The Unwanted

By Jeffrey Ricker

Jamie Thomas has enough trouble on his hands trying to get through junior year of high school without being pulverized by Billy Stratton, his bully and tormentor. But the mother he was always told was dead is actually alive—and she's an Amazon! Sixteen years after she left him on his father's doorstep, she's back—and needs Jamie's help. A curse has caused the ancient tribe of warrior women to give birth to nothing but boys, dooming them to extinction—until prophecy reveals that salvation lies with one of the offspring they abandoned. Putting his life on the line, Jamie must find the courage to confront the wrath of an angry god to save a society that rejected him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
• Release date: Mar 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781626390935

Jeffrey Ricker

Jeffrey Ricker’s first novel, Detours, was published in 2011 by Bold Strokes Books. His second novel, The Unwanted, will be published by Bold Strokes in 2014. His writing has appeared in the anthologies Paws and Reflect, Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction, Blood Sacraments, Men of the Mean Streets, Speaking Out, Raising Hell, The Dirty Diner, Night Shadows: Queer Horror, and others. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, he is pursuing an MFA at the University of British Columbia.

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The Unwanted

By Jeffrey Ricker

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Ricker

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Synopsis

Jamie Thomas has enough trouble on his hands trying to get through junior year of high school without being pulverized by Billy Stratton, his bully and tormentor. But the mother he was always told was dead is actually alive—and she’s an Amazon! Sixteen years after she left him on his father’s doorstep, she’s back—and needs Jamie’s help. A curse has caused the ancient tribe of warrior women to give birth to nothing but boys, dooming them to extinction—until prophecy reveals that salvation lies with one of the offspring they abandoned. Putting his life on the line, Jamie must find the courage to confront the wrath of an angry god to save a society that rejected him.

THE UNWANTED

© 2014 By Jeffrey Ricker All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-093-5

This Electronic Book Is Published By

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, NY 12185

First Edition: March 2014

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. NAMES, CHARACTERS, PLACES, AND INCIDENTS ARE THE PRODUCT OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENTS, EVENTS, OR LOCALES IS ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

THIS BOOK, OR PARTS THEREOF, MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION.

Credits

Editors: Greg Herren and Stacia Seaman

Production Design: Stacia Seaman

Cover Design by Sheri ([e-mail])

Acknowledgments

I would be remiss in not thanking Radclyffe, my editor Greg Herren, and everyone at Bold Strokes Books. And thank you to everyone who has supported me in my writing—I hesitate to list them for fear of accidentally leaving anyone out. I’d be remiss, though, in not especially thanking David Green, who generously offered his invaluable and insightful feedback on this book and helped make it so much better. Any remaining errors are certainly mine.

And as always, thanks to my partner, Mike, who puts up with things from me that would try the patience of a minor deity.

For my parents

Chapter One

Billy Stratton was my high school nemesis.

I didn’t know why he singled me out for torment, but starting in my junior year, he made my life miserable. He knocked books out of my arms, he kicked the back of my chair, he called me names. Once, my friend Sarah told me, he was about to bash my head in with a rock when she caught him. What would make someone want to do a thing like that?

I didn’t know. Didn’t care, either. All I wanted to do was put my junior year behind me, then get through my senior year, go to college, and get out of Athens, this podunk little St. Louis suburb, and never come back if I could help it.

Billy seemed determined to make sure that didn’t happen. Which was how I wound up lying on the sidewalk between classes. My nose was bleeding. Billy stood over me, fists balled. We were behind the main building. I’d been walking to the annex where all the math classes were held.

Get up, you little shit, he said. Our cold war had suddenly heated up. I had no idea why.

It wasn’t a fair fight. Billy was a football player. He was almost six inches taller than me. My dad always said that’s the way with bullies: They never fight fair. It’s fine for him to say that, of course. He wasn’t the one on his back in the dirt with some psycho freak going red in the face because he wouldn’t get up and take some more beating.

Get up! Billy bobbed forward, fists up now. A crowd had gathered. Why wasn’t there ever a teacher around when you needed one?

Why, so you can hit me again? I was speaking more calmly than I felt. The veins in Billy’s forehead were starting to pulse. Behind him, a couple of other football players looked like they couldn’t decide whether they should restrain Billy or join in the abuse. My nose throbbed and my right eye started to water. He’d gotten me good, just walked right up to me and wham.

Speaking to him so calmly, and refusing to get up, seemed to be enough to drive him further out of his mind. I bet it was a short trip.

Get up!

I wanted to say something about his mother—or rather, stepmother—but she was kind of nice, and I knew when to keep my mouth shut anyway. I slowly shook my head. I didn’t think I could even say the word no without stuttering.

This just seemed to enrage him more. I thought he might kick me, but soon he had someone else to worry about: specifically, my friend Sarah. She leaped over me and shoved Billy hard enough to knock him on his rear end. He bounced back up and got right in her face.

Being a girl isn’t gonna save your ass, Sarah, he said.

"I wouldn’t expect anything in the way of civilized behavior from you, Billy." Sarah had a way of making his name sound like the girliest name ever. For the most part they’d just circled each other this year screeching like cats in an alley. He’d shoved me or thrown things at me in the past, but this was the first time he’d drawn blood. For Sarah, this apparently meant the gloves were off.

Billy sneered and turned away, the crowd of other students parting behind him. Where was a single teacher while all this was going on?

As he walked away, he muttered to one of his friends, Fucking fag.

The next thing I knew—the next thing Billy knew, for that matter—he was on the ground with Sarah on his back. She gripped his hair (a challenge, considering how short it was) and smashed his face repeatedly into the dirt. Lucky for him the force of her impact propelled them into the grass. If they’d landed on the sidewalk, his face would have been even more of a mess. While Sarah straddled his back and basically made him eat dirt, she pummeled him in the back with her other fist and kneed him in the flanks, looking for all the world like she was riding a legless horse.

"I’m sorry, what’d you say, Billy? What was that? I can’t hear you. Are you going to say it again? Are you? Are you?"

Billy couldn’t answer, of course, because she wouldn’t let up long enough for him to get a word out. I’d never seen Sarah behave like that before, and it frightened me more than a little bit to see her lose control so completely. I think she might have tried to kill him, but then suddenly, finally, Coach Brandt showed up and lifted Sarah off Billy—literally, she was airborne, and the coach’s whistle beaned her in the back of the head as he shouted, "What the hell is this shit?"

That got an ooh from the crowd—it was never a good sign when a teacher cussed. Someone helped Billy get up and led him away, probably to the nurse’s office. By the time I got to my feet, the crowd had broken up and it seemed like everyone had forgotten all this started because Billy punched me in the face.

Typical. Even when it started out being about me, it ended up being about someone else.

*

I left school early. While I didn’t exactly ask for permission to go home, I figured being ignored while I was bleeding was all the permission I needed. My car, as usual, was in the shop, and I’d ridden to school that day with Sarah, so I had to walk home. We didn’t live far away, but it still took me almost forty-five minutes. Maybe I should have waited to see what happened to Sarah, or to at least tell the principal (I’m sure that’s where Mr. Brandt took her) that Sarah was just defending me. Of course, that would look great, a girl defending a boy. I’d never hear the end of it. Neither would she, for different reasons.

The house was empty. No big surprise there: Dad never got home before me. When I checked my nose in the bathroom mirror, it was starting to swell up and look like someone had painted purple under my skin. I didn’t think it was broken, but no one had ever punched me in the face before, so what did I know?

At that moment, I knew three things. I didn’t want to explain my nose to my dad when he eventually got home. I probably needed to put ice on it. And I didn’t want to go to school tomorrow.

In the kitchen, I filled a towel with ice. As I tilted my head back and lifted the towel to my nose, a flash of white darted past the sliding glass door overlooking the backyard. Our yard was fenced, so no one should have been back there. By this point, thanks to the almost-daily antagonism from Billy, it was in my nature to see every unexpected or unexplained thing as a possible threat. It seemed foolish, but I grabbed a knife from the butcher block before I opened the door and peered out.

I was lucky I didn’t stab myself in the foot when I dropped the knife. A white horse, its head lowered to the ground as it searched for bits of grass to its liking, ambled slowly across the yard. When it heard the knife clatter, it looked up and stared right at me, blinked its glossy black eyes—

—and shook its wings.

I was glad no one was around to hear me, because I screamed like a girl. My first thought—well, my second thought, right after Oh my God there’s a horse with wings in our yard—was that Billy must have given me a concussion when he hit me and knocked me down. I looked away, shook my head, and blinked a couple of times.

When I looked back, the horse was still there. It had folded up its wings and gone back to browsing the lawn.

Richard, is that you?

The voice, a woman’s, came from upstairs. It was followed by a clanking noise, like someone rattling pots and pans. I picked up the knife again and slid the door shut as quietly as possible.

Richard? she called again, then, in a more threatening tone, Is someone down there?

She started coming down the stairs. Pressing my back to the wall, I inched out of the kitchen and into the dining room. I watched the kitchen doorway, wondering who this woman was and how she knew my father…and what was all the clanking about? When it appeared she hadn’t followed me from the kitchen to the dining room, I turned around and prepared to make a run for the front door.

She was standing right behind me.

I screamed, again. Like a girl, again. (What? She scared the hell out of me.)

She also snatched my wrist and twisted the knife out of my grasp before I remembered I was holding it. Then she put her hands on my shoulders to keep me from running headlong into her chest, which was covered in a bronze piece of armor that made her look like Xena, Warrior Princess.

Oh, it’s you, she said—not in a dismissive tone, the way that sort of thing is usually said (at least to me), but more in a sense of wonder, as if I were the last person she expected to see. She put a hand under my chin, gently, which I didn’t expect since she wore a sword at her waist. You’re so… Her voice trailed off as she took in all of me. Short.

Short? I’d never seen this woman before and she was calling me short? Admittedly, she looked taller than my dad even, maybe by a couple of inches. Before I could protest, she turned my chin left, then right, inspecting my face.

You’ve been in a fight, haven’t you? She smiled, and it seemed like a smile of admiration, like being in a fight was a good thing.

I batted her hand aside and backed away. Who are you?

She frowned. Didn’t your father tell you anything about me?

Tell me what?

Before she could answer, the doorbell rang. In an instant, everything about her changed. Her expression hardened as she whipped around toward the door. She’d drawn her sword without my even noticing, and now she crept toward the foyer. Her steps were so light I didn’t even hear her armor clank.

The doorbell rang again, sounding far away to me, like a dream. I started to ask her what she was doing—hadn’t she ever heard a doorbell before? Why was this clearly crazy woman in our house? And why did she know my dad? But she silenced me with a gesture.

This time, instead of the doorbell, there was a knock.

Jamie? It was Sarah. Are you home?

Who is she? the Xena wannabe asked.

"Who is she? Who are you?"

She lowered her sword for a moment and looked at me as if I were asking a stupid question. He really never told you anything about me, did he?

Tell me what?

Her face softened, neither stony nor angry, but sad.

I’m your mother.

*

I might as well tell you now that, yes, the woman in the Xena outfit was—is—my mother. Did I believe her when she told me this? Hell no. At least, not right away. This crazy woman in that getup was my mother? This crazy woman who also had a nose just like a ski slope? Whose hair was long and sandy blond and not at all like mine, which is brown and difficult, but still did that swoopy thing in the front that made us both look like we were walking into the wind?

Crap. This crazy woman was my mother…which still didn’t explain the horse with wings in the backyard who was now staring at us through the sliding glass door.

Sarah knocked again, and I steered my mother toward the sliding glass door. I have to let her in. You have to go hide. Before she could protest, I added, If she sees you dressed up like that, there’ll be a lot of questions. Not to mention that. I pointed at the horse. Take him into the garage. Don’t make a sound until she leaves.

All right. I hadn’t expected her to back down so quickly, or at all. At the door she paused and turned back to me. We still have a lot to discuss, though.

Imagine that, I muttered but not until she shut the door behind her.

As soon as I opened the front door, Sarah gasped. Your nose! Why haven’t you got an ice pack on that?

Because I’m too busy answering the door?

We headed to the kitchen—and ran right into crazy lady. (At least I didn’t scream again.) She’d been dressed like Xena only a minute ago, but now she wore a yellow flower-print sundress and sandals, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Even out of her armor, though, she radiated something that made me feel puny. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tried to steer me farther into the kitchen.

I was just telling him the same thing, that we need to get some ice on that. It’s swelling up like a balloon. She extended her hand to Sarah. I’m Maia, Jamie’s aunt. Was Maia her real name or had she just made it up on the spot?

Sarah shook her hand but looked skeptical. The only other family of mine she’d ever met was my father.

In the kitchen, Maia pointed at one of the bar stools against the island. Sit. While she filled a freezer bag with ice and wrapped a towel around it, I glanced out the back door. The horse was nowhere to be seen.

Maia guided my head back, then gingerly placed the ice pack against my nose. She was careful, but it still hurt. Sarah hadn’t said a thing in the meantime, just kept glancing back and forth from me to my mother.

So what happened? Maia asked. Before I could answer, Sarah jumped in.

This Neanderthal in our class punched Jamie in the nose, then when we were walking away he called Jamie something I won’t repeat. Which is when I let my temper get the better of me.

I closed my eyes. Icy relief finally started seeping through the towel. The crazy woman who was my mother had one hand at the back of my neck, and I let her carry all the weight of my head. Her fingers ruffled my hair gently.

Dad told me she was dead. Had he really lied to me? Was this crazy woman really my mother?

What did he call Jamie? Maia asked, gently.

Sarah hesitated. I’d really rather not say, Mrs.…

Please, just call me Maia.

Well, it was really obscene, what Billy said.

Sarah slid onto a chair at the kitchen table, her clasped hands pressed between her knees. I didn’t want to hear her say the words fucking fag. It was hard enough imagining what they would sound like coming from her—or from my dad, or my English teacher, or the woman holding the ice pack to my face and claiming to be my mother. In my imagination I was surrounded by people calling me fucking fag.

They’re just words, though, Maia said—I decided it would be easier to think of her by that name and not as my mother. If I thought of calling her Mom that would lead to all sorts of other thoughts, mainly questions: Are you really my mother? Why did Dad tell me you were dead? Where’s the costume party? What’s with the horse? Why did you abandon me?

Why are you back?

Words only have as much power as we let them, she said.

Sarah shifted in her seat. I decided to spare her further agony. I closed my eyes.

It had to do with me being gay, Aunt Maia, I said.

Oh. Maia leaned in close to my ear and whispered, What does that mean, exactly, gay?

I opened my eyes. She was still leaning close, but backed away slightly when I looked at her. Did she really not know what that meant?

Sarah must not have heard the question—or it was her turn to rescue me from awkward answers. You’re going to be in big trouble at school tomorrow, she said.

Me? I tilted my head, and the ice pack slid away from my nose. Maia gently put it back in place. What did I do?

You left early without permission. Coach Brandt said he thought Principal Wood was going to have an aneurysm.

Not that anyone would mind. The principal scared me even more than Billy. She wasn’t a bully like him, but when she looked at you, you got the feeling she was looking right into your head and could see what you were thinking. It was unnerving. She was strict, but I wondered if she’d even remembered to punish Billy once she found out I’d gone missing from school. Coach Brandt probably made it sound worse for me than Billy too. I was not the coach’s favorite student after my dad got me excused from gym my freshman year. Brandt said I didn’t put myself out there. Did he blame me? The last time I put myself out there was when we were playing baseball. I got a concussion.

Billy put himself out there, but he was a tank.

I’m sure your father can explain everything to them, Maia said.

I’m not. The way everything stood, he’d have a lot of explaining to do to me when he got home. Something else occurred to me then. There were still two hours left of the school day. I looked at Sarah. Hey, shouldn’t you still be at school?

Sarah got up and paced in front of the sliding glass door. "I’m suspended for tomorrow. Principal Wood was going to have me thrown off the archery team, but Coach Brandt managed to talk her out of that. I’m so not looking forward to talking to my parents about this."

Well, Maia said, when you tell them you were simply defending Jamie’s honor, I’m sure they’ll understand.

My honor? Sarah started to giggle, but she covered her mouth and stifled it. I glanced back at the crazy woman. My mother. Whatever. She made me sound like a sheltered virgin, which I was not going to cop to being, even if I was.

I’d better get going, Sarah said.

It’s amazing how much can go wrong just walking from the kitchen to the front door. First, the sound of whinnying coming from the garage stopped us all.

What was that? Sarah asked.

We all looked in the direction of the garage door. Maybe it was the TV, I said.

Sarah glanced to the left, into the family room. TV’s off.

Fortunately, we all soon forgot about the horse in the garage. Unfortunately, that was because the front door opened and my father walked in.

For a moment, which was probably not as long as it seemed to me at the time, we all stood frozen in the foyer. My dad looked at Maia, then at me, said, What—? Once he registered Sarah’s presence, he rearranged his face in what I swear was record time.

When on earth did you get into town? he asked Maia, trying his best to keep his tone light. He hugged her (so unconvincingly), and I swear he would have strangled her if he could have.

My flight got in a couple hours ago, Maia said, hugging him back and smiling. I wondered if Dad suspected her flight had been stretching its wings in the backyard and chewing on the lawn and was now standing in the garage.

What a nice surprise, he said, which I think meant Get the hell out of my house.

She smiled. I’m so glad to be here finally. No chance, buster.

Great.

What are you doing home in the middle of the afternoon, Dad? I asked.

Wrong question. He crossed his arms. You weren’t answering your phone. I got a call from your principal saying you’d left school without permission. Also, there was a fight?

Maia was still holding the ice pack. She handed it to me, and I put it against my face. Well, it wasn’t much of a fight, I said. I got hit once and that was pretty much it.

Except for Sarah here, who came to Jamie’s aid. Maia put a motherly arm across Sarah’s shoulders for a moment.

If I tried hard enough, it was like I could hear the cooling fan kick in as Dad’s brain overheated trying to figure out what to do. He turned to Sarah. You need a ride home?

That’s okay, Mr. Thomas, I drove. Sarah only lived six blocks away. My dad was that eager to get out of the house—and leave me with a possibly crazy woman who had a horse with wings. Thanks, Dad.

Before she left, Sarah paused at the front door. You’d better have your dad call the school so you don’t get in more trouble tomorrow.

Tomorrow. School again. Billy Stratton, again.

Once Sarah was gone, my dad said, Son, I need to speak to Maia alone for a moment, please.

I lowered the ice pack from my eye. Maia put it back in place. My mind spun with questions, my face still throbbed, and my dad was sending me to my room?

But—

Jamie. Now.

He used the voice he brought out only once in a while, when there was no time for explanations or he was so angry he couldn’t think straight, much less speak without yelling. He didn’t yell a lot. Usually, in fact, he’s really patient, but I could tell from his voice that as soon as I left the room, the fireworks would start.

Not Maia, though. I was already halfway up the stairs before she said, Jamie should stay. This involves him even more than it does you.

Even more? As much as I wondered what she meant, I wasn’t willing to risk my father’s temper by lingering to find out. As soon as my bedroom door shut, my dad’s voice thundered up through the floor.

"What the hell do you think you’re doing showing up here like this? Breaking into our home, telling my son who knows what—"

"Our son, Richard." Maia kept her voice calm, but Dad just bulldozed right over her.

You need to leave now. He did not, I noted, contradict her or say anything to discount her assertion. Was she telling the truth? Had my father lied to me?

You have to hear me out—

I don’t have to do a damn thing where you’re concerned. You made that clear a long time ago. Now get out—

Then it sounded like they were bowling in the living room. Something fell over, followed by the sound of wood splitting. At that point I didn’t care whether I’d been sent to my room. I went back downstairs.

Maia had Dad in a headlock, pinned to the floor, in the middle of what was left of our coffee table. She leaned close to his ear, whispering something. His face was bright red.

I’ve had lots of moments in my life where I didn’t know why I did what I did—rode my bike off an embankment, ate a whole jalapeño raw, snuck out my second-floor bedroom window to meet Sarah and get frozen custard at midnight. I didn’t know why I ran upstairs and grabbed the first thing I set my eyes on, the baseball my dad gave me when I was ten and he hoped I’d take an interest in Little League. I never did, but I kept the baseball and glove to humor him.

I took that baseball downstairs and winged it as hard as I could at the back of Maia’s head, certain I would miss but hoping I’d distract her long enough to let Dad get an advantage over her.

When I had gym class with Billy Stratton, he and the other thugs in my class liked to give me crap for throwing like a girl. I threw like a girl right at the base of Maia’s skull, where it made a dull knock like two pieces of wood slapping together.