How to Street Fight: You are your own weapon, but if you happen to have some brass knuckles or a baseball bat in a particularly nasty fight, more power to you.

“Okay, for starters, we’re going to—” I cut myself off and trap him in a headlock. “Never wait for someone else to swing first.” I let him go and he wobbles. Before he can protest, I swing and stop an inch from his face. “The nose is a good spot to aim for because even if you miss, you have a good chance at clocking them in the jaw or eye. But if you’re dead set on breaking the nose, a head-butt is the way to go.” I grab his shoulders, lean my forehead against his, and stare into his somewhat intoxicated eyes as I fake a head-butt into his nose over and over.

“That’s a lot of violence to absorb in one minute,” Thomas says. “I think I’m good for the night.”

“You’ll be good when—” I swing at him again, but this time he catches my wrist with one hand and grabs my leg with the other, pinning me to the floor.

Thomas smiles. “I told you I’m good for now.” He pats my shoulder and sits across from me on the floor.

“We’ll go for Round Two later on. I’m just happy you’ll be able to put those muscles to use. Maybe I should work out more too, at least for the look.”

“I’ll be your friend, muscles or not,” Thomas says.

“I’m going to tattoo that promise on you as a reminder,” I say.

“I’m never getting a tattoo. What if I decide I want to take up underwear modeling? I can’t have YOLO running across my heart,” Thomas jokes, or at least I hope he’s joking.

I get up and grab a marker from his desk. I sit down next to him and palm his shoulder. “You’re getting a tattoo right now. What do you want?”

“No way,” he says, laughing. I know he wants one.

“Come on. If you don’t end up as an underwear model, what tattoo would you want?”

“I’m scared of needles.”

“This is a marker.”

“Fine.”

“How about one of your little fortune cookie quotes?”

“Surprise me.”

I hold his wrist, steady his arm, and begin drawing a stick figure holding a movie slate; it’ll one day be very meta, if meta is still a thing. My scar is pressed against his forearm, and if I had as much hope in life back then as I do now, it would’ve never existed in the first place. This all feels so right and I like my chances with telling him Side B. “Thomas?”

“Stretch?”

“Were you shocked? When I told you Side A?”

“A little. You’re just so different from any other friend I’ve ever had, and it’s also why I wanted to be your friend in the first place,” Thomas says. It’s funny that he says this while I shade in his stick figure’s eyebrows, one of my favorite things about him. “But when you told me, I didn’t care. I was honored you trusted me.”

“Of course. You’re my favorite person,” I say without a doubt. Thomas isn’t just someone I want in my life—I need him to stay happy, to keep the death out of my life, to make being who I am easier. “It sounds stupid, but I think you’re my happiness.” I rub his shoulder. When he turns to me, I trace his eyebrows from one to the other, and I lean in and kiss him.

Thomas pushes me off and gets up. “Dude, I’m sorry. I’m straight, you know.”

Hearing those words, that lie, feels like every wrong thing in the world: heart attacks, gunshots, starvation, fathers who leave you on your own. I blink to fight back the tears. “I thought . . . I thought that you . . . Sorry, fuck. I’ve just had too many drinks.” I feel like a fucking idiot. “Fuck. Sorry. Fuck.” I look up at him and he’s covering his mouth. “Say something.”

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.”

“You can forget about it. What I did and what I said. I can’t lose my favorite . . . I can’t lost my best friend.”

“Yeah. I can forget, Stretch.”

“I’m going to go home. Sleep off everything.”

“It’s raining.” He says it so matter-of-fact that his words loop through my head again as if they should’ve been obvious: I’m straight, you know. I’m straight, you know. I’m straight, you know . . . “Do you want an umbrella?”

“It’s just rain.”

He tells me something, but I can’t hear him over the echoes. He reaches out for my shoulder and pulls back. “I’ll talk to you later.”

I feel his eyes on me as I let myself out of his window, almost knocking his Buzz Lightyear toy off the ledge. I reach the bottom and turn around to see if he’s been following me. But he’s not there, not even looking out his window.

I’m alone.

Garbage tumbling by creates hurtling shadows underneath streetlamps. I stop at an almost even distance between my house and his, feeling like I belong nowhere now. I collapse onto the curb and just sit there under the expectation Thomas will come for me. And the reality is killer.

7

LATE NIGHT/

EARLY MORNING THOUGHTS

   12:22 a.m.

The moon needs to get the fuck out of my face.

We don’t have blinds, of course, and I can never keep my back to the window because Eric’s side of the room is always glowing from late-night gaming. I sit up and see Brendan, Skinny-Dave, and Me-Crazy passing a cigarette around on the jungle gym. I fall back down so they don’t throw a handball at my window.

I reach for my sketchbook and see the black ink from the marker on my fingertips.

I can’t draw right now.

1:19 a.m.

I can’t even remember what I like about Thomas.

I latched on to the first person who always had a smile for me and who didn’t run away when I told him my secret. Everything I felt was an illusion, nothing more. He reminds me of when I turned fourteen and my family stopped caring about my birthday as much, when my friends made fun of me for wearing the same shirt two days in a row even though it wasn’t dirty.

His eyebrows are ungodly large, a couple of his teeth are crooked, and he’s mastered the art of lying so well he made me believe he doesn’t lie, when actually, the best liars are the ones who fool you by claiming they never lie at all.

(2:45 a.m.)

I never forgot what I like about Thomas.

I’m the liar, not him. I lied to Genevieve, to my friends, to everyone. But I’ve pushed my limit and here’s the truth: this is the most painfully confusing time in my life and he’s the first person who said all the right words to me and reminds me of the first days of summer where you leave home without jacket, and my favorite songs playing over and over. And now he may never talk to me again.