"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.

"Why don't you two? I think I'm going to go for a drive," June's mother spoke, placing the slices of cake she'd put in tupperware in the fridge.

"But it's a tradition," Her dad spoke, furrowing his eyebrows at the woman. "I already have the living room set up, I got the snacks, June already picked a mov—"

"I said I'm going for a drive," Her mother cut him off firmly, reaching for her keys on the counter.

"Is everything alright?" Her father questioned, looking between the two girls. June looked miserable and was doing everything in her power not to cry in front of the man, while his wife simply looked flustered.

"Fine, just want to get some fresh air." Her mother nodded.

She went to her husband and kissed the man on the cheek, before turning towards the door. On her way out, she placed a hand on her daughter's shoulder, rubbing small circles into her back before walking out without a second glance. June hung her head, feeling as though everything was wrong and it was all her fault. She shook the thoughts away, knowing she needed to put on a happy act for her father.

"Everything ready to go?" She forced a smile at the man, who had been staring at her with a worried look.

"Yep," His worry slowly melted in a grin at the sight of his daughter smiling. "Let's go, kiddo."

June followed the man into the living, settling down into their couch and pulling a blanket around herself. She had chosen to watch All Cheerleaders Die, one of the few horror movies they could find online that her father and her hadn't seen. It had been their tradition, since she was 10, to gather up as a family, let her pick a scary movie, then watch it with copious amounts of popcorn and junk food. Her dad and her were basically addicted to the horror, while her mother just suffered through it for their sake.

Pretty early on in the movie, June was tortured by the fact that its lead was a lesbian. Normally, any other night, she would have cheered at the diversity of the film. But now, after coming out to her mother and having to suffer through the response, this just felt like a cold reminder she couldn't escape. She watched in agony through various sex scenes or proclamations of love between the lead and other girls, knowing she couldn't and wouldn't have that, at least not anytime soon.

In the middle of one of said sex scenes, the phone rang, causing her father to quickly pause the movie and shoot up. She could have sworn she heard him mutter a "thank god" as he made his way to the landline in the kitchen. June chuckled to herself, feeling equally as awkward watching that sort of thing with her dad. Each time one was introduced, both of them would get on their phones and pretend as if they weren't paying attention to the events. She too was thankful someone had interrupted.

"June, get your coat."

Her head shot up at the tone of her father's voice. His face matched the graveness of his voice, and the girl found her heartbeat picking up as she wondered what possibly could be going on. The phone now hung limply from the wall, like he couldn't bother to hang it back up, and he was staring at her with such a mix of shock and terror that she felt like she couldn't breathe. Something had to be wrong. Something had to be really wrong.

Despite her fears and racing thoughts, she did as she was told and rushed to grab her coat. She was in her pajamas already, long yellow pants with white polka dots and a white tank top. Something in her told her she didn't have time to change, so she forced on her boots, tucking her pant legs into them, then put on her coat and zipped it up. Her father was still putting on his coat as he rushed out the door, keys in hand.

Once they were both in the car, he didn't bother to buckle before he was speeding out down the driveway. June looked at him in fear as he raced down the road, never tearing his eyes from the street. As they rounded the corner and the town's hospital came into view, June knew where they must be going.

"Dad," She started weakly, trying to grab his attention. "What's going on?"

"It's your mother," He answered, granting her nothing more as he sped into the hospital parking lot.

Both of them rushed out and into the lobby of the hospital, which was unsurprisingly not all that busy. Their town wasn't huge, so it wasn't like they had a constant supply of injured patients they needed to tend to.

"I'm here to see my wife, Jamie Thompson." Her father instructed the nurse behind the desk immediately, an urgency behind his voice.

The man behind the desk typed the name into the computer quickly, never glancing up to make eye contact with the two.

"She's in surgery right now, the doctors will be out to talk to you as soon as they know something."

June and her father conceded to going to the sitting area to wait. Her father soon realized he was unable to sit, and began pacing back and forth, causing June to worry more. Her leg bounced, something it always did when she was nervous, as she awaited news from the doctor. Each time she saw someone in scrubs, she prayed it would be their doctor, but never was. All she could think about was the last conversation her mother and her had.

When a doctor finally did begin to make his way over to the two, June wished she hadn't spent so much time praying for one to come. The look on her face alone let the two know she wasn't bearing any good news. June felt as if she couldn't breath when she finally made it there, and everything seemed to move in slow motion. She could hear the woman talking, but it all felt distant, as if she were watching the interaction take place from outside her own body.

Her mother was dead. They had done all they could, but she died on the operating table.

The next couple of weeks went by in a blur for June. It seemed as though someone had pressed fast forward on her life, and was only pressing the play button on certain, important moments. For example, the cops talking to them and informing them she had most likely been distracted when a deer ran out in front of her car went by agonizing slow. When her funeral took place, it went by agonizing slow. All of the teachers who took it upon themselves to pull June aside and give her their condolences, made it agonizingly slow. Everything else seemed to be moving in the fast lane, flying by too fast for June to even notice.

She hardly remembered anything about those weeks, feeling as if she was just going through the motions. The only thing she could remember, from the time she opened her eyes in the morning to when she closed them at night, was she knew her mother's death, was all her fault.