Discovery
Nicole Dykes
Chapter one
Mason
I’m a high-school graduate.
What the hell am I going to do with my life now?
I have absolutely no clue.
High school was pretty great, to be honest. I mean, I grew up in a really small town with all the same people since kindergarten. I know everyone in my class very well, and they know me too.
Except... maybe they don’treallyknow me.
They see the class clown. The jock—we were all jocks, just to be clear—but anyone can play sports in our town. There’s plenty of room for everyone. They saw the guy who went to prom with Sarah—because we’re best friends. We have been since first grade when I got a bloody nose at lunch, and instead of laughing and pointing at me like everyone else, Sarah grabbed a napkin and actually helped.
She also kicked Tommy Shaw in the shins when he tried to bring it up at recess.
But Sarah is the one and only person in this town who really knows who I am. Knows I wanted to go with her to prom, not only because she’s my best friend and a blast to hang out with but also because I was avoiding Jacquelyn Quinn asking me to go with her.
Because there would have been certain expectations. Expectations I couldn’t uphold.
Because I wasn’t attracted to Jacquelyn or any girl at our school. Or any girl at all, for that matter. And Sarah—well, she was avoiding Bryan Cox asking her because she was attracted to some of the girls at our school.
It shouldn’t be a big deal.
It just shouldn’t.
But in our small town of seven hundred people in the middle of nowhere Kansas, it would be.
I’m Michael and Maggie Dorian’s son. I’m Mason Dorian. And if I were to come out and tell everyone I was, in fact, gay—which I am—I’d turn into thatgay kidin town.
And if Sarah were to say that she only liked females, she’d be thatother gay kidin town.
So here we are, in my shitty car, loaded with duffle bags full of our clothes, and about to start our own adventure. My grandfather—who I adored but who was highly conservative and a little distant—passed away this winter.
I didn’t think he knew much about me at all, let alone really cared about me. That was until I got a letter from his lawyer, telling me he left me his cabin in the Ozarks—that it was mine to do what I wanted, but he hoped I’d go there.
That he wanted me to live there and discover new things.
What those new things were, I have no goddamned idea. He probably wanted to toughen me up—have me chopping wood to stay warm or some shit—but the opportunity is too good to pass up.
And when I told Sarah about my plan to move to the cabin after graduation, she jumped at the opportunity to go with me. So we packed our bags, hugged our parents, and now, we’re on our way.
It’s scary as hell, I’m not going to lie.
We have about a thousand dollars between us, and we haven’t lived anywhere else in our entire lives. But we’re doing this.
We have to do this.
We need the opportunity to be ourselves and live freely, and that’s what we’re going to do.
“How long is the drive again?” Sarah asks, a sketchpad in her lap as she starts to draw what looks like the scenery around us—which is literally just the corn fields of western Kansas.
“Seven hours,” I answer her, and she lets out an exaggerated groan.
