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Back Surrender Your Sons Save as PDF
Chapters (43)
  1. Author’s Note with Content Warnings
  2. CHAPTER ONE
  3. CHAPTER TWO
  4. CHAPTER THREE
  5. CHAPTER FOUR
  6. CHAPTER FIVE
  7. CHAPTER SIX
  8. CHAPTER SEVEN
  9. CHAPTER EIGHT
  10. CHAPTER NINE
  11. CHAPTER TEN
  12. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  13. CHAPTER TWELVE
  14. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  15. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  16. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  17. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  18. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  19. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  20. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  21. CHAPTER TWENTY
  22. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  31. CHAPTER THIRTY
  32. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  41. CHAPTER FORTY
  42. EPILOGUE
  43. Acknowledgments

With that, Molly passes me. Rude, correct Molly; now I’m awash in anxiety and guilt. I have to get home to Ario. If I stay here too long, I’ll lose him to the city. I need to put the Vicky plan into action and get out of this place. Then I can find the Reverend’s FBI agents and let them catch Ricky’s killer themselves. It’s their job, not mine.

We need to catch up with Marcos, but I can’t make him out through the trees. Molly and I hurdle snaking cable roots and jagged tree stumps until a low-pitched yelp stops us. A scream of surprise—Marcos—echoes through the forest, scattering birds from their roosts.

Someone has found him.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE WATCHTOWER

Molly hesitates, but I run in wide, confident bounds toward Marcos’s shouting. The bunny hops toward the predators. Marcos left class to protect me, and I’m not going to let him get his cheek sliced open for his trouble. I whip past curtain after curtain of tangled green until I can’t hear Molly behind me anymore. The next curtain parts, and the claustrophobic forest opens into a serene clearing. A ring of low, secondary growth trees encircle an extinguished fire pit as the sweet hit of barbecue lingers in the air.

Beyond the pit, Karaoke Bill holds a Pez dispenser taser to Marcos’s chest—the ancient bastard in grubby safari clothes is only an inch shorter than Marcos is. Bill lays eyes on me, and his onion skin lips crack open into a wide grin. “You said you didn’t know where the new kid was,” he accuses Marcos, who is speechless.

“What are you doing here?” I ask Marcos without thinking twice, my brain formulating a plan one step ahead of my lips. “I told you not to follow me.”

“What?” Bill asks, his smile collapsing like a brick pile.

“I had a migraine and needed aspirin from the clinic, and I didn’t want to wait for Ramona to come back. Marcos said he wouldn’t let me leave—can you believe that?—and it looks like he followed me to come drag me back.”

Humidity hangs thickly among us as Marcos and Bill are both silenced. I’m a gunslinger of a liar. You’re a liar and a cover-upper, my mom always said. It started with sticking a thermometer to a light bulb to fake a fever and eventually grew into hiding my browser history. We queers are a devious breed. Quick storytellers.

“I told you not to run off,” Marcos says, joining my lie, breath coming easier to him now that Bill’s taser is lowering. “They think you escaped.”

“No, they don’t!” I guffaw. Squinting, Bill pivots his taser to me. “You thought I was escaping?”