James

James is a staff member at Ted House who helps Colton confront the religious shame and fear that continue to shape his life. His importance lies in the contrast between the Christianity used to condemn Colton and the faith James reconstructs from his own painful history: he cannot promise certainty about God, but he insists that a child should not be rejected for being born as he is.

Identity and Background

James is not usually forthcoming about his past. Colton knows that James has experienced pain and rejection and that love came to him only after many years, but he has not heard the details. When James finally shares them, he explains that his father was a preacher, a deeply religious Southern man who interpreted James’s loss of his legs as evidence that James had lost his way. James later tells Colton that he and his father never reconciled before his father died.

James’s own body is visible in the conversation: he extends his prosthetics, whose foam is carved with intricate Victorian spiderweb designs. Colton stares at the elaborate patterns, not because the prosthetics are artificial, but because their fine detail catches his attention. The scene gives James a physical presence without reducing him to it; his history, humor, and hard-won judgment matter more to the conversation than his prosthetics as symbols.

Role at Ted House

James spends time with the young people at Ted House, though he does not often let them get to know him. As Colton approaches graduation, the uncertainty of leaving the home becomes acute. Colton has spent his first year there pushing limits and testing how much trouble he can get away with before being sent away; an incident involving a litter of stray dogs nearly returned him to a group home in Denver. Now, with only a few months before his time at Ted House ends, he fears what will happen next.

Sage has already explained that Colton’s placement is nearing its end, but Colton is terrified and says he does not understand why James is speaking with him. James makes clear that Sage does not control the rules and that Colton’s caseworker must be persuaded that he and Sage have made enough progress for Colton to manage on his own. The exchange locates Colton’s fear within an impending institutional transition, not simply a private crisis of confidence.

Guidance and Religious Conflict

James begins by acknowledging the difference between his experience and Colton’s. His own “religious scars” are internal, he says, while Colton’s are plainly marked on his arms by Father Benson. The injuries are not equivalent, but James uses the comparison to make room for solidarity without claiming to have suffered the same harm.

Colton is unsure whether God would listen to him. The God he was taught to believe in, he thinks, would condemn the people who saved him to Outer Darkness; after what happened, he no longer knows whether he wants to believe in that version of God. James does not insist that he has a definitive answer. He admits that he does not know whether there is a God who wants to listen to him, either, then offers a narrower and more compassionate conviction: God would not turn away a child for being born as he was. If prayer helps Colton, James tells him, he should pray.

Colton answers, “I can be better,” revealing how thoroughly he has absorbed the idea that his safety and acceptance depend on correcting himself. James’s response redirects the conversation from moral self-repair to practical survival. Colton has only months before he must leave, and his caseworker needs to see that he will be all right on his own. James’s counsel does not erase that deadline, but it refuses to make Colton’s identity the problem he must solve in order to meet it.

Relationship with Colton and Narrative Significance

James’s support takes the form of attentive, direct contact rather than abstract reassurance. He sits Colton down, holds his gaze, and squeezes his wrist. The gesture accompanies a story of his own: the preacher father who judged his disability as a spiritual failure, and the years James spent unable to escape that father’s voice in his head. By disclosing what he has rarely shared, James turns a relationship in which he is usually a familiar adult around the house into a moment of personal trust.

That trust has consequences beyond their conversation. After Colton tells Sage that he does not know whether he can free himself from his old beliefs, Sage sends him to speak with James. Colton expects the abrasive Southern man to chastise him for giving gay Christians a bad name; instead, James tells the story of his own rejection. The reversal helps Colton encounter a religious life not organized around the demand that he stop being gay.

James does not offer a simple resolution to Colton’s fear of aging out, nor does he claim that prayer will settle what Colton believes. His contribution is more measured: he separates uncertainty about God from certainty about a child’s worth, and he meets Colton’s self-condemnation with both solidarity and concrete attention to the months ahead. In a story where religion has been used to justify coercion and harm, James represents a form of faith that can acknowledge suffering without calling it deserved.