To: yikes!izzy
Date: Friday, December 2—7:31 PM
Subject: good news
Dear Isabel,
I’m happy to report that I have made a friend. A real, live boy! His name is Jeremy and he’s in my American History class and he wants to be a marine biologist when he grows up. We were made partners for a research project after each of ours simultaneously and abruptly left school—his with mono and mine because her family moved to Utah to join a cult. Of course, I’ve known him for years because we both grew up here, but I never knew knew him, you know? He always seemed to be too much a part of the inner circle, which has never been of too much interest to me.
We make a funny pair because he’s pretty and preppy and popular and perpetually perky, and I’m whatever I am that does not start with a P. He’s also gay, which isn’t really the issue—it’s that he’s spent all of high school surrounded by squealing girls who want him to be some stupid idea of what a gay boy is supposed to be. That has to seriously screw with a guy’s head. He’s pretty sick of it, which is perhaps why he latched on to me so quickly. And maybe that’s why I latched on to him, too, because even though he’s always around people, he feels pretty alone most of the time. I knew I liked him after this one time a couple of his followers came by and announced he had to come shopping with them at the Kitsap Mall that weekend to help them pick out dresses, and when they skipped away he looked at me very seriously and said, “I hate shopping. I fucking hate shopping. And what the fuck do I know about dresses?” We’ve been friends ever since.
All we do is basically make fun of people, and it’s nice not being so serious for once. I’m starting to think that the ability to make people laugh is more important than something totally overrated like, for instance, knowing how to perform brain surgery. The government should subsidize the lives of funny people so they don’t have to waste their God-given talents doing stupid jobs. When I am president, I’ll make sure that happens.
I just realized you haven’t mentioned Trevor in a very long time.
Love,
Connor