𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑 → the society

→1.00 PROLOGUE←

"I'm gay."

The words blurted out of her mouth before she could realize the impact they would hold. It was her 16th birthday, and her mom was just finishing boxing up the leftovers of her cake. The woman stopped instantly, setting down the knife and looking to her daughter for any hint of a joke. But, June remained completely serious, eyes fixed on her mother. Her leg was bouncing nervously as she awaited a response, but her mom just seemed to be studying her.

"Say something," June urged quietly, finally averting her gaze to the floor.

"I'm not sure what you want me to say," The woman spoke truthfully, still studying the girl in front of her. She suddenly didn't recognize her daughter anymore.

"Anything," June looked up, wanting to burst into tears when she saw the expression on her mother's face. "Say I'm still your daughter and you still love me!"

"You're still my daughter, and I still love you," Her mother sighed, finally inching closer to the girl. She brushed her bangs to the side a bit, resting her hand on her shoulder. "But I can't lie and say I'm happy about this."

The tears she had been forcing herself to hold back brimmed in her eyes, and she choked out a sob. She positioned her body away from her mother, shaking off the hand that had been planted on her shoulder. She hadn't had her hopes too high for her mother's response, but she still imagined it going better than this. In her mind, she was able to keep the tears at bay for at least five more minutes.

"Hey, hey, look at me," Her mother stopped her, taking her face in her hands. "If this is who you are, then this is who you are. But, we live in West Ham, where being anything but normal is just fuel for people to talk about you. You're my daughter, and I don't want to see you go through that."

June searched her mother's face, trying to decide if she saw any sincerity behind the words. While it was true that in West Ham, everybody talked, June couldn't decipher if that was really all that bothered her mother. Seeing as the woman grew up in a strict Catholic home, the daughter of a deacon, June hadn't expected her to be ecstatic by the news. The way the woman inferred gay wasn't 'normal' or was slightly pushing her not to come out to the town bothered her, as well.

"You only have two more years here, then you can go off to Stanford or USC and live your life however you want, but while you're here, why not just keep it a secret?"

The girl furrowed her eyebrows at the colleges her mother named, heart-shattering slowly the more the conversation went on. Every time they had discussed her college plans, her parents and her had always dreamt of her at an Ivy-League on the East Coast. They'd hypothetically imagine her at Yale or Brown, making the family proud and further ensuring their good name in West Ham. Never had they even thought of the possibility of her going West Coast, so why was her mom suggesting it now? Did she want her that far away now that she knew? Some part of June knew, with this secret she was carrying, her mother would want her as far away as possible when it came out.

"Okay," June agreed, nodding her head and looking down.

Her compliance seemed to send a shock of comfort through her mother, as she let out a sigh of relief. She reached out her hand and wiped away a few stray tears on June's face before returning back to the cake she had been boxing. The two sat in their kitchen in silence, June trying to decide how her mother would respond to her running and locking herself in her room. Eventually, her dad came in and broke the tension, completely unaware of the events that just transpired.

"We still doing movie night?" He asked with a goofy grin, lightening June's mood slightly.

June looked up to her father in a lot of ways, and always used him for comfort and guidance. That was the reason she had chosen to tell her mom first, wanting to hold on to the closeness between her and her father for as long as she could. She found herself wondering how things would change between them, when she eventually had to tell him.