Chapter One

My parents proudly displayed a Reagan/Bush bumper sticker on their station wagon, which my dad caught me spitting on as I closed the trunk. Looking up from the pile of boxes I’d just thrown in, I found him staring at me from the side. Dad, with his jaw clenched and a look that permeated disgust for his only surviving son, who currently stood before him clad in Army boots and a cut-off KISS t-shirt. For him, the red bandana wrapped around my forehead suggested revolution, my exposed pierced nipple screamed something more sinister, according to God.

Though their denial of me was thick and obvious, my parents and I understood each other without question. As the middle child, the good one turned rotten somewhere between puberty and our move from Seattle, I glared back at Dad with ferocious optimism. A look that could kill also spoke very clearly about how much I hated him. Not just for forcing me to move away, but for everything he wanted me to be that I couldn’t give him. He held my gaze as I spat on the ground between us before opening the car door and heaved my way in next to my sister. His reflection in the side view mirror shook its head before pulling out a set of keys.

My mother uttered her favorite phrase, “Christ, what now?” She had a habit of whispering loud enough for everyone to feel her frustration. A glance shot at me from her place in the passenger seat, deliberately reapplying her lipstick in the visor mirror as dad clamored in. With a heavy hand, he started the car. She slipped her purse onto the floor staring sleepily into the street before us, reaching a lotioned hand over and resting it on his right arm. She always smelled of Evian and soap, a trait I secretly loved. The engine jumped and we rolled down the drive one last time, and though it was killing me not to cry I refused to look back. Instead, I began the road trip with a conversation starter while slipping on my headphones.

“Shoulda been Carter.”

Dad punched the dashboard and began to his usual tirade, red faced under that mustache. Mom took her glasses off to rub her temples. Charlotte groaned and rolled her eyes. The typical American Sunday afternoon.

I looked up at my favorite tree and smiled, thinking as it started to rain, I bet the boys in California fuck better anyway.

------

Dad claimed his insurance firm had transferred us to its Southern California location, but I think he just got sick of the thunderstorms. Either way, I came home from my shift at the restaurant one night to find him and ma sitting at the kitchen table. She was wearing shoes inside, which I found odd because she’d always said those little heels would tear up the linoleum. I almost walked in to warm up some the leftover casserole waiting for me in the oven, a new kind of ritual Mom began when I started working. Only when I saw Dad was crying did I halt in my tracks. She was holding his hand, solemnly staring at the woodgrain and covering her mouth. I’d have had less of a reaction if a serial killer stood before me holding a knife. The whole scene sent an uncomfortable chill down my spine. I’d never seen my father cry before; he was the type to consider any display of emotion outside of anger to be a sign of emasculation. As if to be subservient to one’s own humanity where also an admission of guilt. So I backtracked, climbed up the stairs instead to throw my apron in the washer. Charlotte was nowhere to be found, her own subliminal way of alerting me to follow suit by any means necessary. That night I favored sleeping in the aroma of sweat, pizza and beer, forgoing a desired shower. One rem-cycle of discontent is better than a fight, I thought, and shut my door to the inevitable, yet somehow always unexpected tomorrow.

He’d kicked his way into my older brother’s room before, so I wasn’t as surprised by a similar reaction when I told him to go fuck himself. Around two minutes prior, my sister and I were seated next to each other on the living room sofa, our parents opting to stand before us as they broke the news.

“No way.” My jaw dropped in defiance. “No fucking way!”

“Sam…” my mother cautioned.

“I’m not moving to a new school in another state my senior year of high school!”

“Yes, you are,” Dad chimed in. His face moved like a game of chess. Wet lips pursed in condescension, moving a white pawn into offense. Any time I saw that look I imagined his head exploding. Once again, it did not. I flew up to brush past them and retreat upstairs to get dressed.

“This is bullshit.”

Military reflexes prompted his snatching my arm, slowing down my dramatic departure. Physical contact of any kind outside of hugging was always the right thing to do if he wanted the proper reaction out of me. It gave him permission to hate me in a way he could disguise as logical parenting.

If our relationship were truly a board game of strategy, it had just been thrown violently off the table when I pulled back, hissing “Get the fuck off me, old man!” Bam. I’d never pegged my dad as a southpaw, but I’d been surprised before. At some point I slipped, making it to the stairs in time for a sprint on all fours up to my room. There was only time to glimpse the maniacal grimace of his face appearing outside when I slammed the door shut. Locking it only bought me about six seconds to spin around aimlessly before realizing I’d trapped myself in a cage. There wasn’t any time to consider climbing out a window, a preemptively useless strategy given the 30-foot drop to a concrete driveway below.

Splinters from the door he’d just kicked in shot out at my face before he did, knocking me to the floor where he pressed me into the carpet. In the foreground, the pale blue of Mom’s nightgown fluttered in various directions, briefly padding down the stairs telling Charlotte to go outside. So much movement for accomplishing nothing, winding up in her usual spot in the shadows. His breath, always hot with the stench of coffee spat into my ear.

“If you had anywhere else to go, I’d send ya there,” he growled. “Ya hear me!” There had to be a way out from underneath him, a strategy not yet considered. No way out presented itself under the weight of his strength. It was a power that paralyzed me, rendering even my voice unconscious. He had me weak. He had me useless. And still he wasn’t ready to ready to win yet.

“But until your eighteen, the law says you gotta live under my roof. So you’re movin’, boy. Yes, you are.”

With a fist of my blond curls, he pulled my head back until I let out the embarrassing scream he was looking for. Feminine. Terrified. Gay.

Bulky arms shook my skinny flesh and bones while he shrieked, “You’re gonna straighten up! Ya hear me!” His voice ripped like construction paper into a shrill battle cry. “Start acting like a fucking man!” Suddenly releasing my hair, my head involuntarily fell limp into the floor.“God knows I didn’t raise no queer.”

Checkmate.

A heavy knee that will have caused a bruise released off my back and my pinned hands came free as my father stood to watch me cry before walking out. I looked up at my mom, which set into motion the cruel nostalgia of bedtime stories, butterfly kisses and bubble-baths made with shampoo. Licking the metallic salt from my lips, I couldn’t help but wonder: Where has the time gone? And it was the way she shuffled down the hallway into the lighted bedroom of her marriage, defeated hands dangling at her sides, that told me she might’ve been thinking the same thing.

I allowed myself a few minutes to compose my grief on the floor, the only time and place I ever said goodbye to friends and all I had ever known, just long enough for a song. Charlotte was whimpering quietly from her own purple and pink ribboned room down the hall. And I wanted to apologize, tell her everything would be okay. Instead I practiced my ritual in times of need.

The headphones were under my bed in a pile, didn’t bother trying to untangle the cord. Just sat as close as I could to the Ventrola, slipped the jack in, and flipped my Bible open to my favorite place in Leviticus where the straight razor I used to bleed out my sins lay waiting.

Joni sang.

“The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in ’68 and he told me…”

The sharp line I drew next to the rest on my inner thigh lit my senses up like lightning splitting a tree. Another two times and I’d be able to exhale, fold both knees to my chest, and spiral into dreams too vial to remember when I opened my eyes.

There’s not a problem in the world Joni Mitchell can’t fix by morning.

------

Summer waned in its final days. Friends phoned but I always made myself out of range from the stretched cord. Isolation was letting me cultivate my fury in peace. Two weeks left, but I was already at the hinterland of becoming a stranger. Concentrating on the ease of separation took a lot of energy. When I wasn’t tossing shirts and hangers into boxes labeled “Kitchenware: fragile!” just to be a dick, I was usually taking a nap. One would have thought staying out of the way would have been enough to appease my father, but one would have thought wrong. Because being the offspring of a former military sergeant meant being subject to militant and often random bouts of extreme moodiness.

Sleeping in too late would garner the sheets being ripped off the bed from under me. Half dreaming with my eyes closed I thought I heard the end of the world happening from the next room.

“All the kid does is sleep, Maren! It ain’t right bein’ so lazy all the time, the boy needs to learn some respect!” Footsteps bounding across the hall. Fear mostly paralyzed me under the duvet until my crime was reconciled by force. “Get up!”

There would be a kick to my legs, vigorous rustling of the shoulders.

“Jesus, Dad! I’m up! I’m—”

Using the Lord’s name in vain was a good way to wind up on the floor. The man would be so close that his nose grazed my face as he howled. Spittle flecked angrily upon my cheek during the shrill, deafening speech I was receiving at point blank range. Something about respect, or the lack thereof. The lesson was always hard to interpret in the moment when fear of tinnitus had me distracted.

Trying to help around the house was also a futile experiment in minding my own business. Any time the garage door was open and the hood of the vehicle was stood up, I’d close my eyes in anxious pessimism, tip-toeing my way around the house until my presence would be discovered. Hiding in my room pretending to do homework, the voice would holler up the stairs. A determined “Get out here, boy! Finally gonna learn somethin’ useful for a change…” In spite of every instruction I could never identify one tool from the other, always forgot how to change the oil like he’d showed me.

Washing my hands was close to crossing the line into obsessive compulsive disorder, but I hated getting my hands dirty. Still, trash duty was my chore of choice. Can’t really take out the trash wrong, right? True to the old saying, if there was a will and a way, he’d find it. Glaring from the kitchen window, he’d snarl at my delicate toeing to the trash cans at the end of the drive, holding the overstuffed garbage back as far away from my person as possible, sometimes even dragging them. It was almost comical how fast he’d be out the door to scream at me to “pick that fucking bag up, boy.” I’d comply with an obligatory eye-roll in another direction. It’s not that I wanted to be disrespectful or lazy or even rebellious. It’s just that his anger played out like a procedural drama, and I felt like it was so typical, so ugly and pathetic. Respect wasn’t a significant priority on my list once I’d come to realize not everyone’s father behaved like mine did. He’d always had a beer in his hand, or a sticky brown liquor in a short glass. But it’s not that I feared him per se, either.

Dad wasn’t always screaming. But when he was, it just meant playtime would be outside that day. Riding bikes from once neighbor’s house to the next until the sun started setting across town. By that time Dad would be asleep on the couch, and mom would have the meatloaf on the table, and that’s how families were. Imagine my surprise becoming suddenly aware that some people’s parents didn’t even drink. I can’t tell you when that day was, but I know it happened. Just like how I was never afraid of dying until the day I told myself I wasn’t.

Little moments like that began to happen more and more, and that’s what my mother would call growing pains. At times it was painful, to become addicted to ideas the way I did. Eventually I’d begin to question everything, occurrences happening all the time. Growing up, I’d realized, was becoming sad in the middle of the day for no reason at all. The day I was helping Mom wrap dishware in newspaper it occurred to me that my father’s agenda had nothing to do with what I was, but what he considered me to be.

In a good mood and talkative, Dad bustled to and fro, preemptively hauling heavier objects to the front of the house—the faster the movers loaded their trucks, the less he’d have to tip. Sitting Indian-style on the linoleum, I forced my gaze anywhere other than up.

“Honey, you’re gonna throw your back out again. Just let those guys help you in the morning.” Mom was on her hands and knees duct taping towels around the legs of our dining room table, an heirloom inherited from her great grandmother that she polished constantly. She looked up long enough for Dad to kiss her on the cheek before folding another rag.

“I’m almost done anyway,” he announced, slapping his hands on the island. “Hey listen, so I thought since we’d have everything packed up by tonight we could just go out for pizza or something. How’s that sound?”

Mom, only paying half attention, said, “Whatever you want.”

I nodded, hurriedly finding a cabinet of pans to be interested in.

“What’re you stewing about, boy?”

My hands fell flat on something cast iron.

“My name isn’t boy.”

Nobody spoke. A silent shockwave muted the house, leaving only the washing machine upstairs to clink and whir into a rinse cycle. I didn’t turn around or even bother to feel the shock of adrenaline push through my nerves. I’m used to it, I thought, and returned to my duty. A deep, obvious inhale came from under the table. Mom trying to break the spell of tepid uncertainty. I think everyone’s surprise he just walked away, but that moment provided unexpected information I’d ruminate on for years to come.

It took only a moment that day to consider a memory from a few years before. Maybe it was the quiet, or the way I could feel dad’s eyes staring daggers into my head, but I immediately descended into the buried memory of a few years before. My older brother’s birthday, a chilly February afternoon spent layered in sweaters and quietly treating Allan to a day of whatever he wanted to do that didn’t involve his loud friends and actually enjoying himself.

A bronze bell clanged against the glass door as we filed into the record store, stripping off scarves and gloves layered too heavily for 50-degree weather.

Allan was first to set off the chain reaction.

“Ma, will you hold my coat while I look around?”

“Ooh, can you hold mine too?” Charlotte excitedly held out her pink bundle of goose down before Mom could respond with a sigh.

She ended up sitting on a vinyl armchair in the corner drinking coffee, unbothered by passersby too busy racing home to their stereos. The four of us dispersed, Dad following Charlotte from a respectful distance to let her feel a hint of independence. The rock music Allen and his friends enjoyed listening to scared me at first, but he’d insisted I listen to it so I could learn what real music was like. But also to tell me to stay out of his room when he wasn’t there.

I had always been fonder of the stuff Mom and I would listen to when we were home alone. The kind of endless days with no agenda, home sick from school or turning the volume way up to clean the house. I’d have fun exploring the artwork of various artists she’d stashed away in a hallway closet. Olivia Newton-John filled the halls, Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand, Diana Ross—all the voices who’d helped shape my mother into a woman that now only remind her of a time before Better Homes & Gardens.

Allan was already checking out, dropping anchor on a Simon & Garfunkel greatest hits album he didn’t need. My fingers flipped past hundreds of records, nameless faces I’d not yet have the privilege of knowing yet. But there was a name I did know, and I snatched it from its place on the shelve to show my dad, holding it out with both hands.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Sam.”

“Daddy, can I get this?”

He turned with raised eyebrows to find Carly Simon staring back at him and he froze, looking from the vinyl, to me, and then to the ground.

“Put that back.” He ordered. “Find somethin’ that’s not for girls.”

Locking eyes with my mother who was now staring at us like a hawk, he’d ordered something to her as well. As she sighed, his fingers tapped rapidly against a leg and I could tell I’d done something wrong. Confused, I put the record away and walked over to a stack labeled “Elvis.”

Something for boys, I thought.

Before my fingers even reached the plastic lining, I was being grabbed by the arm, where my Dad twisted sharply upward causing me to let out a surprised yelp. My toes grazed the grimy black and white tiles as I was whisked out the door. I watched from the backseat at his nostrils flared over heaving chest. We waited together in the cold for the others to blunder out, Mom gesturing something I instinctively knew as a sign to remain quiet until we got to the theater.

That night, after pizza and breadsticks across the street, we were to see “The Shooter.” Dad made the choice himself in spite of Allen’s birthday, never one to pass up the opportunity to see John Wayne. The Majestic had a calming quality for me that always made me feel safe. It gave us something to look forward to on weekends, a conversation starter on the bus to school the following Monday. I liked being in a room with all those other people, sharing the same experience at the same time. It made me feel like I was a part of the moment, somehow. I’d come to learn that even when I was alone, it wouldn’t be for long. My friends would show up without fail on the silver screen, and always with something new to say when the velvet curtains parted.

Standing outside the box office, young couples chattered indistinctly, jumping in and out of the revolving doors, a gateway to the foyer where the scent of buttered popcorn forever stained the gold wallpaper with atmosphere. Ticket stubs and candy wrappers littered the floors, where no one looked unhappy to be exactly where they were. I stared up at the movie posters glowing through their lighted frames, wide-eyed and longing to follow the crowd into “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Westerns were always so boring to me. How many ways could cowboys eat beans in the dirt or shoot at Indians in their territory before it became the same story every time? A silver lining, I thought, was at least this one had Lauren Bacall. An usher shuffled us past the barricade, and there wasn’t much time left for one last look.

Ellen Burstyn is so pretty.

But I didn’t say that.

------

The last room to be packed was Allen’s, who couldn’t do it himself from his place under the headstone. I never saw Dad go in there, but once every few months I’d see Mom sitting on the floor next to his bed, only early in the morning on my way to fill a bowl with cereal. His tags would be clutched in one hand while the other gripped a section of blonde curls atop her head.

Daylight gleamed from the space under his closed door. His door was always closed. The handle was cold as I turned it, pushing the door open with my fingertips. A pile of flat boxes lay against the wall outside, so I brought them in along with the masking tape around my wrist. There was never a room so still. Flecks of dust reflected light against the window’s backdrop of our front yard. I held my breath walking in to look at the scene he woke up to every day before it happened. Not much to see outside of an average, beautiful day complete with the always freshly-mown yard, rose bushes lining the curb; and Charlotte, who’d been mostly absent from the day’s activities, sitting motionless in the tire swing staring into the street.

------

There could’ve been worse places to move, I had to admit. The sun was brighter here, the sky more open than the one we left behind. At least we were still coastal. I practically fell out of the wagon eager to stretch my legs. A claustrophobic twenty-hour drive with my family separated between one night at a honky-tonk motel would render anyone adaptable, so by the time I looked up at the mission s clay tiles rippling across the roof of our new house I felt a sense of hopeful disposition pulling my lips into a smile.

Inside, the house smelled of new paint, a temporary sensation that I loved. And there was no carpet on the first floor, just creamy tile glossing through the rooms like polished sand. Ascending the staircase to wander about the second floor, I tried putting on an air or boredom to mask my eagerness. Needed to stake my claim on a good bedroom. From below, my mother tsk-tsked and crossed her arms, making a series of 360 degree turns before muttering to no one in particular.

“Well, I just wish I’d’ve known. We’re gonna have to get so many rugs. Oh…”

My hand glossed over the railing and I let out a silent laugh. Nothing looked like it had been touched before, it was all a clean slate primed for future ghosts. The first room, the biggest, had a private bathroom with attached terrace, and would therefore go to parents.

It doesn’t matter, I thought. Just find the one that’s furthest away.

To my surprise, the back bedroom had a nice set of French doors opening to a Juliet balcony with a view of a gated backyard. There was a little coach house behind an in-ground swimming pool. “Mine,”I declared, twisting the glass knob to let in the salty breeze. Our driveway sounded like a warzone after the truck arrived. Dad didn’t waste any time to bark out orders to the beleaguered Mexicans hauling our precious memories through narrow doorways.

“No, hold on. You gotta turn it this way. This way!”

There was no doubt in my mind Dad was already sweating, and probably ready to accuse at least one of the hired help of theft before day’s end. I closed the doors to retain any last moments of unrequited peace and lay in the center of the floor, staring up at the speckled ceiling. A darkly stained fan whirred overhead, and I watched in mesmerized introspection until the blades took on the illusion of being sedentary. From what I assumed to be the living room, the blunt sound of a punch to the house’s interior startled me into reality. For god’s sake, someone dropped something. Probably their end of a couch. Muttering a small prayer, I heard the bounding footsteps of a man aching to scream at someone.

“Would you be dropping shit if this were yours? Huh?”

There it is.

Then padding up the stairs.

“The hell is he? Get out here, boy!”

A door slammed. I ran my fingers along the fresh carpet, reading invisible brail through the fibers.

My door swung open and hit the wall. The man was drenched in sweat, from the heat or his accelerated blood pressure, or both. He bared his teeth under that ugly mustache, nostrils flared, lips thrust out in deliberate agitation. Practically breathless, he pointed at me with callused finger.

“If you don’t get your ass downstairs—" He took a moment to seal his mouth in a hard line for effect, head tilted with an eye-bulging glare. “I’m gonna put you down there myself. And I guarantee you’re not gonna like it.”

“Okay.”

He crossed the room in an instant, ripping my shirt as he pulled me up by its collar.

“I said now!” And like the ragdolls he’d caught me playing with 10 years prior, he thrust my desponded body into a guardrail, where I slipped and pinballed my way from wall to stairs to floor.

A worker dropped a box in the kitchen to assist me, which is more than I can say for my mother who said something about it being too early for a migraine.

“¿Estás bien, papi?”

“I’m fine. Yeah, thank you. Um, muchas gracias, senor.”

The man nodded and back away, everyone turned to look up at my dad, high on his pedestal of judgement: Mexicans, gay son, all in one room. Might as well be hell.

“Get back to work.”

Making his own graceless descent to the foyer, he grabbed my arm and let me outside. This time he pointed to the truck.

“I want that empty before dark,” he said, and walked away.

Two of the workers came back outside shaking their heads.

“Gente blanca loca,” one said climbing up to grab a vanity mirror. The other laughed gripping his gloves around the heavily wrapped glass.

“Siempre!” he replied, and transferred it to me. A human assembly line. Holding the mirror suddenly made me go gold, the blood drained from my face and I could feel the tears pushing willfully against my thoughts. Sometimes all I wanted was to cry in front of a stranger.

The man glanced over the box he’d been handed and sighed.

“Esta bien, papi,” he whispered. “It’s okay. Back to work and is done.”

That’s right, I nodded. Is done.

The day carried on, and with no more yelling. But anxiety was tangible, so no one talked much either. Order had been restored by the man of the house. And under his instruction every room was filled with cardboard and nonsense just an hour after sundown, which he held against the workers when it came time to payout and tip: “I said before sundown, fellas. Maybe next time you be dropping people’s furniture, either.”

Four men griped in Spanish while the truck was loaded with plastic and blankets and dollies, leaving no trace of their kind behind as white neighbors, young and old, stood in windows and on porches to guide them down the street and into the dark where they no longer mattered. Life went back to normal, it seemed, though I had no context for life in this corner of California. But as I sat outside on the curb watching shapes move to and fro in their own white houses, I searched for any sign of warmth amid the ordinary. As predicted, families satisfied into safety with the aliens finally gone were free to put on slippers to settle in for the local news or toss back a few cold ones as dinner barbecued in a manicured backyard. The Millers and the Browns and the Goldbergs and the Johnsons were allowed to let their guard down. Behind me, the smell of my own dinner through open windows told me the day was almost over and Mom was currently distributing Chinese takeout onto paper plates. Though I was very hungry, I refused to get up, wanting only the two beers I secreted into a box of my clothes from a case hidden in the movers’ front seat.

Stall. Stall as long as you can. It’s more dangerous in there than out here.

I found myself looking up to ponder the stars, seeking out the moon where I belonged. Where I may as well have been. Stray thoughts circling down the cortex of my brain like a garbage disposal. Confirming my uncertainties about how it all would go, pangs of regret about something I said to someone wo didn’t deserve it, the face of a man who didn’t exist yet. The one who would hold me up to the highest standard of beauty, running his fingers through my hair while he whispers into my ear, “Welcome home.”

------

Just one more for the road. Just one more.

My straight razor, and my Bible for that matter, had somehow gotten lost during the move. I couldn’t figure out how such a delicate friend could be misplaced in the chaos. One would have thought I’d take careful note of its whereabouts while packing

With the rest of your bedside table junk, right next to your yearbook. It’s fine.

However, it was neither right next to my yearbook, nor was it fine. Two dilemmas were presented to me. The first—what if someone found it and, God forbid, tried to read it, and gasp at the shock of slicing their finger open. The second, and least trivial—I was jonesing for a treatment really fucking bad.

Something had to be done about the Bible, but cross the bridge, ya know? My backup plan relied heavily on the women of the house. Their disposable razors were always stashed away in the Red cupboard behind a mountain of cardboard tampons and sanitary napkins. I’d done it before, snapped off the outer hinges to release the little blades. If no one was home I tried to be responsible and boil them before disguising them in a towel en route to the bathroom. But today proved inopportune. The first day at a new school. Monday morning was spent annoying my parents playing “Another Brick In the Wall” on repeat. The bus was expected to appear at 8:15, so I needed to act quick.

Laying out the darkest towel I could find on the bathroom floor and started the shower. Which would I do first? Jerk off or bleed? Either option was exciting and my erection bounced as I pulled my underwear off. Cut one. Stroke. Cut two. Keep stroking. One more. I’m getting close. No more, you’ve got to clean up. Eruption up to my chest. Ready to start my day.

I showered fast under a hot spray then sat on the edge of the tub. Disposing the razor is easy, just wrap in tissue and push to the bottom of the can. The big Band Aids were in the wicker basket under the sink, where I put them our first night here. Tear the wrappers into small pieces, flush. Fling the plastic applicators in the can, no one would bother to do the math.

“Sam, you’ve got 10 minutes! Hurry up, honey!”

Slow down, Mom.

There, mission completed. Ready for clothes. The dirty denim shorts I like, denim vest with the buttons, big chain with the Master lock for my neck, stainless steel rings from the mall, kiosk, black nail polish from my sister, jock strap hidden until the bus then pulled up past my waist, whatever for shoes. My reflection in the mirror called me a faggot before I could even think it. And I suddenly felt naked walking into the kitchen where Dad was reading the news, Mom pouring more coffee.

“It’s your first day, don’t you think you should take a little more pride in your appearance.”

Dad didn’t even look up and the words fell out more as a statement than a question, but I admired his commitment to feeling endlessly disenchanted. Mom chimed in before I could retaliate by telling me to get her purse from the coatrack in the doorway. Fumbling for small bills crumpled somewhere in the finite space, which never failed to become a black hole in the hands of my mother, she seemed to genuinely wish me a good day at school.

“Here’s a five, honey, and don’t spend it on anythingexcept for food. Ya dig?”

I offered a perplexed version of a smile. We both laughed as she folded the money into my hands with a gentle pat.

“Yes, I dig. Just please never say that again.”

She winked and turned to plate some eggs. Occasionally my Mom had a master sense of humor, but the spell never seemed to last beyond sunset. Tomorrow she’d be just as likely to forget I was even there. A shadow swept over my smile as the stairway suddenly took on a serious quality. Without explanation I felt drained of whatever joy the moment with my Mom had given me. All that remained was a disarming view of the stairs, the sun falling into sharp geometric shapes across the walls, and the overwhelming urge to being sobbing.

One more. Just one more.

No. I don’t have time.

You’ll be quick! You already know where the razor is. Just do it. You’re gonna regret it all day if you don’t.

Fuck!

The sprint up the stairs would draw attention. Beads of sweat leaked from my forehead as I dug through the garbage. There! I un-wadded the tissue and dropped my shorts. There was no time for a bandage, I’d just bleed into my underwear. The cut would have to be on the side, near my buttocks. So much space had already been used up, how did that happen? Pressing down, the edge unzipped my flesh with a glorious sigh. Images flashed before my eyes. A burner on a gas stove igniting in flame. Wheels of a train grinding against steel tracks sending sparks flying. Finally, the sign of relief I’d been looking for slipped quietly from mouth. The world was three-dimensional again. Mopping up the blood with tissue, I sensed her in my peripherals. My mother had been standing motionless in the frame, hand still on the knob. Guess I was too busy to notice her opening the door.

Horror dilated her eyes wide around a face pale as a ghost. Looking from the bloody treatment of my body to the damage it caused in real life made my system flush hot with shame, then anger. She cleared her throat with a tsk.

“The um… The bus is outside waiting. Sam—”

“Can I get a little fucking privacy, please?” I seethed. “Ya dig?”

Whatever shock she felt at the sight of me was swallowed by routine iciness, sagging into a complexion telling me she’d had enough. The bus honked from the street and she closed the door with a nod. Charlotte called up from the entry way, having been dressed and ready since dawn.

“It’s here! Hurry up!”

Ignoring her plea, I took my time walking down the stairs. From his place in the driver’s seat, a man in a tattered Dickies jumpsuit continued to blare his horn and yelled from behind an unruly beard, undoubtedly reeking of cheap beer.

“Get out here, kid. Or you’re walkin’!”

Feeling defeated, I dragged my feet outside. I didn’t bother to shut the door or consider shrugging on my backpack, opting instead to leave it in the hall. At this point I was bound and determined to have a ruined day, and there was no turning back. Every class would be an experiment in preparedness and hard knocks. “Not a good way to start off in a new school, Mr. Kessler. Have a seat next to so-and-so and copy their notes after class.” Standard procedure directed from grizzled teachers ready for retirement. That’s probably how it would go.

By the time the bus reached the school, my bare legs were stuck to the ripped green vinyl seats. Dried blood matted my shorts to my thigh, which ripped the would open again as I stood up to fall in line with all the other petulant bricks. Students littered the courtyard, dressed to impress for initiation into a new year. Charlotte stuck close to me as we fishtailed our way through the vibrating buzz of summer gossip and rehashed tales of vacations in the Catskills.

Inside, the hallways were antiseptic from being hollow all summer. Built in shelves displayed remnants of years past behind glass encasements. Class portraits in black and white were scattered about randomly and linear among knickknacks, batons, tassels and flags, cut-out stars wrapped in tinfoil. We glided silently along the illuminated shelves, and though neither of us said it, I’m confident we were thinking the same thing. This would be us someday. Just a picture on these walls, surrounded by people we hardly knew. And a thousand miles away, our absence closed up like an open wound. The void once raw and painful would fill up with new experiences and friendships and future histories that would no longer mention our names. The friends we’d built ourselves into were strangers now, new holograms on Mars jettisoned into the atmosphere where we would wander, eyes cast forward past unfamiliar faces sizing us up. Chemicals burned under our skulls reminding us to appear confident and hide our fear. Stress on this inside. Don’t let them see you kneeling down begging for kindness in the dark. The animals, while curious, are also hungry.

Finally, a bell rang violently, defibrillating the campus into a moving circulatory system. The school year had officially awakened. Teenagers moved into the bowels like a stampede as Charlotte and I gave each other one last look.

“Meet me here after your last class, ok?”

I nodded.

“Here goes nothing,” she sighed. Her eyes looked to me for a word of encouragement, and I ashamed that I couldn’t share her optimism.

I nodded again.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

In Seattle, the leaves had changed and were beginning to fall. But in California, the sun was blinding from every direction.

The morning was passing unremarkably. As instructed by the schedule mailed to us by the school board, our first step on the itinerary was to find the designated homeroom. Students were segmented by class, last names in alphabetical order. I meandered back and forth searching for my assigned place in this world. That’s when he entered my life for the first time. Two football players jostled each other, stumbling out of a restroom. Then they saw me too. I flushed at the idea of what I must have looked like, examining the schedule close to my face and spinning in circles while determining irrelevant room numbers.

On his left was a tall, skinny ginger speckled with acne who ignored me. “Alright, dude, I gotta motor. Mr. D. is gonna hand my ass to me. Guess the bulldog still hasn’t been putting out!” The other boy chuckled lightly, watching as his friend ran past me holding a bouquet of composition papers and a text book.

“See you at practice, Stevie.”

I didn’t move until he looked back at me, his face retaining a smile that visibly changed in context. Of course he couldn’t know who I was, but he regarded me in such a way that it made me think he’d heard of me. It wasn’t rational, the place I’d fallen into at the sight of him.

“Hi,” he said with a nod. “You look lost.”

I finally arrived 10 minutes late. Room 316 had already closed its heavy door, which I struggled endlessly to open until a pear-shaped woman with horn-rimmed glasses finally unlocked it. Her chubby hands pushed the door open to reveal my agitated stance from the hallway, chest heaving in annoyance.

The bitch looked like a Sunday school teacher, and not only for the gold cross dangling in its own pool of sweat between the hollow of her neck.

“Can I help you?” she asked, wearing a condescending and heavily practiced look of confusion. She crossed her arms and said something ridiculous about interrupting her class. From the look of it, at least what I could surmise from a quick glance at the 20-or-so pairs of eyes staring back at me, my presence came as more of an intriguing relief than an interruption.

Despite my best effort, I wasn’t in the mood to smile or apologize. I opted for a flat, “Couldn’t find the room,” expecting that to be enough.

“And your name is, then?”

“Sam Kessler. Where should I sit.”

“You’re the transfer, then. Ok. Well, you’ve missed your chance to introduce yourself and make a decent first impression…”

I knew it.

“This homeroom is a one-time orientation formality, the duration of which you may listen to from the hallway. I don’t allow tardiness; and class, if any of you choose to be late from here on out, you’ll just have to take that up with the truancy officer. Now, where was I?” She pulled at the amber beaded chain hanging from her spectacle. “Oh, yes,” she declared turning again to face my hooded glare. “And Mr. Kessler, my name is Mrs. Anita Drake. I believe you’ll be seeing me later today for Economics. Pleasure to meet you, and welcome to your senior year.”

Orientation was preceded by a pep rally. A new sensation had bubbled up through my nervous system—optimism I hadn’t felt in months. The entirety of the previous period, sitting Indian-style on the floor in the hall, was spent picturing him right across from me on the adjacent wall. His words, our brief conversation, repeating in layers like a song stuck in my head. He appeared to me all at once, and in a kaleidoscope of glittering pieces. Lightning striking the same place in my chest a thousand times over. Black hair slicked back. Stubble peppering his chin and neck. Eyes that crinkled at the edges, kind and soft like new Virginia bluebells. Crooked teeth crowded inside a heart-shaped smile. Cigarettes and musk emanated subliminally from his letterman’s jacket, which he must have been trying to mask with Double-Mint gum.

Wow.

“I’m Leon,” he said offering out his hand. I shook it deliberately, giving my attention to his short nails and palms callused from lifting weights. “And you must be new here.”

I coughed out my name, swallowing hard.

“I’m Sam. Kessler. I just transferred here from Seattle.”

Insecurity was palpable in my tone and getting worse by the second, fueled by an obvious attempt at pretending my face didn’t just turn beet red.

“And, um, I can’t seem to find my fucking homeroom to save my life.”

“I like your chain.”

“Mm,” I nodded without actually hearing him. “What? Sorry, I’m kind of off today.”

I laughed, hoping he’d find my misplaced attention amusing.

“The chain around your neck. I have one like it, but my Aunt makes me take it off when I leave the house. As if I can’t just put it on anywhere else. She says it doesn’t look ‘respectable.’” He punctuated the word in quotation marks with his fingers. “But I think that’s just her subtle way of saying I look like a fag.”

My first instinct was to laugh, at the very least as a defense mechanism. He was beautiful, but he was also a jock. Jocks don’t like fags. I bit my lip and backed away, looking around for an exit strategy. But if I ducked into the nearest classroom, I’d look like an idiot and still end up getting into a fight after school by the flagpole. I swelled with relief as he apologized without missing a beat.

“Sorry! I didn’t mean that. I know I come off a little faggy myself sometimes, but I don’t hate it. I mean, I figured—You like boys, right?”

I nodded.

“Cool, cool… Well if anybody starts fucking with you let me know, and I’ll take care of it.” He smiled again, which meant I couldn’t breathe. “So uh, let’s see what your damage is.” He took the paper from my hands and let out a groan. “Aw, fuck! You’ve got the bulldog. Mrs. Drake is a real bitch, and she hates everyone. Especially her husband, and he’s almost just as bad. But nothing a little late night stimulation can fix, in my opinion. She’s probably got a block of concrete where a pussy should be.”

This guy’s funny, I thought. Then preceded to laugh a little too loud like a girl stroking a boy’s ego. But I just couldn’t figure him out, and I liked that too. Nothing about him made any sense. Maybe he was just nice. Maybe he was a lot of things. Whatever he was, I already knew I’d latched onto him and didn’t want to let him go. People were always so predictable. After a while everyone just started to look the same. No faces, just bodies shuffling things around until all the future had to offer them was a labyrinth of identical walls. I expected a different future. I preferred water to earth, something tangible but elusive. That’s what they call attraction, I suppose. Wanting something close enough to touch that might as well be a million miles away.

“You’re on the next floor up, I’ll take you there.”

He put his arm around my shoulder. Touch, safety. I looked up at him and melted into his side, listening to him talk as we climbed the stairs. The entire time I asked myself, who was this guy that managed to grant me a few moments of grace while I scraped the bottom of the barrel. People aren’t nice like this, right? They just aren’t. But he is. And how is this possible? After he escorted me to the right place, my thoughts ran wild with anticipation, but also doubt. Thinking at two extremes had me strung out, asking myself what wouldn’t I do for this beautiful creature I don’t even know? Or maybe we’d never actually talk again—he’s probably like this with everybody. He’s probably a quarterback, the homecoming king. I’ll get lost in the water, just another wave in the moving current.

“Here you go!” he beamed, slapping a high-five on the wall and leaning into a contrapposto. I could’ve looked at that shape forever. “Best of luck in there, and don’t put up with her shit. I’ll probably see you soon in a class later.”

“Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you again for your help. I have a habit of getting lost a lot, so don’t get used to it.”

“I’ve got you, man!” he said patting my shoulder, as close to a reaction I could have asked for. But I was only half joking. There was always an opportunity to lose your way when the right boy was somewhere nearby. He sauntered over to the grim-looking stairwell. Before he disappeared he turned around and quickly sized me up.

“Hey,” he whispered

“What?”

“It’s all good. And I’m really glad I got to meet you.”

“I’m glad too, buster.”

Slip of the tongue, I thought, and turned red again. Buster? Where did that come from? But I couldn’t help smiling. Leon cocked his head and grinned back, before lighting up with that toothy smile. I was in a tailspin of confusion. Nothing about this scenario seemed real. Everything was too good to be true, but I suppressed those thoughts in the moment. This moment, I remember, felt like love. The ideal kind of perfection that happens when you least expect it, when you’re not asking for it. But he was right there in front of me, the reason so many broken-hearted songs passed through the radio. In that moment I promised myself this wouldn’t be the last time. A happiness like this brief interaction meant possibility. There was no way I could give that up.

“Buster, I like that.” He nodded in approval. “I think you’ve got the fever. Yeah, that’s what I think.” With that he turned and jogged down the steps, calling out one last time, “See you soon, buster!”

Don’t let it go, carry him around. Don’t let this feeling slip away.

Leon was right, Drake did have the personality of a heavy brick. Maybe I was better off in the hall anyway. Some girls in the back of the class giggled suspiciously in my direction, covering their mouths. Our instructor commanded order of the room, spitting out page numbers in the syllabus which in apathetic monotone would be read in its entirety by the final bell. Hovering over the East window looking back at me was a sign I’d read many times before:

TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

“We’ll see,” I blurted, sliding down the wall to my assigned seat on the floor.

Leon.

Leon.

Leon…

I repeated his name silently as if under a spell.

I’ve got the fever? I wonder what he meant by that.