Those El Paso Stars by Stephen McKinney (best ereader for pdf txt) 📕

Sawyer dripped with sweat as he boarded the bus to school. It was towards the end of August in the city of El Paso, Texas, and the temperature exceeded one hundred degrees in the small, crowded school bus. He took a seat next to a friendly looking girl near the front of the bus. Aside from the uncomfortable heat that filled the El Paso air, sweat formed on Sawyer’s brow for another reason. On this particular day, Sawyer was to present his research paper to his entire ninth grade English class. It was an awful process; each student would walk up in front of the thirty peers that surrounded him/her and read their papers out loud. The worst part about it was that these presentations counted for three test grades; a bad presentation could easily ruin a final grade. Sawyer was not one for public speaking, as a matter of fact, Sawyer was not one for speaking in general. He was quiet, an introvert who kept to himself. So the thought of standing before his class, having to speak, made him shudder. Sawyer thought to himself, “It’s going to be alright, you’re going to do fine ”. He took a deep breath, wiped the sweat from his brow, and stepped off the bus feeling confident.
Sawyer’s confidence quickly disappeared as he walked into class. All of his classmates were huddled in small groups, talking and laughing, seemingly indifferent to the fact that they were about to deliver the biggest presentations of their academic careers. Sawyer sat down at his desk, laid his head down, and prayed that he wouldn’t be called on to go first. Fortunately, he wasn’t. A couple of his peers raised their hands to go; they all seemed to present their papers with ease. A common theme throughout all these presentations was that most of the students had done their papers on legendary football players from El Paso. Unlike his classmates, Sawyer was not into football, or sports for that matter. He was a history buff who loved to read and watch old movies. While all of El Paso spent Friday nights at the high school football game, Sawyer spent Friday nights at the local library, reading. He was different from his peers, and it made him uncomfortable. As more and more students presented their papers, Sawyer got more and more nervous. Sawyer had done his research paper on Richard I, who was the King of England from 1189 till his death in 1199. He respected the King because of his military conquests along with the fact that he was extremely well educated. Although he was quite fond of the King, he was uneasy about how his classmates would react to his paper. Sawyer felt the sweat start to creep back to his face. In his head he started to plot an escape route out of the classroom. But before he could act on the plan, the teacher said, “Sawyer, you’re up next.”
Sawyer stood up and walked to the front of the classroom. As he stopped at a point in the middle of the room, he felt his knees and hands start to shake. He steadied himself and began reading his paper. After he finished the first page, a sudden relief came over him. His peers weren’t degrading or making fun of his paper, actually a few of the guys had seemed interested when Sawyer spoke about King Richard’s military successes. It was going great. “Just a few more pages and you’ll be back in your seat before you know it,” Sawyer thought to himself. When he reached the last page of his paper, he started talking about Richard I’s personal life. He told the class about a few of Richard’s important siblings. He then told his peers about Richard I’s homosexuality. He paused. Suddenly a boy in the corner of the room remarked, “This guy was a faggot!”. Bursts of laughter erupted around the room. Even the teacher let out a smirk. A deep scarlet red started to spread across Sawyer’s face. He finished his presentation, trembling, and sat down. When the bell rang, Sawyer stood up and left the English classroom, hurt. The rest of school was a blur. Sawyer sat in his classes, not listening to the teacher, not listening to anything but the sound of laughter that still played over and over in his head. School quickly ended and Sawyer got back on the bus to go home.
Sawyer kicked the sand as he walked from the bus stop to his house. He lived in a single storied house off a sandy road on the edge of the desert in El Paso. He was an only child, in a family where he felt alone. His mother, Lauren, worked full time as a financial assistant at the local bank. She was a sweet woman, who liked Sawyer, and loved to read. When Lauren wasn’t reading, she was spending her time cooking for the family. His father, Frank, was the University of El Paso head football coach, where he spent all of his time coaching the sons he never had. He was a big, rough man who scared Sawyer. Frank had a deep voice and a knack for getting angry at the smallest things. Once when Sawyer was twelve, his father had come home after his team had lost, furious. Sawyer walked up to his father, showing him the artwork that he had been working on for months, a picture of a penguin painted with various pastels and pencils. Frank took a look at the picture and immediately ripped it in two. “What the fuck is this?” he yelled. “I can’t believe you spend your fucking time drawing shit like this”. His father stormed into his bedroom, leaving Sawyer in tears. Altercations like that defined the relationship that Sawyer shared with his father. With both his parents working most of the day, Sawyer spent most of his time by himself. Sometimes at night, when his parents went to sleep, Sawyer would sneak out of his house. He would jump from his window into the desert and just walk. The stars at night in El Paso shone so bright that a blind man could see them with ease. Oh how Sawyer loved those El Paso stars. He would walk and walk until the grains of sand told him to stop.
“Sawyer, it’s time for dinner!” He opened his bedroom door and slowly walked into the kitchen. A familiar aroma filled Sawyer’s nostrils as he sat down at the kitchen table. Sawyer’s mother had made his favorite, oven barbecued pork chops with salad and corn bread. As his mother and father sat down at the table, Sawyer offered to say the prayer. He didn’t consider himself to be a religious person, but Sawyer often prayed, asking for things he knew would never come true. “Dear Lord, thank you for this day, thank you for the nutritious food you set before us. I ask you God, to please bless this family and bring nothing but peace into our lives”. He paused. “Please bring happiness to everyone in the world tonight. Amen”. Sawyer’s mother gave him a warm smile as he started to eat his pork chops. Every night as the family ate dinner, they would play a game. The game was called Two Truths and a Lie. It consisted of each member of the family sharing three things that had happened throughout their day. Then the other two family members would guess which of the three was a lie. It was a great way to share what was going on in each other’s lives. Sawyer loved it, not only because he was great at it, but he throughly enjoyed hearing about his mother’s and father’s day. It was one of the only moments throughout the day when he felt like he was part of a family. On this particular night, he was on a roll. He guessed his mother’s lie with ease and had spectacularly guessed his father’s lie as well. He swallowed his last bite of corn bread and then gave his three. “Today, I received an A on my geometry test. Today, I finished a book for my history class. And today, I got made fun of during my big English presentation”. Sawyer’s parents glanced at each other. Being his mother, Sawyer’s mom said, “Well I sure hope that the last one isn’t true, so I’ll guess number three is a lie.” Being his father, Sawyer’s dad took a second to think about it and randomly guessed, “Number one”. They were both wrong. Sawyer then went on to explain what had happened during his presentation at school. When he was finished, both his parents looked confused. “Why would you do your research paper on a fucking queer?” asked his father. Sawyer thought for a second and replied, “I didn’t really think too much about it, I thought he was an extremely interesting person”. His mom spoke up and said, “But honey, he was gay”. The words rang in Sawyer’s ears for the rest of dinner. When the last of the pork chops had been eaten, Sawyer returned to his room.
Sawyer didn’t wait for his parents to go to sleep that night before jumping out of his window into the desert. He walked under the stars for what seemed like hours before stopping. It was a dark night, but the stars illuminated the sky. Right when Sawyer was about to turn around to head home, he noticed a large object in the not so far off distance. He walked slowly towards it, not knowing what it was. “Is it a person?” he asked himself, surely there wasn’t another person as crazy as he, walking around in the desert at night. But It wasn’t a person, it was a rock. A big rock in the middle of the desert. Odd, thought Sawyer. He leaned up against it and looked up at the moon. It shone so beautifully that night. As Sawyer leaned against the rock, all of the emotions he had felt that day started to pour out of him. He buried his head in his hands and began to cry. He cried, remembering the students that laughed at him during his presentation. He cried, thinking of his father and knowing that he would never be able to be the man that his father had dreamed of. And he cried, because of the secret he held, the secret he had held his entire life. He was gay.
In that moment, Sawyer felt more alone then he ever had. “I am gay” he said aloud to himself. It felt good to say it out loud, but it didn’t heal his pain. He had always known of his homosexuality. He had hidden his secret from his parents, his schoolmates, and the world for his entire life. He didn’t know what to do. He lived in a conservative place in which any thing but