Page 75 of Man On

“Yeah?” Miah’s eyes light up.

“They’ve got an ass like it's been carved from marble, with just enough jiggle to make you want to bite into it.”

The sound of the key in the door spikes my heart rate. Lane has barely talked to me since yesterday. Other than passing him on campus between classes once, I haven't seen him at all since our shared class this morning. I was happy to hang out with Miah for a while this afternoon, because I've missed his company, but I made excuses to go home. Miah followed me, begging to hear more about my supposed secret girlfriend. I love the guy, but the moment Lane comes home I’m ready for Miah to leave.

I want to talk to Lane, to check in with him to make sure he's okay. Not just if he's okay with the hot as hell shit that went down in my bedroom yesterday. There are a lot of other things we still haven’t talked about, like the documentary, or what happened at the restaurant, or his nightmares.

He had another one last night, which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t remember. He’s had one every night since Hannah called him.

When Lane walks in, he takes one look at Miah, who holds his hand up in greeting, and quickly glances in my direction before heading straight to his room. He doesn't join us to go down for dinner, and makes excuses when I knock on his door afterward. I don't have a chance to talk to him at all, and it’s clear he's avoiding me again.

I leave my door open and climb into bed early, hoping a good night's sleep will get me out of my head. But I wake up to Lane having another nightmare, and run into his room immediately.

He's not thrashing about as much as he did last night, so I'm able to slip into his bed and lie on his chest, letting my weight press into him. He startles awake and tenses for long enough I think he might throw me out, but then allows himself to relax and drifts back off again.

I nearly fall asleep on top of him. I’m exhausted, and I imagine he is too. I’m not sure how long either of us can keep going like this. It's not that I mind being there for him; I like that I can bring him comfort. I’m worried about him, and it’s gotten to the point that his anxiety is rubbing off on me.

I consider telling my dad, or Hannah. But what would I say? Would they be able to tell that my interest runs deeper than brotherhood if they see how closely I’ve been watching him?

On the surface, Lane seems fine. He's going through all the motions, playing his part, wearing his mask well. But at night when he's sleeping, all his demons come for him.

I don’t know what to do. The documentary aired tonight. I overheard Lane telling Hannah he didn't want to talk about it, and that he wasn’t going to watch it.

I don't want to watch it.

But I need to know something. And I'm never going to break through Lane's mental hangups without having some basis of understanding.

Tomorrow morning, I’m likely to have some time to myself. Especially if he remembers me coming into his room to comfort him, he’ll avoid me like the plague until I see him for warm-ups before the game. Instead of going to the library to study, or meeting up with Miah and the guys to hang out, I decide I’m going to watch the documentary, in case there's anything I can learn about what Lane is going through.

Just as I expected, Lane slips out before I wake up. I stayed in his room until close to dawn, slipping out before his alarm went off. In case he does come home, I bring my laptop into the living room and put on a pair of headphones. It doesn't take me more than a second to find it,, and I curl up on the couch with a bowl of cereal to watch.

My cereal is quickly forgotten as the documentary does a deep dive on the three top leaders of Deliverance Summit, starting with Lane's grandfather, Pastor Nathanael Warren. His pictures give me the creeps, the way looking at a photo of a serial killer might. He's handsome in a very clean-cut way, and I can see the family resemblance. But there's nothing behind his eyes. In every picture and video clip, he seems cold and calculated, detached. The only exception is a clip of him giving a sermon, where he's so worked up that he's dribbling spit. The congregation is worked up to the point of hysteria, and several people faint. I've never seen someone have a seizure in real life, but the way some people are shaking and jerking around is concerning. Their eyes are bulging and they tilt their faces towards the sky, babbling in what could be another language, but sounds like gibberish. There are children present in the video footage, but their faces are blurred, so I can't tell if any of them might be Lane.

The entire display is far scarier than any horror movie I've ever watched, so much so that it makes me question my own beliefs. We were never regular churchgoers, but the services we did attend, usually for special occasions or when my grandma would visit, were nothing like this.

The documentary describes Pastor Warren as highly charismatic. And intelligent, it seems, considering how long he kept his church compound secluded and free from the scrutiny of the public and the law. They lived almost entirely off-grid, aside from electricity. The compound was so rural, they rarely had visitors, and it was easy for them to pass as a farmstead, rather than a religious commune.

Behind those gates, there was an entire community of people living in their own bubble, away from the rest of the world. The women were subservient, the children often too afraid to be anything other than obedient. The journalist describes harsh punishments that would incur child abuse charges in the modern world. But the people living on the Deliverance Summit compound didn't live in the same reality we do. At the time of the raid, nearly all the children, and many of the adults, had never been outside the compound. They'd never heard music or seen a television set or used a computer. Many of them had never even seen an actual licensed physician or had appropriate schooling.

It makes me think about just how smart Lane must be to have caught on the way he did, to have gotten the SAT scores he did, not to mention being accepted to a prestigious school like Harrison University. And, aside from being a little standoffish in crowds, and a complete dick to me at times, he turned out to be kind. Which, considering the man that raised him, and the man that sired him, is a miracle in its own right.

Wanting to feel the least bit connected to him, I pull out my phone to message him.

Noah: Hey. You feeling ready for the match tonight?

Noah: I’m looking forward to seeing Dad and Hannah.

He leaves the messages on read. That's fine. At least I know he's seen it. Him ignoring me and being his usual grouchy self is probably healthier than the giggly, flirty Lane that his anxiety conjured the other day. That wasn't him. Not really.

The documentary covers some basic background on the other leaders, including Gideon Larsen, the man I recognize as being Lane's father. Him and the man that acted as the physician for the people living on the compound were both charged with sexual assault of minors. Gideon was also charged with aggravated assault and abuse related to the Deliverance Summit conversion therapy camp.

I sit up straighter. This is the part I'm most curious about and afraid of. Like a terrible car accident, I don't want to see the grisly evidence of someone smeared across the asphalt, but I can't look away. This accident involves people I care about.

The journalist says that it was only in the last decade that Deliverance Summit opened their gates to welcome guests. None of the victims of the so-called ‘reparative therapy’ camp were comfortable enough to be interviewed openly, but there are two men that agreed to disguised interviews. The filming is a little hokey, casting one man in dark shadows and using a deep voice changer to disguise his voice. The other man uses his normal voice, but they blur his face.

"At first, it just seemed like a normal church camp. There were activities, and plenty of children that lived there did all of that stuff with us. We could socialize with them, but never with each other," the man with the blurred face starts, wiping his palms on his lap before twisting his fingers together nervously. "I thought it was a bit boring, and maybe a little weird because it was like they were living in the past. There weren’t any TV’s or computers or anything like that. But I wasn't scared. Not at first." He pauses and looks down, his chin resting on his chest. "I realize now that nothing started until I let my guard down. The pastor would go for walks with me, ask me questions, but always seemed friendly. I believed he cared about me.”

"But things took a dark turn," the journalist says, leading the men to describe the horrors that took place at Deliverance Camp.

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