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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

RICKY: Don’t say that!

<soft clatter, shuffling>

<For the next one minute and thirty-nine seconds, there are no sounds except crying and indistinct muttering. Reverend Gary Packard does not return, and the tape abruptly ends.>

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE CUT

TODAY

It happened here.

Thirty years ago, Ricky almost strangled his cousin on the slightly warped barn floor of Briggs’s treehouse office. The same floor I’m collapsed across now. Am I a Ricky or a Stanley? Am I the boy who had his life stolen away or am I the “idiot kid who could never be anyone’s boyfriend”? It could be either: Ricky’s rage pulsates through my neck, but Stanley’s helpless terror lays heavily on my chest.

If I stand, the whiteboard cut on my back will start screaming again, so I remain trembling on my knees. It gives me a front-row view to the bumps and knots in the wood where Reverend Packard almost died—but Ricky couldn’t let himself go through with it. Ricky was nineteen and the Reverend was seventeen. My age. Cousins. As close as brothers, it sounds like. Ricky was an out college student; he was only trying to help his scared, closeted cousin…but the Reverend snitched him out, giving them both a one-way ticket to Nightlight Island.

“I got out, I had somebody who loved me!” Ricky screamed, his throat ragged from crying. He lost everything because of Stanley, but Stanley—the Reverend—was just a kid afraid of his dad. He looked up to Ricky, and—according to this Expulsion—experienced at least one truly happy night in his life thanks to Ricky.

My hands no longer atrophied, I slap off the foam headphones; the rigid headband slides around my neck and settles. The pain in both boys’ voices is impossible to shake. On the tape, the young Reverend wasn’t authoritative; he was a tulip—a high-pitched, gentle lilt that months and years of Nightlight therapy ground into the guttural purr it is today. Ricky’s voice was equally bizarre; I’d never heard him speak so fully before. I wish I knew both of them back then. I would’ve helped them get along. Helped them understand the real culprit behind all of this: the Reverend’s father. That monster tore apart his son’s life, his nephew’s life, and the life of any other Nightlight camper in the nineties. The Reverend’s dad died before we moved to Ambrose—I don’t know when—but after listening to this, it seems possible that he was the one who attacked Ricky and killed his husband.