“All right, your turn.” I look up at the policewoman walking toward me. She’s a short white woman with shoulder-length, curly red hair. She bends down with a key and unlocks the cuff that’s tethered me to the chair for the past hour and a half. “Put out your right hand, please.”
I do as she says, and she puts the cuff back on my right wrist, then motions for me to stand.
“Come this way.” She turns and heads around the reception desk. I take one last look at Nathaniel’s picture before following her.
Let’s say I’m Nathaniel Beaumont. What does this woman do? Types my name into a system and sees that I’ve been missing for almost ten years. Then what?
Ahead of me, the woman reaches her desk and motions to the chair next to it. I sit.
“Right.” The woman—her name tag reads “R. Walters”—sighs and turns her attention to me. “Name, hon?”
If I borrowed Nathaniel’s name, just for a bit, maybe Nathaniel’s parents wouldn’t even have to meet me. If the cops took me to the hospital for the DNA test, or at least uncuffed me and left me out in the waiting area, I could make a run for it.
If I disappeared again, the police would know I wasn’t Nathaniel at all. They’d realize I saw the missing poster, took his identity, and played them. They’d apologize, and the family—if they ever found out—could sue and they’d get a nice settlement.
Or am I lying to myself? Making myself feel better for what I already know I’m going to do? My choices are simple: Tell the truth and go home, followed by conversion therapy and torture. Or I tell this officer I’m Nathaniel Beaumont and maybe go to a hospital, uncuffed, while they verify my story. I need a moment to breathe. I need to not be fighting every damn day.
Think of something else. Anything else!
“Nathaniel,” I say. Officer Walters types it in, then looks backat me for the last name. “Beaumont.” I spell it for her, and she thanks me.
She opens her mouth to ask something else but stops. Her eyes dart around the screen and she clicks something.
She looks at the computer, then at me again.
She’s very interested in me now. The boredom is completely gone from her face.
“Holy shit,” she says under her breath.
Holy shit indeed.
Four
Everything after that happens so fast I barely have a second to think.
First they uncuff me.
Then they put me in an interrogation room, where they don’t interrogate me but instead give me water and doughnuts—apparently that cliché about cops is true. Of course I try to eat too quickly and throw it all up. Once my vomit is cleaned, I try again, taking small bites until the doughnut is gone, then reach for another.
After that, people come in to talk to me. A beautiful middle-aged Black woman with long, straight black hair pulled to the right side. She says her name is Detective Hall, and she has a man with her, a tall and skinny white guy with a salt-and-pepper crew cut wearing a nicely fitted suit. She introduces him as Supervisory Special Agent Grant.
FBI.
Grant looks as if he’s about to say something but thinks better of it. The detective asks me question after question while Agent Grant watches from the doorway. She asks me my name again, where I’m from, where I’ve been, what I’m doing in DC.
I give her quick, concise lies—keeping track of them as I goalong. I’m nervous at first, but then it starts to feel familiar. I used to lie to my friends and family all the time. If I went to a party, I’d tell my parents I was going to a church event. Then I would go there for an hour first, in case they asked anyone if I was there. I lied to church friends and school friends, and didn’t tell them I was gay.
Until Frankie. She was the one person who saw who I really was, because she was lying, too. While it felt like we were the only two gay kids in our grade, we knew it wasn’t true. But we also knew we had to lie. To keep up appearances so we weren’t tormented incessantly.
Detective Hall asks follow-up questions that I avoid or try not to provide too much information on.
Where are your parents?
Where did you live?
Who did you live with?
How long have you been living on the street?
