Page 116 of Theoretically Straight

“Are…are you okay?” I hear myself ask.

Mom sniffles. “Not really.”

I chew on my bottom lip as I wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t. “Do…you want to talk about it?”

She sniffles again, gazing back down at the scrapbook. “I don’t–I don’t know.”

Apprehensively, I make my way to the couch, dump my soda and snacks on the coffee table, and sit next to her on the couch. I peer down to see which scrapbook she’s cradling, not surprised to find that it’s one she made of our family vacation to Yellowstone National Park three years ago. It was our last big family vacation that we took before Grace went to college, and Mom frequently revisits this album when she’s feeling particularly nostalgic or sad about us being “all grown up.” My eyes land on the focal photo on the page: it’s of all of us—Dad, Mom, Grace, Nathaniel, and me—standing in front of a picturesque valley with an impressive waterfall in the background.

“That was a fun day,” I mutter, not really sure what else to say.

“It was,” Mom says quietly. “Do you remember when we were driving between the different landmarks, sometimes for hours, and you and Nathaniel wouldn’t stop bickering about and playing video games on your Nintendo…?” she trails off, trying to remember what the console is called.

I let out a weak laugh. “Nintendo Switch. Yeah, I remember.” I smirk. “Nate kept ignoring the low battery alerts and kept letting it die, and he would lose all his progress and try to blame me.”

Mom laughs. “But then you would always help him get it back. He’d whine to you about it, and sure, you’d get frustrated sometimes, but you were always there to help him get back to where he was before.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

Mom sighs shakily, a wistful smile on her face as she stares at the photo. “You were always the best big brother to him. You still are.”

I shrug. “I try to be. Nate’s a pretty cool little brother anyway, so it’s not hard.”

She sits quietly for a few seconds, then her gaze turns to me, and she reaches out a hand to touch my hair. I let her, closing my eyes as she runs her fingers through my unruly curls. It feels nice, but resentment from the past several days is bubbling just beneath the surface, causing a whirlwind of contradicting feelings that I eventually ignore because I’m just too tired to fight.

“I look at these pictures sometimes,” Mom says after a while. “They’re pictures of all of us, of course, but…recently, I’ve been paying attention to the ones of you.” She pauses, tracing the picture of fourteen-year-old me on the page with her finger. “I look at these from three years ago, and I look at newer pictures from a year ago, and then I look at you here and now, and while I can clearly see where you’ve matured, gotten bigger and taller, and how your face looks more grown-up, there are so many things about you that are still just as ‘you’ as they were three, four, five years ago.”

I frown, watching her curiously. “Yeah, that…that’s how aging works, right?” I ask, somewhat playfully but cautiously.

Mom chuckles, nudging me slightly. “Of course, you goofball, I know that’s how aging works. I just…” she hesitates, gazing back down at the scrapbook, her eyes getting sad again. “I keep looking at these photos trying to figure out when something…changed. I don’t know when it happened, and I don’t know how I missed it. Because for so long you’ve been Theo—my Theo—and you have your own special light about you—and you still do, but something must have changed for you to…I don’t know, I just…I should’ve seen it. I should have seen it and…” she trails off, staring down at the page as if she’s looking for the rest of her words there. “I just can’t figure out how you’ve changed this much so quickly without me being able to notice.”

Immediately, Caleb’s words from Spookies all those weeks ago come rushing back to me. “Mom, I didn’t–I’m not a completely different person just because I like a boy. Everything else is the same. I’m still me. I still like playing video games and hanging out with my friends. I still listen to music 24-7, and I get super fixated on the bands I like. I still eat too much pizza, and I still get freaked out in big crowds. I still get self-conscious about being shorter than most of my friends. I’m still trying to blow up on TikTok and get a million followers, and I’m still obsessed with Triple H and spooky stuff.” I glance down at the Yellowstone family photo and laugh nervously. “I still wish more than anything that I had not been wearing that cursed t-shirt for this picture because now I’m embarrassed by it.”

Mom exhales a shaky laugh. “Wh-why are you embarrassed by it?”

“Because it’s a stupid Shaggy and Dragon Ball Z crossover shirt referencing a meme that was probably already dead when I was wearing it,” I say with a wince. “The idea that this t-shirt is immortalized in a scrapbook and exists online somewhere literally makes me want to crawl under a rock and die.”

Mom starts laughing in earnest now, which makes me laugh, too. When the giggling subsides, I look at her with as much seriousness as I can muster. “So, I’m still Theo. I just found something else about myself that has been there all along. It was just locked away.”

Mom considers this silently for a few moments. I can only hope that she’s considering it, anyway. She finally looks back up at me. “I want to understand,aroha. I truly do. And I want you to understand why–why your father and I have responded the way we have to all of this.”

I sigh and stare back down at the scrapbook, specifically at Dad’s face. Deep down, I know he means well. They both do. They’re worried about their son’s salvation, which is something I’ll never truly understand and probably won’t unless I have kids of my own. They genuinely believe that my being anything other than heterosexual is endangering my chances of spending eternity in Heaven after I die. When I think about it like this, their reaction makes a lot more sense, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“So…hypothetically,” I begin hesitantly. “If Grace were to convince you and Dad that the Bible maybe doesn’t actually condemn homosexuality, would that make you feel better?”

“It’s not that simple, Theo,” Mom says quietly. “Whatever proof she’s bringing to the table is from her secular school, and that’s–well, you know how your dad feels.”

I swallow down the anger that threatens to bubble over at that. Of course. “Well, could you at least believe me when I tell you that this isn’t just something that’s going to go away?”

Mom’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“You keeping me away from Caleb and grounding me isn’t going to make me stop being attracted to boys. You know that, right?”

Mom swallows audibly, her gaze shifting out into the dark living room at nothing in particular. “I don’t…I don’t know.”

“Well, I do,” I press on, suddenly feeling bold. “This isn’t just a phase or some rebellious stunt. You know me better than that. I don’t act out like that.”

“I know, that’s why I’m so confused,” Mom says, her voice cracking. “That’s why this whole mess didn’t make any sense to me from the start. This just…it isn’t like you.”

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