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“ Holloway sat upon the rotting trunk of a fallen tree, shifting to the side slightly to make room for Willabella to sit beside her. Willabella hesitated, before reaching a delicate hand down to brush some moss aside and finally settling down next to her. After a moment of silence, Willabella sighed, directing her attention to the woman sitting beside her.
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” She muttered. “You really are… Extraordinary.” Willabella exhaled, her gaze falling to the ground before she felt a hand on her cheek, directing her attention back towards Holloway. The redhead was smiling, and Willabella felt a ghost of a smile dancing on her own face, as well.
“Oh, yeah?” Holloway breathed, her voice uncharacteristically soft as their faces drifted closer together.
“...Yeah.”
Willabella shut her eyes, finally closing the gap between them and pulling Holloway into a kiss.”
Grace felt her brow furrow as she read the passage, slowly moving the book farther from her face as if creating distance between her and the text would help her understand.
They… kissed?
Grace shook her head lightly, going back to the top of the paragraph and reading it again (For research purposes, of course). Sure enough, the text remained the same. Willabella and Holloway, the two main characters of the novel she’d just recently checked out, were kissing.
But… Willabella and Holloway were both girls, weren’t they?
Grace had been really enjoying this book and was sure beforehand that they were both women, but upon reading that paragraph she suddenly couldn’t believe it to be true.
…Holloway was somewhat masculine a lot of the time. Maybe they’re actually a man, and Grace just missed it. She flipped to a previous page, anxiously avoiding rereading that passage for the third time, and skimmed through a few lines. Sure enough, Holloway was referred to exclusively as she.
They were both girls.
And they… kissed.
Grace’s first response was discomfort, possibly even slight disgust. She tensed up, glancing around the classroom in fear that another student would see what she was reading--though nobody was paying her any mind, of course.
Her second response was guilt. God was accepting of people, so shouldn’t she be, too? Why should she care what people chose to do with their lives?
Her third response was something akin to confusion. Her family had never talked about… “gay” people, nor had her church, but she knew it was generally frowned upon by Christians.
How was she supposed to feel about this? Was she supposed to be accepting and loving, or was it okay to be uncomfortable by it? She’d gotten this book from the middle school library, weren’t school libraries supposed to only have appropriate content? Did that mean this book was appropriate, or did it sneak through the cracks?
The contradictions made her head hurt as she finally looked back at the passage in her novel. Glancing at the clock, she sighed lightly as she realized there was half an hour left of class time for silent reading, and she hadn’t exactly brought another book.
…Admittedly, it probably wouldn’t have been very difficult to attain another book. She could have borrowed one from the teacher or asked to visit the library. She even could have sat in silence and pretended to read, as so many of her classmates seemed to do.
Still, Grace couldn’t help but continue reading. Despite herself, she really enjoyed this book, and as uncomfortable as Grace was, she needed to know what happened to Willabella and Holloway. With a nervous breath, Grace reread the passage one last time, and continued down the page.
She’d finished the book by the end of the day.
----------
Grace couldn’t sleep.
She laid flat on her bed late into the night, staring at the popcorn-ceiling of her room through the dim lighting of her old pink nightlight. Her small white-noise machine hummed softly in the empty space, filling the air like static and cushioning her thoughts.
She couldn’t stop thinking about today. She couldn’t stop thinking about that book.
Despite her initial reaction, throughout her reading of the novel she found herself becoming more accustomed to the idea.
Willabella and Holloway were both kind and caring to one another, a perfectly sufficient model of what a normal relationship should look like. At a certain point, her discomfort had been dissolved entirely as she found herself consumed within the pages of the story.
Perhaps it didn’t matter that they were both women.
Grace was surprisingly comfortable with this thought. She’d come to the conclusion that God would love all people, regardless of what gender they happened to love. She’d decided that women loving women wasn’t all that crazy.
Men were disgusting, anyway, so she couldn’t blame people for instead choosing the more viable gender.
She knew one day she’d be married with several kids, as that's the future she’d always pictured for herself, but was never quite able to fully stomach the idea of spending eternity with a man.
When she was young, before she understood how the world worked, she would argue with the mean boys at the playground, insisting that girls didn’t need boys, and she could just marry her best friend, Stephanie. She’d boast they they could sleep in bunk beds and adopt a million babies and they’d never have to deal with any boy’s crudeness, or smelliness, or attitudes, or--
Hm.
Grace sat up in her bed, staring blankly as she still found herself lost within her head. She fidgeted absentmindedly with the edge of her blanket, her fingers sweeping over the neat stitching. There was a certain thought that began to form within her mind, though she attempted to keep the idea at bay.
It couldn’t be true.
Okay, sure, she thought men were gross and undesirable, but that was just because she was a good, Christian girl. She would never think about men in a lustful way, because she did not lust. She was good. She’d find the one for her--the man for her--, they’d get married, and maybe then she’d feel it.
Love can grow over time, after all.
…Still, she couldn’t help think back on her life.
The friends she was perhaps a little too close with.
The characters she couldn’t help but be drawn to.
She’d always brushed her men-aversion off as being too young to be attracted to anyone, but now that she was in middle school, many of her friends were constantly developing crushes, and she found herself falling behind.
She still didn’t like men. She wasn’t sure she ever would.
Did… Did she like women?
Sure, they were pretty. Women were kind and sweet and incredible, and just being around them could make her feel more energetic. She preferred books and movies with exclusively female leads, and found herself inexplicably drawn to certain characters.
Was she…?
Grace physically shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as she laid back on her pillow. She clutched a stuffed lamb to her chest and curled up on her side, begging her thoughts to quiet so she could finally rest.
She wasn’t… one of them.
She was normal.
…Right?
…
Grace still couldn’t sleep.
The implications were flooding her head in a confusing downpour that kept her mind wide awake. Eventually, she gave up, opening her eyes and rolling over in bed to grab her phone off of its charger.
She squinted at the sudden onslaught of light as she turned it on, quickly lowering her brightness before opening the device. She navigated to the Google app, opening the search bar and hesitating over the keyboard. After a moment, she managed to type her query and anxiously entered it.
“Am I gay?”
The immediate top result was a quiz meant to answer that exact question. Grace clicked the link, glancing around her room in paranoia despite the fact she knew no one was here to see it. She looked back down at her phone, reading the first question.
“Have you ever had feelings for a same-gender close friend?”
Grace pursed her lips and looked up in thought, as she contemplated her previous friendships.
…Or, well, one specific friendship.
Looking back down at the options, Grace felt her face heat up as she hesitatingly clicked “I Think So,” and navigated to the next question.
“Have you ever felt sexual attraction to someone of the same gender?”
Grace immediately exited out of the tab in a panic.
She was not sexual, not in any way, shape, or form, and the mere thought of answering a question of the manner disturbed her deeply.
She said a brief prayer, asking that God would understand she didn’t mean to open a link like that, that she didn’t know what it would be.
She exited the google app, deleting her tabs and closing it entirely. She opened the bible app instead, seeking any sort of comfort to coax her to sleep. She browsed through recommended verses and scriptures halfheartedly, her mind still elsewhere as she tried to calm it.
Eventually, she caved to her unyielding thoughts, opening the search feature on the bible app, and simply searching the word “gay.”
She wanted to know what God thought. If He’d be accepting, if this was the path He wanted for her.
Unfortunately, the word yielded little results, as the verses listed didn’t even include the word “gay,” let alone discuss the topic. She opened the search bar again, trying to think of what they may have called it in the time period the bible was written.
After a moment, a familiar word finally jumped to her mind, and she opened the search feature again, this time typing out the word “homosexual.”
The search garnered two results.
“Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men.”
(1 Corinthians 6.)
Grace’s heart dropped as deep, violent guilt burrowed its way into her.
She should have known.
She should have known it was sinful, she should have stopped reading that book the moment she came across that passage.
Tears pricked at her eyes as she berated herself for ever thinking it could be okay. She read through the second passage as well, words becoming slightly blurred through her tears.
“For the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers--and for whatever else is contrary to the sound discipline.”
(1 Timothy 1.)
She closed the app and allowed herself to cry, folding her hands together to pray for forgiveness and begging God to save her from her sins.
It was just a lapse in judgement. She understood now that it was wrong.
Disgusting.
Immoral.
She would live a Godly life married to a man, because that was the only option.
She’d talk to her pastor and fix whatever was wrong with her.
She could do it.
Grace decided that she’d report the book to the school for being inappropriate for children. She’d make sure she never read a book like that again.
Her eyes burning from her pitiful sobs, she finally drifted off to sleep.