As Far as You'll Take Me Read online

  To my family.

  The one I was born into, and the one I found along the way.

  Also by Phil Stamper

  The Gravity of Us

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  ONE

  As it turns out, I’m pretty good at lying.

  On paper, there’s nothing about me that says I’d be a great liar. I follow whatever obscure rules have been set by fake authority figures—No running near the pool! Turn off your phone in the theater! I won’t even jaywalk. I was shoved into Christian youth groups for most of my upbringing, and, well, the Bible is pretty clear on what happens to liars.

  But maybe that’s why I’m so good at it. I’m incognito. Why would Marty possibly lie? The answer, of course, is simple:

  I’m gay, and I’m suffocating.

  I came to a realization about the former a long time ago, but the suffocating? That crept slowly into my chest, shortening my breaths until I realized I wasn’t breathing at all.

  “You’re being melodramatic.” Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, Megan flips her long hair out the car window so strands sway and tangle in the wind.

  She has a habit of doing that. The hair flip and the dismissal. Like my worries don’t matter. Like my looming international trip is nothing.

  “My flight leaves in five hours. I don’t have a return ticket. My parents don’t know I don’t have a return ticket.” I grip the oh-shit handle harder. “I’m freaked.”

  “I can tell. You’re panting harder than when we did that hot yoga class.”

  “God, don’t remind me.”

  “You’ve got to believe me when I say this. You know how I hate giving compliments, but this is just fact. You are the most competent seventeen-year-old on the planet.”

  Her voice puts me at ease. It’s a suspended chord—unsettling at first, both soft and harsh, followed by a clear resolution that feels like home. I lift my double chocolate Oreo milkshake out of the cup holder and wipe the French fry crumbs off the bottom of the cup, these now-ancient reminders of all the fast-food adventures we’ve gone through in this car. Megan in the driver’s seat. Me, the passenger.

  Always the passenger.

  “I don’t know how I could have prepared so much, yet still feel so unprepared,” I say. “It defies logic.”

  I know it’s partly because of Megan. We’ve got this yin-yang thing going on. She’s so chill it’s like she’s constantly high on pot, and I’m about as high-strung as Hilary Hahn. (Because she’s a violinist. And violins are high-pitched and have strings. High-strung? Okay, never mind.)

  “You graduated early,” she says. “You saved money working at that shit diner all year. You performed in about every ensemble in the tristate area to beef up your resume. You figured out your dual citizenship and visa process in the middle of Brexit.” She lowers her voice to a whisper, the wind in the car taking away the words as soon as they leave her mouth. “You’ve been trying to escape Avery for years. You’re more than prepared for it, Marty.”

  Her words sting and soothe at the same time. Is she bitter that I’m abandoning her? My best of two friends—no offense to Skye. But a lot of history is there. It took me ten years to meet her, five years to stop hating her, and two years of hanging out near constantly to get where we’re at now.

  “I’m not escaping.” Of course I’m not escaping.

  “Finish your milkshake,” she says. I do. “We’ve got two more ice cream stops before I roll you into the airport.”

  My gaze drifts out my window at the glory that is I-75 just before rush hour. The evidence of downtown Cincinnati evaporates from the exit signs, and we’re left with the suburbs—Arlington Heights, Lockland, Evendale.

  “Maybe we should abandon the milkshake plan. 275 will take us right there, and I’ll have extra time.”

  She sighs. I knew she’d sigh. “And what, exactly, would you do with this extra time?”

  “Read?”

  “If by ‘read’ you mean get to the gate and stare at the screen, freaking about delays that aren’t going to happen, then—”

  Now I sigh. It’s like a steam engine in here. “I get it. Carry on. What’s next?”

  “Young’s Jersey Dairy. We can feed the goats there. This is going to be an experience.”

  I appreciate Megan’s need to make even the most mundane drives to the airport into an adventure, but I can’t let it go this time. In just a few hours I’ll be up in the air. Away from Avery, Kentucky. Away from the shitheads at my school and the shittier shitheads who ate at the diner where I waited tables.

  Away from my parents.

  “Maybe I feel bad for lying to them,” I say.

  “The Bible-thumpers?”

  “Yes, that’s their official name.” I roll my eyes. “Though I call them Mom and Dad.”

  Megan hasn’t said two words to my parents since everything went down last year in London. Not like she was even there, but she got the full story. And, well, she is not one for nuance.

  “You know how I feel about them.” Her voice softens and I soak it up. “But I get that this is hard for you, Mart. Really I do. When do you think you’ll tell them you’re not coming back?”

  The planner in me wins out this time, and a confidence rises along with my chest. “The summer program lasts three months, which means I have plenty of time to get a paying gig. Maybe that’s what I’ll do. Once one of these auditions works out, I can announce it. They’ll be so happy their son got a spot in the London Philharmonic, they won’t be mad that I’m—”

  Megan butts in. “—never seeing them again?”

  “Okay, now who’s being melodramatic?”

  Three months. That’s plenty of time—and it’s not like I’m super picky. It doesn’t have to be the London Phil. It could be the Royal Opera House, or a regional theatre like the open-air one in Regent’s Park, or … well, we’ll see.

  “It would have been a lot less complicated if I actually got into that summer program.” I’m kind of rambling, but what else do you do when you’re nervous? Make sense? Not a chance. “But I think it’s a good thing. Because otherwise, I’d be wasting so much time in class and not out there booking gigs.”

  The program is at the Knightsbridge Academy of Music. According to what I told my parents, I auditioned last year and got accepted. I even have a letter to prove it.

  But that’s not the truth. Unbeknownst to my parents, I flopped at the audition after the whole London Pride mel
tdown. Hell, technically, that program started a couple of weeks ago. Thank god no one researches everything to the extent I do.

  After everything happened last year, it didn’t take me long to realize how much I actually needed this London thing to work out. How much I needed to get away from them. Get out of that tiny place. And all it would take was a forged letter, some time to ease my mom into the idea of going back to that sinful place, plus a little help from my cousin Shane.

  Long story short, I was able to convince them to let me go this year. Fully on my own dime. I’m going to London, but I’m not attending the academy. I’ve got my own plan, and I’m not coming back.

  Megan’s right. I was trying to escape.

  And I freaking did it.

  Well, it was almost a clean escape.

  Megan just drove off, her hair flying out the window (and she calls me melodramatic?), and I’m standing here just inside the Columbus airport, trying to mentally prepare myself for everything to come:

  Being lost in this behemoth of a building.

  Maneuvering around this building while also being lost.

  Going through security.

  Waiting in lines.

  Emptying my pockets.

  Taking out my toiletries and laptop.

  Triple-checking that I’ve followed every rule.

  Inevitably ending up leaving a full water bottle in my bag somewhere.

  Finding my gate and flying off to an entirely new life in a new country.

  What I did not account for is that standing between me and security right now are my mom, my dad, and my grandma. For a moment, I’m stricken with the kind of fear that grips your lungs and sends shocks through your whole body, because the downside to lying is that at some point you’ll probably get found out. And I was really hoping to not get found out until sometime after I touched down on UK soil. (Preferably not until I turn eighteen in a few months and there’s even less they can do about it.)

  But then I see Mom’s holding one of those shiny Mylar balloons, helium shortage be damned, in the shape of a rectangle with the Union Jack on it—the flag of the United Kingdom.

  “Mom?” I ask. She’s scurrying toward me with an emotion that’s half panic, half grief, and hands me the balloon before wrapping her arms around me. I drape an arm around her in response, still kind of dumbstruck.

  “Nana wanted to say goodbye,” Dad explains, “and we thought with all your planned milkshake detours we could beat you here.”

  Grandma insists on being called Nana, but she’s never really struck me as the nana type. She’s so fit she moves faster than I do half the time, which is not bad for someone who just turned seventy a few weeks ago.

  Mom takes my rolling suitcase from me as I greet them. Mom’s family is spread throughout Europe, but Dad’s side never left Avery. Long as the census goes back, really.

  The four of us exchange oddly formal pleasantries, like they didn’t drive an hour and a half just to pop up and say one last goodbye, and I feel way too many emotions churning in my stomach along with the ice cream. It doesn’t feel great.

  “We really should let you go,” Mom says, after a lull in the conversation. “Looks like everything’s still on time. We’ll follow your flight on that tracker. Once you get your SIM card set back up, just send us a text so we know you’re okay.”

  “Three months,” Dad says. “That’s not so long.”

  I’m lying to you.

  “I made sure Pastor Todd added you to the prayer chain at church,” Mom says.

  Even if I get a good gig, after finding a place to live and rehearsals and performances, there’s no way I’ll be able to come back.

  “Not long at all,” my grandma says. “Take lots of pictures for your nana, and send me a postcard if you have a chance.”

  I force a smile and walk toward airport security. I’m making my big escape, and everyone I love is watching me do it, completely unaware. My parents were shitty to me before, I know that, but is this any better?

  What am I doing? What have I done?

  They’ll never forgive me for this.

  TWO

  The Eagle has landed.

  I’ve just gotten off the plane, and I feel like I’ve been walking for a half mile just to get to customs. My eyelids are heavy. Sticky, almost. It may feel like a dream world, but nothing’s too different yet.

  I take a step into the customs area, and I let all the other passengers rush around me and split into two lines. On the left, Europeans. On the right, Americans. Well, that’s what it looks like, at least. I roll my shoulders. Stretch my arms.

  Good morning, Heathrow Airport.

  I reach into my shoulder bag to grab my passport, but stop when I see a pale green envelope. Marty Pierce is written on the front, in too-perfect cursive to be Megan’s handwriting. She and Skye gave it to me at my posh bon voyage party—or what Megan and I dubbed the My Mom Still Uses Pinterest party—and forbade me to open it until I landed in London.

  Don’t get me wrong; the party was definitely cute. The invites were red, white, and blue. Not our stars, but their stripes. Dozens of our church friends were there along with extended family I hadn’t seen since Easter. Mom set up a fancy tea station that I didn’t touch because tea is disgusting, but I did eat the pastries and biscuits. By “biscuits,” I mean cookies. And though every detail was polished and fit perfectly with whatever aesthetic she’d found online, my mom bought one tacky thing, just because she knew I’d love it.

  A large cake. Big Ben in the night sky, with four children flying around the side. Three in pajamas, and one in bright green tights. Admittedly, I had a weird obsession with Peter Pan as a kid. Like, I dressed up as him for every Halloween I can remember. We’re not too different, he and I. I’m half a year from being an adult, but as I’m obviously gay and completely unable to grow a beard, I still identify with Mr. Pan.

  Being a gay kid with sometimes shitty parents isn’t easy. Their red voting record contradicts every “I love you” that comes out of their mouths. The money they spend at Chick-Fil-A used to go right to the organizations that want to make sure I never marry. To make sure I can never be truly happy. On the flip side, it felt like the cake was a peace offering, a subtle nod that “I know who you are.”

  This thought causes more thoughts about lying and how long it’ll be until I see my parents, which … brings out all the tension in my body, then the guilt for feeling sorry for people who don’t deserve it.

  But I can’t think about that. I won’t. I’m always reading into the little things, but the big things never change.

  Love is complicated.

  I take in my surroundings. White walls, red rope to keep us lined up properly. (Properly! Sounding like a Brit already.) I’m technically in England, so I’m allowed to tear into Megan and Skye’s letter. I pull out the card and examine the front. It’s the kind of design you look at and know it costs more than a Hallmark card. The typeface you see boasting artisanal foods in your local overpriced organic market. Kombucha. Kimchi. It’s Skye’s style if I’ve ever seen it—he’s careful and neat, while Megan’s not above doodling over a used index card and handing it to you unceremoniously.

  I open the card.

  Marty,

  As your best friends from the small, lowly state of Kentucky, we want to wish you, Mr. Britain, the best of luck in London.

  However, this serves as a binding legal contract. You, the undersigned (we’ve forged your name, so don’t worry about signing), commit to one (1) hour of FaceTime, every Friday night. We’ll still need an excuse to miss all of those Avery High bonfires.

  You’re going to do great. And we’re going to miss you, Mart.

  Love,

  M&S

  P.S. It’s Skye—Now that you’re too far away to kill her, I need to confess. Megan told me. And I think you’re awesome, dude.

  Crap. Of course she told him.

  My tidy, five-person out list has just become six. Mom, Dad, Shane, Aunt Leah, M
egan, and now Skye? He’s a friend, a good one, but how did that give Megan the right to out me like that?

  I clench my hands, and the edge of the overly designed card crinkles within my fist.

  A presence behind me clears her throat. She’s dressed sharply in a uniform that notes her status as a customs officer. “Keep moving along.”

  “Right, sorry.” I jam the card back into my bag and start riffling around for my passport. Instinctively, the officer ushers me toward the US passport holder line. The queue, that is, because every word apparently needs a different word in London.

  I stop again, and the lady’s stare ventures dangerously close to glare territory.

  That’s just not how you welcome someone to your country.

  Finally, I spot the red passport and flash it at her. The passport that took ages to get, and is the only reason I’m even on this journey. I pray a silent thanks for my mom being born in Ireland. Her birthright citizenship meant I had this chance to come here. For school, for work, for anything.

  I separate from the officer and join the (much shorter) queue to the electronic passport check. Where the other Americans with me on the flight get inundated with queuing, questions, and stamps, I simply walk through with a blank look at a camera and a scan of my passport.

  As soon as I leave the area, I look up and see an ad showcasing a wildly British—albeit gaudy—vision. A pub dinner, a pint of beer, and the Union Jack in the background. “Welcome to London.”

  The words swirl around in my head. Welcome. To. London. Every step is a new revelation, a new reminder of this mess I’ve gotten myself into. Okay, maybe not a mess, but it’s causing me some anxiety.

  Some questions:

  What if I don’t like living here? I have no backup plan.

  What if the charming accents lose their charm?

  How long is it going to take for my luggage to come out on that carousel?

  What if it doesn’t? They’ve definitely lost it.

  Cue the panting. Again.

  Almost instantaneously, my fears about luggage negligence turn out to be for nothing. I grab my suitcase, which was maybe the fourth one to hit the carousel, and I’m on my way.