for long, but Pete was used to it and he never really worried too much about it.
He'd prepared dinner, or at least, he had boiled some spaghetti and reheated some leftover sauce from the fridge. He wanted everything to be perfect.
Mom had looked so happy when she walked into the tiny kitchen and saw the plates and bowls waiting for her.
"What, is today my birthday?" she'd joked.
"Are you saying I can't make dinner to show my mom I love her? I need to have ulterior motives?" Pete had bantered back. Every time he said something like that, mom's eyes filled with tears, she smiled really big, and hugged him tight. Really tight, as if she was worried he might somehow disappear.
"So mom, I wanted to talk to you about something," Pete said. He wiped the corners of his mouth on his napkin and sat up in his seat. This was it, his big moment.
"Yes, sweetie?"
"I'm gay."
It was silent for a moment. A look crossed mom's face, as if something was out of place, but she couldn't identify the exact piece that didn't fit.
"Oh," was all she said.
Peter wasn't sure if that counted as a win, but he decided to keep going. The whole point of the plan was to get mom distracted by the gay-bomb so she'd say yes to Disneyland. "Also, I wanted to ask if I can go on the class trip to Disney."
Marilyn didn't miss a beat. "No," she said. "Pass the salad."
"C'mon, mom, please? It's organized through the school, so there'll be tons of chaperones," he explained. Mom could be so overprotective sometimes. She'd only started letting him go to the mall with Syd and no adult chaperones this past year.
Mom didn't even think about it. "No."
"Mom, I never get to do anything fun! All the other kids in my class get to go on vacations all the time but you won't even let me out of your sight! I'm not a little kid anymore, okay?"
Marilyn stood up very suddenly, her chair scraping out behind her.
Peter froze. A sudden, unbidden memory forced itself to the forefront of his mind.
Mom was usually so calm, gentle, loving. But there were times – usually right before or after she'd lost a job – where she seemed like an entirely different person. She would say things that didn't make sense and her mood swings were all over the place. But this wasn't a memory of one of those mood swings. Peter was used to them by now, and while they weren't fun, they didn't scare him anymore.
This was different. He didn't know why, or anything about the memory, but he could just remember crying and then – a slap. Mom had hit him once. He scrambled to extricate himself from the chair and backed up to the wall, pale with fear.
Mom met his eyes and stopped. She must have seen the fear, because quick as a switch, the anger was gone and she was just mom again.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, going up to him to pull him in for another tight hug. This time it felt too tight. "But I can't let you go, Petey. We can't afford to go, and after the fire when you were young, you know I get nervous when we're apart."
Peter nodded. "Yeah, I know, mom," he said. He'd known that she'd never say yes. Mom was afraid of everything when it came to him. He couldn't go out after dark, he couldn't go to sleepovers at friend's homes, he couldn't even go on an airplane. Disney had never been a real possibility. Just a dream.
April 2011
Peter was waiting by Sydney's locker on Monday. He was practically trembling with excitement, and she could sense it from where she stood down the hall where she had been stopped by a teacher who wanted to speak with her about one of the clubs that she was an officer for.
He nearly screamed but finally, she finished the conversation and walked the rest of the way down the hall.
"Geez, Pete, you look like you're about to go into labor or something," she noted, pushing past him to retrieve her books.
Peter wasn't even bothered that she was trying to play it cool when she obviously knew that he had some Very Important News. "She said yes!" he shouted, garnering a few confused stares from other kids in the hall.
"Don't worry about him, he's still straight as a slinky," Syd told the onlookers.
"Haha, very funny," Pete said dryly. "Did you even hear me? Mom said yes!"
"To what? Wait – no way! San Fran?"
Peter could only nod his head. He was so excited that he couldn't even verbalize his emotions anymore. After years of begging for the slightest bit of freedom, years of missing out on field trips and dances and movie dates after dark, Peter had finally worn his mother down. Well, he'd had some help from his history teacher. But he'd finally done it!
Their class had a one day trip to San Francisco planned for the last day of classes before spring break. They were going to go tour Alcatraz as a large group and then would have a few hours of supervised freedom before hopping on a bus back to Sacramento. Since Mr. Bolton, the history teacher, was also the Gay-Straight Alliance faculty advisor, he'd personally taken it upon himself to appeal to the club president's mother and convince her that the historical value of the trip would be priceless. Not only could Peter learn about an important piece of American history, Mr. Bolton explained, but he could also learn about some of the most important events in LGBTQ history.
Marilyn had bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Mostly because Mr. Bolton had promised to never let Peter out of his sight, but the details weren't important. For the first time in his life, Peter was going somewhere . He was a part of the group, not the kid left behind to eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches with the nurse while everyone else was off doing something fun.
Syd and Peter jumped, squealed, and hugged in the hallway, not caring that their classmates were staring.
The day of the trip couldn't come soon enough. It was almost as if Marilyn had regretted allowing Peter the chance to go to the city without her and was doubling down on all her other rules to make up for it.
It didn't help that this was one of those times when she was out of work. Peter had begun to suspect that there might be something more going on with his mom after taking Psychology at school. He wondered if it would be best for her to see someone, but when he'd tried to mention it, she had gotten scary again like the night he'd asked about the Disney trip, so he'd kept his mouth shut about it.
His mom was erratic these days. She'd still be awake by the time he left for school, or she'd sleep twenty hours a day. He was pretty sure that she was drinking more than was healthy, and once he thought he caught a whiff of cigarette smoke on her even though she'd quit cold turkey after the fire.
Now they were in a shouting match about his driver's license. Again .
"C'mon, mom, I'm 16 already. Everyone my age has their license and I don't even have a permit!"
"I told you, Peter, you are not getting a license. It's dangerous out there and I love you too much."
"Yeah, but mom, I wouldn't even drive that much. It just would be nice to have an ID. I look like an idiot when all my friends pull out their permits and I just have my school ID. Plus, once you're an adult, there are way fewer rules about practice and classes and stuff before you get your license. So technically it's safer for me to get it now when I have to take driver's ed." Peter grinned. He'd done some research online since the last time they'd had this argument and was sure that he'd just won.
"No. End of discussion," Marilyn said. There was an edge to her voice that told Peter not to pursue it. She simply turned her back and walked away.
Peter groaned and stomped over to his room, slamming the door behind him. He pulled up an incognito browser on his iPod to log into Facebook so he could message Syd angrily.
Facebook was another of those things that mom had said no to. So one day at Syd's house, Peter had made a throwaway email address and created his own account. He only used it in a secret browser so mom would never be able to check his browsing history for it, and he knew that she didn't have a Facebook of her own so he didn't have to worry about her finding his account.
He wasn't paranoid, but his mom could be overprotective… and when she got into one of her states, he worried about what she might do if she learned how many of her rules he had broken. So just in case she did monitor his phone or internet use, he used incognito browsers and only messaged Syd and some other friends through Facebook so that mom couldn't read them.
Some of his friends had thought it was over-kill, but well… when his mom got into these states, he could never be too careful.
The morning of the trip to San Francisco came too early. Luckily mom seemed to be calming back down, because she had gone to bed the night before and was awake before Peter, in time to drive him to catch the bus at school at 7 in the morning.
They didn't speak in the car, still sore over the driver's license argument ( not a fight , Peter tried to tell himself). But she did pull him into a tight hug before he got out of the car, whispering, "Be safe, my Petey. You know I just worry because I love you so much."
"I know. I love you, too, mom."
The bus ride was an hour and a half of pure boredom. Peter tried to sleep with his head resting against the window while Syd flirted with a boy from her chess club. The girl was involved in entirely too many activities for Peter to try to keep track of all her social circles. Meanwhile, thanks to his mother's overprotective nature, he was only involved in theatre and the GSA. His little circle of friends was limited to an odd assortment of kids from all grades, and even that had been fractured recently when he and Brian had broken up.
Once they arrived, however, everything seemed perfect. San Francisco was beautiful, the air was fresh, and it smelled like freedom. Peter couldn't stop grinning as he followed Mr. Bolton and the several other students in their group to pick up their tickets for the ferry to Alcatraz.
Once on the boat, and even on the island, Mr. Bolton promised a bit of freedom. It was an island prison that had kept some of the worst criminals contained; he wasn't worried about a few high schoolers with phones escaping or getting lost.
Peter and Syd found themselves a couple of seats away from most of their classmates and eagerly gazed out across the water towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Peter was so enthralled that he missed all of Syd's subtle gestures and ended up wincing in pain when he got a sharp elbow to the ribs and heard her hiss, " Look! "
Standing mere feet away from them on the ferry was none other than the guy from the Free Credit Rating commercial. Of course, he'd also been in a few other shows, but they mostly knew him from the commercial. Both Syd and Pete had been obsessed with the commercial, if only for a minute, just to watch him. Plus, the song was catchy and it played at least twice per episode of NCIS .
Peter pulled out his phone to try and take a subtle picture. He then busied himself with looking down at it, in case the guy looked over again. He didn't want to be accused of being a crazy fan. So he missed it again, and needed another nudge from Syd and a hissed, " Peter! " to know to look up.
The guy was walking over to them.
The most handsome man in North America.
Coming to them.
"We are so sorry," Syd said once the guy was only a few feet away from them.
He chuckled. "It's fine. I was a teen once, too. Do you guys want a selfie?"
The two stared at each other in awe for a moment and then heartily nodded at the man.
The man took Syd's offered phone, posed with them, and quickly snapped the picture.
"Thanks so much!" Peter and Syd gushed in unison. Peter nearly groaned at how childish and rehearsed that sounded.
"Really, it's no problem," the guy said, with the kindest smile. He turned to go, then paused and turned back. Peter met his eyes and suddenly felt his nerves about the entire encounter simply melt away. "Hey, I bet if you tweet that pic, you'll get a ton of new followers. Tag me in it. At Cooper Anderson." The guy, Cooper Anderson, apparently, winked and turned away.
Syd immediately began tapping at her phone, composing the perfect tweet to sum up the encounter, while Peter watched Cooper walk back over to an older couple and sit with them.