Cabin Nine [[Revised Edition] Under FURTHER Revision]

Seventeen

We somehow make it to the end of the summer without my parents finding out about us. Jack's parents caught us in a matter of days. They immediately exchanged money. When I find the courage to ask if they're going to tell my parents, both of them profess their hatred for my mother. I didn't know there were negative feelings between the two but it puts a lot of situations into perspective. They promise to keep my secret.

I knew they'd be cool about it, but I didn't think they'd be this cool. I mean, they bet each other twenty bucks that we'd be dating by the end of high school. Mom 2 won.

We spend the rest of the summer doing damage control so nothing gets back to my parents. We tried to be really careful, but there's really no telling how many people know about us until school starts. I'm the only one who's confirmed to be gay, but people have suspected Jack for years. It's like this generation's witch hunt. I hate this town and all of its people. Especially since no one even blinked when my parents started asking them to pray for their poor homosexual son.

David and Louisa help a lot more than I expected them to. I didn't think they'd care about my reputation or Jack's. But they do, apparently. As far as people are told, we're just friends and he's straight. Which is hard to believe, considering the way he... well, just the way he is.

Jack's reply to David asking him to tone it down was "why can't I dress nice? I haven't spent seventeen years in the closet for nothing." I can tell he's really proud of that line by the devilish grin on his face while both David and Louisa groan at him. He's really stepped it up with the gay jokes.

I think he's perfect the way he is, but Louisa says it's a dead giveaway, especially now that he's been hanging out with a known gay guy. When I tell her that's stupid, she says, "People are stupid. Big surprise."

I think this whole thing has brought us Ybarra kids together. We're friends now. My whole life, they've just kind of been there. I mean, I barely knew anything about David until this summer. He moved out when I was nine. We really didn't have any time to get to know each other.

But the summer ends and David has to go home, and Louisa and I are left alone.

She's only a year younger than me. It's kind of really hard to believe because she's a lot smarter and she's completely terrified by the concept of time, which isn't something you expect from someone who's younger. But I think that might have been part of her attraction to Jack. They're both insanely smart. Jack wants to be an anthropologist and she wants to be an engineer. Ever since she and Kaylee started hanging out, she's getting more and more into the mechanical part of engineering. She's the only girl in her automotive class and she's the only one with an A+ all semester.

Jack and I walk into school early on the first day. I'm completely panicked but he's keeping his cool. It's kind of infuriating but I love him for it. He knows when he needs to be stable for me. I don't like that he has to be the stable one and the smart one and the reckless one, but he is and he's perfect. I think I'm just the boring one. Jack makes me less boring. He makes me better. He makes me be who I want to be.

I mean, just take today for example. He left his house an hour early because I needed him to. He's still being himself, wearing a fancy suit with a tie that matches his eyes. I've been panicking for weeks and he's been calm. I didn't have the mental capacity to plan for anything, so he came over last night and picked out my clothes for the first day of school. The man is my rock.

People don't stare at me as much as I thought they would. With the number of churches in this town, I assumed they would all hate me now. I mean, I know our church is good but surely they all aren't. That just doesn't happen. A few basketball players send me some hateful glares but Delilah and Jack are right there by my side, sending glares right back. I've never been good at being intimidating. Even when I accidentally broke some kid's nose in first grade, he just started laughing. I think he might've been a sociopath, though.