HELLO

It’s really weird to see yourself on the cover of a tabloid. I mean, you go into the convenience store at the corner to get an energy drink because you need something to help you stay awake so that you can study for your Calculus exam the next day, and there’s your entire family on the cover:

* Your stepmom trying to look like she’s had to deal with the paparazzi every day of her life since she was born, not just for, like, a few weeks.

* Your stepbrother, who you’d think was really hot if you didn’t know what an idiot he was.

* Your stepsister, who thinks she’s living the American blonde version of Kate Middleton’s life.

* Her boyfriend, with whom you’re in love—more on that later—and …

* YOU, half-hidden in shadow because you were trying your best to get out of the shot, but when all of those guys with cameras were coming from so many directions … well, you know that’s you. Plus, you realize how badly you really need a new winter coat. The one in the picture just doesn’t flatter you the way it did when you got it, when you were thirteen, eight inches shorter, and fifty pounds skinnier.

Is it weird that I keep referring to myself as “you”? Because all of this really happened to me. Me. I still can’t believe it.

I suppose it would be logical to think you wouldn’t have picked up my story if you didn’t already know who I was, but just in case, I’m Christopher Bellows. Although, for all of my seventeen years up until then, everyone just called me Chris. I’m not really sure why the press always identified me as Christopher. Yes, it’s the name on my birth certificate, but if they’d ever just asked that question, I would have told them. But they were interested only in other details—not that they got those right—and never really interested about me. I admit, I bear my share of the responsibility for their getting it all wrong, so I guess I’m just going to tell this story as if you knew nothing, because, in reality, even if you read every single article published up to the moment of the big announcement, about the truth you do know nothing.

So, yeah, the first thing I’d like to make clear is that I was never their maid, their captive, or their slave. (I’m rolling my eyes here, just like you probably would if you ever read or heard that about yourself. And this time I really mean you, not me.) I’m not saying I can’t see how someone could interpret our lives that way if they wanted to, especially since I think it might have been Coco who got that whole rumor started, but since being a drama queen often goes hand-in-hand with being a drag queen, consider the source. Actually, the night I met Coco was the same night we all met J.J. So it’s basically the night that separates the before from the after in this story. I should probably start there. Even if you have read all of those inaccurate news accounts that began the next morning, these were the last few hours of relative calm before the proverbial storm.