Page 1 of Loving Trent
Prologue
TRENT
Age Thirteen
“Where is it?” The panic lacing my voice feels like claws tearing at my throat. Ripping the bottom drawer from the six-drawer, dark oak dresser, my hands shake as the contents fall to the floor. Nothing. Nothing but brightly colored shorts I haven’t worn in months. My heart pounds painfully behind its cage, as if it wants to break free and leave me motionless on the floor. Spinning around, the copious piles of clothes wrap around my feet, pushing my balance further askew. At least they soften my fall. A loud roar fills the empty space as my hands tangle in my hair, pulling harshly. So, this is what defeat looks and feels like.
“Think, Trent! Where was the last place you remember seeing it?” I ask myself out loud.
Heavy, echoing silence answers my pathetic plea. Thankfully, not another soul is around to witness this epic meltdown. Which is precisely how I need it to be right now. No one needs to witness my frantic search for the journal I swore I put in the same place it has been for a couple of months. Second drawer, under the soft, musky-tinged blue hoodie I stole from him.
The unassuming, brown leather journal that cost me twenty bucks is the only safe place in my life. The hours when my hands frantically write the dark secrets I keep to myself every day are the only time I’m able to be my authentic self. I’m not dumb. I not only live in a very conservative part of the world, but I’m part of a very religious family. Acceptance is the least of my worries if anyone reads my written words.
At the young age of eleven, I overheard exactly what my father and his friends thought of someone like me. Although their words were slurred, the hate and venom coating them like thick molasses chilled me to my core, forcing me to experience fear like never before.
No one can know the secrets I cling to like a second skin.
With my inner voice screaming that over and over again, I push up from the pile and storm into my sister’s room right across the hall from mine. Just last week, I came home to find her going through my bathroom. Everyone thinks she is this perfect person, but I see what she does when no one is looking. My thoughts bounce between hoping that she did, in fact, take it and fear that she has it. Whatever the case, if she has it, I hope that her busy schedule has kept her from reading it. The last time I laid eyes on the journal was this morning, when I shoved it back in its hiding place as I rushed out my bedroom door.
My hand is gripping the handle of her closet when the sound of doors slamming floats up through the open window. Running across her clean room, I lean out of the window and see that time has run out. Mom, Dad, and Betty are getting out of the family car, heading straight toward the house. Like the dark clouds hanging in the sky, dread pushes down on me.
Is my nightmare about to unfold, or am I safe for another night?
I’m almost across the landing and back in the safety of my room when the front door flies open and Dad yells up the stairs, answering my inner question.
“Trent, get down here now.” Ice slides down my back and infuses into my blood. His tone tells me that Betty wasn’t the one to find my journal. My blood turns to lead, making my small body heavier than it’s ever been. My legs seem to have started a rebellion along with my heart and lungs because none of them are working the way they should right now. “Don’t make me come get you! That will only make this harder on you.”
My hand grips the banister so hard that my knuckles turn white and my nails scratch the side of the wood. I feel as if I have someone ten times heavier than me sitting on my shoulders, pushing me down. My chest aches with how hard and fast my heart is beating. My lungs burn, screaming for fresh air. My gaze is locked on the white, four-panel wooden door blocking my escape. The end of the stairs is just a few feet from it, and no one is standing in front of it.
Can I make it if I run?
Dad’s and Mom’s voices are coming from the dining room along with another male voice that I don’t recognize. I could quickly sprint to the front door and leave behind whatever is about to happen. But I’m only thirteen. Where will I go? I don’t have friends who would help me. My little heart brings up his name and face, but he doesn’t even seem to know I’m alive. Plus, dreaming about that fairytale has led to whatever is waiting for me in the other room.
“In here, young man,” Dad calls. There hasn’t been a lot of love in his voice, but even the small amount I would hear on occasion is gone. In its place is hatred.
Dread continues to weigh me down, and terror joins the party as I round the corner and see a massive man standingnext to my mother, holding my journal. I’m tall for my age, at five feet seven, but this guy seems like a giant. I feel small in the presence of their disgusted and hateful expressions. Stopping dead in my tracks, I try to turn around and run because, without a shadow of a doubt, I’m not safe anymore. But before my body completes the turn, my father’s hand closes around my upper arm. While I’m tall, I don’t weigh that much, and Dad manhandles me with no effort.
“Not so fast, little faggot,” he sneers at me, yanking me so hard that without his grip, I’d be flat on my ass. Everything in me dies at that moment. That word coming from the mouth attached to the man who is supposed to love me no matter what is like a bullet being shot from a gun. It hits its mark—my heart—and does what it was intended to do, destroying everything in its path. I shut down, physically but mostly mentally. If someone asks me in the future what was said after that sentence, I could not tell them one little detail other than that our floors were dark brown.
I stay glued to that spot until my father’s hand is replaced by the stranger’s. The stranger leads me out of the only house I have ever known. He places me into the back of a van, and I watch as we drive out of town and continue driving until we make it to a place called Camp Arrow. A camp whose sole mission is to take “troubled” kids like me and make us normal, or so the pamphlet they give me says. I don’t know it now, but I’m in a fight for my life and at the hands of monsters who have free rein from my parents to do “whatever it takes.”
One
TRENT
It’s safe to say that life—for anybody—isn’t easy. It doesn’t matter what you have or don’t have. A million dollars, a vast house, a loving family; or five dollars and a studio apartment accompanied by silence. None of that matters because the road we all walk is full of pain, hurt, and uneasiness.
Hitting the brakes, I slow my Kawasaki Eliminator down to a crawl before coming to a complete stop. I push out the kickstand and remove the custom-painted black helmet, but that’s it. I’m not ready to fully step back onto this cursed piece of land. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, my gaze scans the scene straight from my nightmares.
The forest surrounds a circle of eight small, square buildings. Continuing straight down the driveway that cuts through the circle will lead you to a long rectangular building that sits just out of sight behind the trees. If I take a left from the spot I’m sitting in right now, there will be a simple, one-room white church, complete with a stained-glass window and a bell that chimes every hour throughout the day. Behind the church, within a ten-minute walk, sits a two-story, red brick house with a hidden basement only accessible through the trap door located at the side of the house
While all of these buildings hold the darkest days of my life, none of them are the primary focus in my nightmares. No, that spot is reserved for the two, slightly bigger, black painted, square buildings that are to my right. The walk to get there only takes ten minutes, but back when this place wasn’t abandoned, that walk felt like it took hours. No matter how hard I tried over the past ten years, I’ve never been able to shake the hold that this unassuming, deserted place has over me.
The memories that continue to haunt me.
The demons that constantly like to pick at my black heart.
The fact that I don’t like to be touched.
