Eric doesn’t taunt me like he usually does whenever Mom or Dad or my cousins hold me back from fighting him. He shrugs. “I’m only trying to help, freak.”

Freak. Freak. Freak. Freak.

(AGE TEN)

Mom bought us the newest PlayStation for Christmas, plus a discounted X-Men game because she had a little extra money left over. We’re playing and Eric chooses Wolverine because he likes playing as the main characters. He calls himself a “one-man army” since he’s always good with them. I choose Jean Grey because she can transform into Dark Phoenix and becomes extra powerful. She has this really cool flight-and-fire trick I saw in the video’s game demo at the store.

“Stop choosing the girl characters! Be a boy!”

I choose Cyclops instead.

(AGE ELEVEN)

The superintendent brings his wrench out at 11:00 a.m. like every summer and jerks open the fire hydrant. Jets of water blast free and some kids stop to take off their shirts while others charge straight in to cool down.

Brendan takes his shirt off.

He’s been my best friend since first grade and I see him all the time but I don’t stop looking at him until Baby Freddy tells me we’re playing tag and I’m it. I only chase after Brendan, like a magnet. When I finally catch him, I tag him on his bare shoulder, and my hand stays there a little longer than it needs to.

Brendan finally comes back from visiting his family in North Carolina this weekend and I’m so excited. While he was gone, I really got into comic books to pass the time that would’ve been spent playing with him. I even draw one just for him.

It’s a Pokémon comic with its pictures colored in by pens. There are a lot of eraser streaks from my outlining stage but he won’t care. It’s about Brendan becoming a Pokémon master and shows how unstoppable he is throughout all his gym battles.

I hope he likes it.

(AGE TWELVE)

Mrs. Olivia taught the class about Shakespeare and all his plays today.

I’m on the couch next to Dad while he watches basketball with Eric. The game is really boring. Since learning about theater and our school’s drama club, I want to become an actor who will star in really cool action movies like Scorpius Hawthorne with sword fights and magical battles. I would rather watch movies than a bunch of sweaty guys trying to put a ball through a hoop so I can study how to be an actor, especially since so much has changed since Shakespeare was alive. (If he was ever really alive. I think he might be made up, like Santa and Jesus but grown-ups tell you he’s real.)

“Dad, did you know that men used to play the roles of women in Shakespeare’s plays? That’s pretty funny, right?”

Dad turns away from the game for the first time all night. “You’re a boy,” he says. “Don’t ever act like a girl.”

(AGE THIRTEEN)

Brendan runs up to me. “Yo! Yo! I just got my first blow job!”

I get a little heated. I’m just surprised, you know. “Whoa. Awesome. From who?”

“Some girl who’s friends with Kenneth and Kyle. She thinks Kyle is cuter because he’s coming into his mustache, but I talked a good game and got her into my pants. I am a god!”

I pat his back. “Good job, dude. Good job.”

Brendan sees Baby Freddy coming out of our building with his baseball equipment. “Hold up, let me go tell that little shit.” Brendan runs off and I feel a little sick.

(AGE FIFTEEN)

There’s definitely something going on between us: we spend all of Earth Science passing illustrated notes back and forth instead of listening to Ms. O mispronounce minerals with her thick Puerto Rican accent; we always come up with bullshit excuses to keep hanging out after school; we trade stories at this pretty cool chicken spot; we go to the movies and throw candy and chocolate into our buckets of popcorn; we rest our arms next to each other’s. Mostly we play around a lot in the park, just the two of us, like a secret. A secret we suck at hiding because everyone already suspects we’re dating, but I’m still pretty damn shocked when I hear: “You should be my boyfriend.”

I gotta admit, I thought I was doomed to a life of hookups like Brendan and Skinny-Dave. Or more like Baby Freddy who always chases and never catches anything. I never thought someone would give me the hand-holding treatment. This must mean that I was wrong about everything I thought about myself. I scoot a little closer to Genevieve on the park bench. I squeeze her hand and say, “Sure. I’ll give being your boyfriend a shot.”

I don’t understand.

It all felt so right in that moment I agreed to date her. I was the straightest guy I knew, but when I got home that night, I was still thinking about other guys. Not Brendan anymore; I got turned off from him after hearing him talk about sleeping with girls as conquests. No, I think about the dudes I see undress in the locker room at school, the ones sitting across from me on the bus staring at nothing and likely thinking about their normal crushes.

I don’t think about Genevieve. She’s staring up at me now like I’m all she thinks about, like I should be inching toward her lips, as she is mine. I go for it, to prove myself wrong. I turn at the last second and we bump heads.

“Ow!” Genevieve laughs. “Watch it, dumb-idiot.”

“Sorry.” I rub my forehead.

“Take two?”

I nod and she jokingly backs away as if she were in danger of another head-butt. She pulls me toward her and when she turns left, I freak out and turn left too and we hit each other again. Maybe this time she’ll take it as a message from the universe that I’m the wrong boy to be kissing.

I know I can’t possibly be fooling her, or anyone, and that’s my problem—without her, I definitely won’t be fooling anyone. I pull her to me, and this time I get it right, and when it’s done I laugh, which probably wouldn’t make anyone feel good. But Genevieve smiles—and then punches me in the arm.

“I suspect I’ll be hitting you a lot.”

(AGE SIXTEEN—OCTOBER, NINE MONTHS AGO)

I’m in the school library rereading Scorpius Hawthorne and the Legion of the Dragon when I catch him looking at me from the fantasy section. Collin Vaughn is another junior, and he’s what I like to call an almost-jock: he hasn’t been able to get on the basketball team since freshman year but acts superior anyway during gym class.

Collin walks over with two books and pulls out the chair across from me. “Cool if I sit?”

“Cool,” I say. “I see you reading these fantasy books and comics a lot during class and lunch.” His brown eyes wander to my Scorpius Hawthorne book. “Are these any good?” He slides over The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Hobbit.