Mom thought for a moment, then got up and left. I worried I’d driven her away or something, but she came back from the front room with another present: small, rectangular and wrapped in glossy red paper. ‘This was in the mailbox,’ she said, and handed it to me. It wasn’t particularly heavy, and it had my name printed across the back in what looked like impossibly neat handwriting. ‘I figured it was from one of your friends.’

Weird. Olivia? Definitely not. She wasn’t one to shove a present in the mailbox; she’d want to give it to me in person. Seeing as the list of people I could consider ‘friends’ was practically microscopic, there was only one name left.

Breathe.

I tore at the paper with a new hunger, suddenly feeling very validated, like this had all been worth it – June had been thinking of me, enough to come all the way over, to give me something. I should have gotten something for her, I thought.

It was a book. A pale green cover with a drawing of a distinctly sad-looking guy on the front, and above it, the title. It took me a second to read, even after the paper had been cleared away. I must have been reading it incorrectly. No, no. There it was.

Healing Homosexuality.

I instinctively grabbed for paper to conceal the cover, as if I could rewrap it somehow, and if I did then maybe the moment wouldn’t have happened, I never would have opened it at all, but it did. It had happened. Someone had put a fucking copy of Healing Homosexuality in my mailbox.

Thank God Mom hadn’t watched me open it. She had her back to me, refilling her coffee, which gave me enough time to sneak behind her towards the stairs with the book pressed to the side of my thigh, turned cover-side in. ‘Thanks for everything, Mom,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I love you.’

This was suddenly very real. I could handle texts; my skin had grown so thick that I was practically one big callus.

But this was real-world.

They’d been to my house.

They’d driven to the cul-de-sac, come to my house, put their grubby fingers on my mailbox.