Page 78 of Unfix Me

“No, he’s not. You’re an adult.”

“If he doesn’t pay, I don’t have a choice. I screwed everything up.”

He jerked away from me and got to his feet. I watched him warily as he paced. He grabbed the lamp off of his desk and threw it against the wall, making me flinch.

“Sen, talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. We can’t do this anymore.”

I stood and marched over to him, grabbing his jaw. “I don’t accept that.”

“You have to. I don’t have a choice.”

“No. I told you that you’re mine. That’s not something you can take away just because your dad is a dick.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Not personally, but I’ve met people like him and like you. I’ve seen them living their lives free of that abuse and it’s not easy, but I’m not letting you go back to them so that they can try to stop you from being yourself.”

Pressing his hands against his eyes, he inhaled shakily. “I don’t want to go back.”

“I know. You don’t have to go home.”

“Not home. D-Dumont.”

“What’s Dumont?”

“I can’t go there. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

A fresh round of sobs began, making him stumble into me. I pried his hands away from his eyes and leaned my forehead against his. I knew this was the major piece that would help me to understand Sen. It was what I needed from him. He was terrified of it and, frankly, so was I.

“What’s Dumont, Sen?”

He met my eyes. There was a darkness there I’d only caught glimpses of over the past two months. So much pain and suffering; loss and heartache.

“It’s a conversion program,” he said. “I went there for three summers so that they could fix me.”

Words escaped me. All I could do was pull him against my chest while I prepared myself for the full horror of what he must have gone through.

Chapter 26

Kai

“I was thirteen the first time they sent me,” Sen said. “Turned fourteen halfway through.”

He held on tightly to the coffee I’d ordered. It was much needed for the kind of day we were going to have. Classes were forgotten and everything else took a backseat to this. With his back against the wall and his legs in my lap, he’d calmed down quite a bit from earlier.

“In eighth grade, I met someone in English class. Victor. He spoke Russian, which I thought was cool, and we became friends. One day, he kissed me. I knew that I felt attracted to guys, but I never really let myself think about it too much. My parents weren’t supportive of it. I just didn’t know how much they hated it. Victor stayed the night at my house a few times and my parents liked him, but then my dad got home from work one day and he saw us through my bedroom window. We were too close, almost kissing.

“He kicked Victor out and said I wasn’t allowed to hang out with him. At first, he decided that I was just confused and that Victor started it. Throughout the whole school year, my dad didn’t say much to me. He just looked at me with disgust and I was convinced that he hated me. I thought it would help if I explained, so I told him that I’ve always been interested in guys, not girls. He was angry. He sent me to Camp Dumont to be fixed. Their success rates were high, I guess.”

I took a long drink of my coffee to conceal my scowl. He fingered the lid on his for a few moments before he continued.

“It was horrible. I hated it from the moment I got there, but I wanted to do it for my dad. He thought there was something wrong with me and, well, I was thirteen. He was supposed to know best. I tried, but when I met Travis, I didn’t want to do it anymore. We liked each other and started sneaking around to hang out after lights out. We kissed and for a second, I felt whole again. He told one of the therapists, thinking it would be a safe way for him to talk about it, but it wasn’t. We were…”

He swallowed hard, his brow furrowing with some memory.

“They put us through aversion therapy regularly, making us sick when we thought about men or when they showed us pictures of male bodies. They used pain and humiliation, they scared us to believe that terrible things would happen if we were gay. When they found out about me and Travis, they made us into an example.”

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