Chapter 6

The shutters had been repainted. Cole remembered them being clay-brown, like the trim around the door and the edge of the porch. Now they were navy blue. It looked odd against the tan paint that covered most of the house, but it wasn’t ugly. There was the window to the bedroom Cole had shared with Jamison and Owen, furthest right on the second floor. The laurel tree’s branches were trimmed so they didn’t reach to the window anymore. There weren’t many places to sneak off to around here, but sometimes their friends got hold of something exciting, like fireworks or alcohol or both, and Cole and Jamison would shimmy down that tree in the dead of night to join the fun. When Cole started to understand that his feelings towards other boys weren’t going away, he thought about escaping down the side of that tree during some moonless night. Instead, he had left out the front door in broad daylight.