HERE’S THE thing. Before it all happened, I was a totally normal teen. Totally.
At least kind of, I suppose.
Or at least that’s how I saw myself.
Not too tall, not too short. Three years on the soccer team at Eisenhower High School kept me in pretty decent shape. I’m not the kind of guy you’d avoid looking at if you passed me in the hall, but probably not the kind of guy you’d look at a second time either.
I was kind of there and not there, if you know what I mean. I’m not, or wasn’t, really a jock, I wasn’t exactly a brain (my grades are good but nothing amazing), I wasn’t labeled a geek, or arty, not much of anything you can put your finger on. I was just that guy you’d see in your class or during lunch or around town (in my case Piney Oaks, Texas) after school somewhere and who you wouldn’t ever think twice about.
Until the moment I opened fire in a crowded classroom or something.
Sorry, bad joke.
But that worked for me; that was the way I wanted it, or thought I wanted it. I kept my head low and kept myself to myself. Breakfast at home with the parents. School. Soccer. Homework. Work at Freezie Treats three afternoons a week after school and Saturday afternoons. Mess around online. Bed.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
It’s not like I didn’t have friends. I did. Well, kind of, anyway. I had a couple of buds on the soccer team, and some other guys I knew well enough to hang out with at lunch, but I guess that was really about it.
No one who counted as a real friend, the kind you could tell anything to. The kind you shared your life with.
But at the start of my junior year, my guidance counselor told me I needed to join an afternoon school club of some kind to bump up my chances of getting into a decent college. Something artistic would be good, he said. Something to balance out the soccer. And since drama club seemed to be the easiest one to get through, I signed up.
That’s where I met Nate.
Nate Jonson, to be precise. Not Nate Hamilton, who played football and most definitely was not my Nate.
Like me, my Nate is, or, um, was, average beyond any reasonable doubt. Failed to make the soccer team, but crushed it in debate. Good-looking but not so much you’d be afraid to talk to him. Boy Next Door, I guess you’d call him. A too-skinny blond with blue eyes that sparkled and seemed to see everything and know even more while all the while appearing to be amused by it all.
Our friendship was immediate. We were sitting next to each other while some science nerd was trying and failing miserably to get through a short monologue. We rolled our eyes at each other at the same moment. I whispered, “Can you believe this guy?”
He whispered back, “Not for a moment, that’s the problem,” and we both did our best not to laugh out loud.
Throughout the rest of the meeting, we kept grinning at each other, daring each other not to laugh at the failed attempts at passion, comedy, and everything else onstage, as well as everyone else around us.
When it ended, I introduced myself; he did the same.
And we started talking. Not just talking but talking really fast. Like it had been building up for years and we’d each finally found the right person to share it with.
It didn’t seem to matter what we talked about….
“The time has come,” the Walrus said/“To talk of many things/Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—/Of cabbages—and kings….”
And we never really stopped.
Not about that of course, at least not at first. We didn’t need to talk about it. We just knew at once there was that we had in common.
Two regular kids in a public high school in a conservative Texas suburb who knew at once that they shared a secret they weren’t ready to let everybody in the world know.
We were totally average and normal teens who both happened to like boys.