But they didn’t see. They refused to see. All they could wrap their minds around was the fact of him leaving, not the why.

  “Not this time, Ryan,” his mom decided. “Not tonight. We can talk about next weekend.”

  Ryan reached for the doorknob again.

  “No,” he told them. “I made a date, and I am keeping that date. Avery is going to be waiting for me. I have to go.”

  In response, his father deployed his most threatening voice. “Don’t you dare walk out that door.”

  Ryan’s response to that voice is always like an allergic reaction. Instant irritation. Immediate inflammation.

  “Or what?” he taunted. “You’ll make my life miserable? Well, guess what—you’ve already aced that one! You know me about as well as this door knows me. But you know what? I like the door more. Because watch—the door’s going to let me leave.”

  He could sense his father about to jump forward. But Ryan was quicker than that. He was quicker as he got through the door and slammed it behind him. He was quicker as he got in his truck and sped out of the driveway. The radio was already primed to blast; he couldn’t hear what, if anything, his parents were yelling after him.

  He got in his truck and drove.

  He told himself he’d go see Avery, and deal with the rest of it later.

  * * *

  —

  When he got home, the door was bolted. He didn’t have the key to unlock it.

  He checked his texts. There was one from his mom, telling him to ring the bell.

  So they weren’t locking him out. They just wanted him to have to wake them up to get back in. They probably had their lecture waiting on index cards.

  He considered sleeping in his truck. But he had work the next day. He needed sleep. He needed to shower.

  What he didn’t need was that lecture.

  When they opened the door, he pushed right through. They weren’t expecting that. He ran to his room, locked the door. His father pounded. They told him he was acting like a baby. Exact words: like a baby. But eventually they were the ones who wore themselves out.

  Ryan knew they weren’t going to knock down the door. He knew he was safe.

  But he still slept with his car keys under his pillow and got out of there before they woke up.

  * * *

  —

  Now he’s at work, a slow Sunday morning at the grocery. Avery is texting to see how he’s doing. He tells the truth, that he had to sneak out of his own house to avoid a blowup.

  Your blowup or theirs? Avery asks.

  Unclear, Ryan replies.

  Luckily Ryan doesn’t have checkout duty today, just stocking the shelves. He knows he’s not supposed to look at his phone while he’s doing this, but the Sunday manager doesn’t really mind as long as the work gets done.

  Hey, boy, Avery texts. What U stockin’?

  Cans of tomato soup.

  Mmmm. Savory.

  Cups of Greek yogurt.

  Stir it up, boy. STIR IT UP.

  Boxes of Cheez-Its.

  Rub off all over my fingers.

  There are ten- or fifteen-minute intervals between these exchanges, but whenever Ryan switches an aisle and taps out an update, Avery has a response in seconds.

  Shouldn’t you be studying? Ryan asks before opening a box of cinnamon swirl loaves.

  I am. The unpacking habits of the blue-haired grocery worker. This is AP-level stuff. (A&P-level?)

  Seriously. It’s okay if you need to go.

  Going is the last thing I need, thankyouverymuch.

  Strangely, this sentence hits Ryan sideways, not in the way it was meant. He imagines Avery in his bedroom, his parents bringing him snacks and cheering him on. Of course Avery has no need for going. Of course he’s happy where he is.

  This is the imbalance. Avery is making Ryan happy, but he’s the only thing making Ryan happy. Avery has plenty of other things to make him happy.

  Still, that’s not a reason to stop the conversation.

  Cinnamon swirl bread.

  It doesn’t take three seconds before Avery replies, Slather me in cream cheese and roll me up.

  Ryan smiles, and also wishes he didn’t have to feel so grateful for the smile.

  * * *

  —

  He texts his mom to say he won’t be home for dinner. She texts back to thank him for letting her know. He works late, then grabs some food at McDonald’s. There aren’t any texts from Avery because, Ryan’s sure, he’s having dinner with his parents.

  The problem with McDonald’s is that he’s done with dinner in ten minutes. He thinks about going to see a movie or maybe dropping by Aunt Caitlin’s. But he’s also sleepy and doesn’t want to be a zombie in school tomorrow.

  So he heads home. The benefit is that his parents are eating in the kitchen when he comes in.

  “I’m going to bed!” he yells as he rushes up the stairs.

  He hears a chair pushed back from the table, then his mom saying, “Just let him go.”

  He locks the door again. Puts his car keys under his pillow. Sits in bed and tries to read.

  His phone comes alive next to him. Avery, finally free.

  The message, though, is the opposite of free.

  It’s going to be a crazy week, with exams and the play. I probably won’t get to answer as quickly. But I know I’ll be seeing you for the show Friday. I’ll owe you a week’s worth of affection.

  Ryan responds, I understand.

  And he does understand. Even though it will make the week harder. He’s definitely feeling withdrawal, but the saving grace is that he knows it’s not from Avery withdrawing.

  He tries to focus on his own schoolwork, his own friends. At lunch on Monday he tells everyone about the date and his parents’ reaction. Alicia is angry on his behalf, and he knows she can relate to some extent. Dez, whose parents let him do whatever he wants as long as he gets good grades, is more fixated on the date than the parent trouble.

  “Wow, it’s like you’re really serious with them. They’re a them, right?”

  “No,” Ryan says. “Avery’s he/him. I’ve told you this before.”

  Dez raises his hands. “Okay, okay! Sorry.”

  Ryan knows this doesn’t come close to what Avery has to deal with, but it’s a glimpse. He has the urge to pour Dez’s soup over his head.

  “Why are you such an asshole?” Alicia says. “Seriously. What the fuck?”

  Dez looks to Flora and Miles for help. None arrives.

  “He’s my boyfriend,” Ryan says quietly. “Do you have a problem with that, Dez?”

  “Not at all! I was just trying to be respectful.”

  Ryan doesn’t want to eat anymore. Not here.

  Alicia tries to smooth things over. “I think it has to be serious, if he got you to wear a tie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear a tie.”

  Miles, his mouth full of chocolate milk, shakes his head. Then, after swallowing, he says, “The seventh-grade assembly! When he had to give the speech!”

  Jesus. Right back to The Bad Year. Only Alicia knows how truly bad a year that was.

  Miles looks at him now. “You still remember that speech?”

  “Nope,” Ryan says. “Not even a little.”

  “Too bad,” Miles says, picking up his chocolate milk. “I remember it being a good speech. Woulda loved to hear it again.”

  Even as he’s having the conversation, Ryan wants to be telling Avery about it. Wants to be explaining what it means.

  But no text could convey that.

  * * *

  —

  Ryan works more hours after school than usual, because he’s planning to take so much of the weekend off. It also helps him avoid his parents.

  Tortilla chips, he texts Avery.

  It takes four hours before he gets the reply:

  They’re nacho problem.

  * * *

  —

  On Wednesday after his shift is done, he goes to see Aunt Caitlin. She looks tired from her own day at work. But she brightens up when she sees him.

  “The hair looks good, if I do say so myself,” she says. “How’d the date go?”

  They sit down on the old lime-green couch and he tells her what happened with Avery (the good part), and then what happened with his parents (the bad part).

  “Oh, Ryan,” Caitlin says when he’s done.

  “Why are they so awful?” he asks her.

  “They’re not awful,” she says. Before he can argue, she puts her hand up. “No—listen to me. I have friends who grew up with awful. Your parents are wrong a lot of the time, but they’re not awful.”

  “But why are they like this?” Ryan asks. “You’ve met Avery—does he seem scary to you?”

  Caitlin smiles. “No.”

  “So why won’t they let me see him? What are they so afraid of?”

  Caitlin’s smile disappears. Carefully, she asks, “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Okay. But hear me out, okay? I’m not saying they’re in the right here. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I’m not trying to justify the way they are. But there are reasons.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  * * *

  —

  Caitlin pulls back a little. The edge in Ryan’s tone is a warning. He’s not going to understand because he won’t want to understand. At the same time, he is sixteen years old. He should know this.

  “They’re scared, Ryan.”

  “Why? Because I’m gay?”

  “No,” Caitlin says. “Because it wasn’t that long ago that you were hurting yourself.”

  * * *

  —

  There it is again. The Bad Year.

  * * *

  —

  Caitlin goes on. “I know it was harder for you, and I know it was scarier for you. But it was still hard and scary for the rest of us.”

  Ryan pulls back in shock. “What are you talking about?”

  “We knew, Ryan. I’m telling you we knew a lot more than you thought we knew.”

  * * *

  —

  Seventh grade. He knew he was gay, but had no intention of telling his parents. Only his friends. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he got it in his head—from reality shows, from websites, from surreptitiously watched porn—what a gay body should look like. And he thought his thirteen-year-old body could become that, could withstand whatever needed to be done to it. He tried working out. Running in layers of clothing, so he’d sweat more. Eating protein shakes instead of food.

  It didn’t make him a sex god. It made him sick and exhausted.

  His parents didn’t notice. Or if they did notice, they chalked it up to “adolescence,” a too-easy excuse for all kinds of things. Talking back. Closing off. Eating very little at dinner as a way of being “difficult.”

  One of his teachers noticed and sent him to the school nurse—Nurse Tiernan, the sweetest man to ever walk the earth. It took maybe five minutes for Nurse Tiernan to figure everything out. What Ryan was doing, and why.

  “We come in all shapes and sizes,” Nurse Tiernan told Ryan.

  Ryan wasn’t ready to accept the we. Or even the premise. Because if Nurse Tiernan was doing such a great job being gay, why was he stuck as a nurse in a middle school and not living his best gay life in some big gay city?

  He didn’t say this to Nurse Tiernan. But his resistance was still noted.

  Nurse Tiernan brought in Ms. Simon, Ryan’s guidance counselor.

  Ryan thought he had leverage, so he applied it; he told them he’d get help, and work to get better…as long as nobody else knew about it. Especially not his parents.

  They agreed. Nurse Tiernan had a friend who was a therapist and was willing to make a “house call” at the school. So once a week for six weeks, Ryan missed gym in order to talk to Dr. Lindsay. Ryan realized he had been experimenting with what he perceived as self-improvement without really committing to it. Now, with the therapist’s help, he abandoned it completely. Dr. Lindsay helped him focus on the coming-out part (which he called “inviting in”). Eventually, Ryan was ready to invite Caitlin in. Then she helped him with his parents. They weren’t nearly as happy about the invitation.

  * * *

  —

  “The school let them know,” Caitlin tells him now. “They had to. But everyone agreed that if going through the school was working best for you, we’d go along with it.”

  “So you’re telling me that when I first told you I was gay…you already knew?”

  “Yes. We also knew that you’d been hurting yourself, with the disordered eating and exercise. And we knew you’d gotten better. I understood that it was more of a wobble than a fall. But your parents—they felt you’d gone down a bad path while they hadn’t been looking. And I think they’re still worried that you’re on that path, even though by now it’s clear you’re on a different path, the one you were meant to be on. Again, I’m not trying to make excuses for them. I’m just trying to explain to you why they might be scared. The unknown is always scary, and when your kid is involved, it’s exponentially scarier.”

  More than anything, Ryan knows that Aunt Caitlin loves him. And it takes every ounce of this knowledge to keep him on the couch, to keep him from screaming, to keep him from sobbing. The story of his life for the past three years hasn’t been the true story. He hasn’t known the true story of his own life.

  What he says next surprises even him.

  “Why can’t I just live here?” he asks, the scream and the sob combining into a plea. “Why can’t I just live with you?”

  Caitlin opens her arms for a hug, and he gives in to it.

  “Your body is longer than this couch,” she murmurs to him. “And I don’t think you want to be the guy in high school who shares a bed with his old aunt.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” he whispers, choked up.

  “If it comes to that, then so be it,” she says, holding tight. “But it shouldn’t come to that.”

  They stay there for a while. Finally, it’s Ryan who pulls back, who continues the conversation.

  “I appreciate you telling me,” he says.

  “I promise, there’s nothing else I’m hiding. No other big reveals.”

  “So my parents really are my parents? Not you?”

  Caitlin snort-laughs. “ ’Fraid so.”

  Ryan turns serious again. “Please don’t tell them you told me, okay? If I want them to know we had this conversation, I’ll tell them.”

  Caitlin nods.

  “Thank you. And, Caitlin?”

  “Yes, Ryan?”

  “You know I’d never hurt myself now. Right?”

  “I do know that. But it’s still good to hear it.”

  “I promise. That was a bad year but it already feels like another life. I mean, I only met Avery a few weeks ago and that feels like years.”

  “Good years?”

  Ryan smiles. “Yeah, good years.”

  * * *

  —

  I am going to have so much to tell you, Ryan texts Avery as soon as he gets into the truck.

  I can’t wait, Avery immediately replies.

  * * *

  —

  Once again, he makes it to his room before his parents can catch him. He really doesn’t want to talk to them now.

  There’s knocking on his door. His father saying he’s acting like a brat and better open up. His mother saying she made dessert and kept some for him. Doesn’t he want some dessert?

  “The bribery doesn’t work if the threats come first,” Ryan tells the door.

  Then, two hours later, he makes a stupid mistake. He’s too loud going to the bathroom, and can’t lock his bedroom door from the outside. So his room is unguarded, and when he comes back in his pajamas, his father is waiting.

  “We’re going to talk, whether you like it or not,” his father says. “This kind of behavior will not be tolerated in this home.”

  “Get out of my room,” Ryan says, even though he knows it will only make things worse. Then he screams it, “GET OUT OF MY ROOM!”

  He clears the doorway for his father. He points to it. Insists.

  “I only want to talk,” his father says.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m fine. I’m totally fine. I just need you out of my room right now.”

  His mom appears in the hallway, asking what’s going on.

  “Tell him to get out of my room,” Ryan appeals to her. “I want to go to sleep. Tell him to get out.”

  “Okay,” she says. Then she turns to her husband. “Let’s do this tomorrow. He needs sleep.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Ryan’s father says. Ryan half expects him to say, Don’t think you’ve gotten away with this! like an archvillain in a comic book. Or maybe that’s something the hero says to the archvillain.

  The moment his dad is through the door, he closes and locks it. But he still wakes up at least a dozen times during the night, afraid it’s come unlocked.

  Even the keys beneath his pillow aren’t a comfort.

  * * *

  —

  One more day, Ryan texts Avery the next morning.

  Three exams, one dress rehearsal, and one more day, Avery replies a few minutes later.

  * * *

  —

  “I want to see Avery’s play!” Alicia says when Ryan tells her his weekend plans.

  “Too bad,” he replies. “It’s all sold out!”

  “I’m serious,” she says, hitting him on the arm.