This Boy Read online

  freshman year

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  sophomore year

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  chapter fourteen

  chapter fifteen

  chapter sixteen

  chapter seventeen

  junior year

  chapter eighteen

  chapter nineteen

  chapter twenty

  chapter twenty-one

  chapter twenty-two

  chapter twenty-three

  senior year

  chapter twenty-four

  chapter twenty-five

  chapter twenty-six

  chapter twenty-seven

  chapter twenty-eight

  chapter twenty-nine

  chapter thirty

  chapter thirty-one

  chapter thirty-two

  chapter thirty-three

  chapter thirty-four

  chapter thirty-five

  chapter thirty-six

  chapter thirty-seven

  chapter thirty-eight

  chapter thirty-nine

  chapter forty

  chapter forty-one

  chapter forty-two

  acknowledgments

  about the author

  My friendship with Roby Smalls began in the men’s room, the two of us pissing side by side into our respective urinals. We were fourteen. We’d seen the same movie at the Co-Ed Cinema, though we hadn’t seen it together — by which I mean we hadn’t bought our tickets together or sat together. Yes, our eyeballs processed the images at the same time in the dark theater, but it wasn’t until the movie ended and we both went on our own to the restroom with its sticky floor and flickering light and overflowing trash can that we, you know, had our special moment.

  Not like that. I’m only about the ladies. Anyway, homophobia is so last century.

  Roby sniffled first. Then I sniffled. Piss against porcelain, the buzzing of the fluorescent tube light, and the two of us sniffling back and forth, struggling not to cry because of how damn sad the movie had been.

  It’s not important which movie it was. It could have been any movie, any of a dozen movies that summer that were devastating and real and happened to be way better than I’d expected when Mom threw out the idea and I said sure, because, as she pointed out, it was a good way to escape North Carolina’s sweaty August heat. Plus, popcorn.

  It was A Star Is Born, all right?

  After the third or so back-and-forth sniffle, I glanced at Roby. I gave him a quick nod, which he returned. And then we shook our dicks and washed our hands, and that was that.

  It was the most authentic man-to-man conversation I’d ever had.

  Two weeks later, high school started, and Roby turned up in my freshman year seminar. I didn’t blurt out, “Whoa, you’re the dude from the men’s room. We both sniffled and tried not to cry, remember?”

  He recognized me, though. I know because he gave me the same nod in class that he’d given me in the restroom. He looked sheepish, but also like he owned it, that moment we’d had. Like, Yeah, you caught me out, but I caught you, too. Anyway — admit it — don’t you think it’s kind of funny?

  As Roby passed me on his way to his seat, it struck me how short he was. At the movie theater, his height hadn’t registered, I guess because of all the sniffling and peeing. Also, I happen to be on the tall side. Pretty much everyone looks short to me.

  But that day in Ms. Summers’s classroom, I saw that Roby was shorter than all the other guys and about half the girls. Shorter than Ms. Summers. Shorter than my mom, and she’s five four.

  For girls, being short doesn’t matter. In some cases it’s probably an advantage, since it’s cute when girls are tiny. For a guy, being short sucks, especially if your last name is “Smalls,” as in Roby Smalls. The world played a trick on him in that regard.

  Roby is pronounced so that it rhymes with Toby, just so you know. By the end of the period, everyone knew the name of everyone else in the class, which is called WEB, which stands for Where Everybody Belongs. We’re supposed to talk about values and ethics and happiness and stuff. It’s goofy. But Ms. Summers is young and pretty, so it’s not so bad. Also it’s her first year of teaching, so she lets us get away with more than she should.

  This one guy, Stevie Hardman, takes advantage of this by peppering our class discussions with words like shit and damn. Every so often he drops an f-bomb, to remind us that he’s a wild and crazy guy.

  “Stevie, let’s keep this class a fuck-free zone,” said Ms. Summers the first time he tested the waters.

  Stevie grinned around the room and said, “Of course, Ms. S. Whatever you say, Ms. S.”

  Stevie’s best friend, Matt, slapped Stevie’s palm. Some of the girls tittered and ducked their heads.

  Roby looked at me and rolled his eyes.

  Such a tool, he was saying.

  Don’t I know it, I replied with a chin jerk, though subtly enough that no one else caught my end of the exchange.

  Stevie is a tool. But he’s a popular tool.

  A month into the semester, Ms. Summers directed our attention to a dozen self-help books shelved at the back of the room. Using them as a resource, our assignment was to come up with a strategy for “leading a rewarding life,” which we would present to the rest of the class. A few kids had already gone. Today was Stevie’s turn.

  He propped a poster on the ledge of the smart board and used a laser pointer to highlight the title of his project, which was “Don’t Be a Crappy Crustacean!”

  He’d been going for laughs. He got them from everyone but Roby.

  He told us that in the animal kingdom, male lobsters fought other male lobsters for territory. When it became clear which lobster was going to win, the losing lobster could either surrender — and stay alive — or fight to the bitter end, and die.

  According to Stevie, death was preferable to defeat. He swept his gaze across the room, graced us with a cocky smile, and said, “Why, you ask?”

  “No,” muttered Roby.

  “Because after every fight, the lobsters’ brains are chemically altered.” Stevie aimed his laser at a giant lobster wearing a hand-drawn crown. “For the alpha lobster, this is great. The alpha lobster’s brain is flooded with seraphim.”

  Ms. Summers cleared her throat. “I think you mean serotonin.”

  Stevie looked annoyed at having his rhythm interrupted.

  “Seraphim are the highest order of God’s angels,” Ms. Summers explained.

  “I don’t believe in angels,” said Stevie.

  “That’s fine,” said Ms. Summers. “But I think you mean serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter connected with depression. People with low amounts of serotonin tend to be depressed. People with high serotonin levels, not so much.”

  “Yeah, that,” said Stevie. “The winning lobster gets better and stronger after a win. But the loser lobster”— Stevie pointed the laser at a pathetically puny lobster with a giant L on his chest — “the loser lobster’s brain literally melts.”

  “Ew!” said some people.

  A girl named Gertrude Leibowitz blanched. Then she sat up straighter and lifted her chin. Gertrude terrified me. She had heavy bangs and dark eyes. She was really intense.

  “That’s not true,” she said. “No way.”

  “Way,” said Stevie. “The loser lobster gets depressed and stays depressed, because of not getting the flood of sero-whatever. It’s called the dominance cycle. The winners stay winners, while the losers become bigger and bigger losers.”

  “Let’s hear how your research applies to us,” Ms. Summers said. “What wisdom should we take away?”

  “Um, be a winner?” Stevie said. He heh-heh-ed. “Always succeed, and if you can’t succeed, die. It’s better to die than to lose.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Gertrude said.

  A soft-spoken girl named Natalia raised her hand. She didn’t come across as timid, but reserved. Polite.

  “Yes?” said Stevie.

  “Are they all boy lobsters?” Natalia asked.

  “Well, yeah,” Stevie said, as if it were obvious.

  “How?”

  “Huh?”

  Natalia frowned. “Wouldn’t there have to be girl lobsters somewhere?”

  “Yeah, Stevie,” said other kids, catching on. “What about the girl lobsters?”

  Stevie patted the air. “You want to know about the girl lobsters? I’ll tell you. The alpha lobster gets all of them. All the girl lobsters line up and say, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ because they all want to mate with him.”

  Stevie’s buddies guffawed. Roby cradled his head in his hands.

  Stevie strode to his desk, grabbed a book, and returned to the front of the room. “And I quote,” he said. “‘On noting the alpha male’s dominance, the female lobsters shed their hard shells to become soft, vulnerable, and inviting. They fill the air with fragrant mists and offer themselves to the alpha.’”

  Matt and some other guys hooted. They said things like “Yeah” and “Ooo, baby, release those fragrant mists!”

  Stevie snapped the book shut. “The alpha lobster gets all the girls, and that is why being a winner at life means being a winner, period.”

  He bowed. Kids whistled and clapped. This set
off Ernie Korda, a special needs kid. He laughed and began hitting his thigh with his fist.

  Gertrude thrust her hand into the air. “So in your fantasy world, you would get all the girls?”

  Stevie gave Gertrude a blatant up-and-down look. “Did I say that? No. What I said is that all the girls want the alpha male. How many he decides to claim is up to him.”

  “So girls are just objects to be collected?”

  Stevie coughed into his first. “Not just collected.”

  “Ms. Summers!” Gertrude cried.

  Stevie held up his hands. “Don’t blame me. Blame biology.”

  “Tone it down, Stevie,” Ms. Summers warned.

  Roby lifted his head. “Actually, failure is more valuable than success,” he said.

  “Dude,” Stevie said.

  “Care to elaborate?” said Ms. Summers.

  “We learn from failure. What do we learn from success?”

  “How to keep succeeding,” said Stevie.

  “And it’s a cop-out to say we’re governed by biology,” Roby said. “Once upon a time, maybe. When we were cavemen.”

  “And cavewomen,” Gertrude interjected.

  “Maybe lobsters behave according to lobster biology, but aren’t humans smarter than that?” Roby shot Stevie a glance that said, I am, anyway. As for you . . . ?

  “Burn!” crowed Matt.

  “I’m not talking about intelligence,” Stevie said. “I’m talking about basic primal urges.”

  “Urges,” Matt echoed. He wagged his big woolly-mammoth head.

  “Shut up, Matt,” Stevie ordered. He turned back to Roby. “Let’s say a girl, a pretty girl, walks up to you and takes off all her —”

  “That’s enough,” Ms. Summers said sharply. At the back of the room, Ernie had gotten pretty loud. Usually he was accompanied to his classes by an aide, but today the aide was absent.

  Ms. Summers walked to his desk. “Ernie, can you calm down? Or do you need to go to the resource room?”

  Ernie was a sweet kid. He loved those white powdered donuts that come in a bag, and he was always offering them around and wanting to share. But now he laughed and banged his thigh, over and over.

  “Okay,” Ms. Summers said, urging Ernie to his feet. She looked frazzled. “I’ll be back in two minutes,” she told us. “But this discussion is over. Sadie, you’re up next. Be ready.”

  “Yep,” said Sadie. She waited until Ms. Summers left the room, then pulled out her phone, stuck in earphones, and closed her eyes.

  The rest of us turned back to Stevie and Roby.

  “So, Roby, as I was saying: pretend a pretty girl walks up to you and takes off all her clothes,” Stevie said.

  “Why does she have to be pretty?” Gertrude demanded.

  “Fine, any girl,” Stevie said. “But if you’re a guy, if you’re a red-blooded American male, and a naked girl offers herself to you . . .”

  Stevie had to have known that all the boys in the room were now envisioning this imaginary naked girl. It felt wrong, especially since half the kids in the class were real live girls, and beneath their clothes, they were naked as well.

  Why is a naked girl so much more vulnerable than a naked guy? We guys were naked beneath our clothes, too, but it didn’t mean the same thing.

  “Drop it, Stevie,” Roby said.

  “Listen, man, you can be as politically correct as you want,” Stevie said. “But at the end of the day, you’ve got this girl — pretty or not, I don’t give a shit — and she’s saying, ‘Come and get it’ . . .” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t be all over that?”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Roby said.

  “So that’s a no?”

  “Screw you.”

  “Bro, you’re missing the point,” Stevie said. “I’m not on the menu.”

  It was so stupid. Stevie was so stupid. But kids laughed, and Roby flushed and slid lower in his seat.

  Stevie turned to Matt. “What about you, buddy?”

  “Would I have sex with a naked chick?” Matt said. “Um, duh.”

  “Torin?” Stevie said.

  Torin stretched his legs and crossed one foot over the other. “I mean, if the girl is willing . . .”

  “She is.”

  “I’m not going to turn her down. That would be rude.”

  They slapped palms.

  “Paul,” Stevie said, “you’d say yes to free sex, right?”

  Paul as in me.

  “Paul, please,” said Gertrude.

  “Ooo, d’you hear that?” Matt said. He adopted a falsetto. “‘Paul, please!’ She’s begging for it!”

  Spots of color rose on Gertrude’s cheeks.

  I wondered what was taking Ms. Summers so long.

  Stevie gazed at me, eyebrows raised. Sweat dampened my pits. Fear sweat. I try to come across as confident, but the truth is I’m awkward and lonely and, more often than not, I feel like a scared little kid.

  “Paul?” Stevie pressed.

  Saying nothing wasn’t good enough. Saying nothing was like watching from a crowd as some guy got beat up and not doing a thing to help him.

  So, okay, I decided. I’d tell Stevie “no.”

  And I would have. I swear. But Stevie was already sauntering back to his desk. He clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Good man, Paul.”

  “Yeah,” said Matt. “Get you some!”

  “You’re a dick, Matt,” I said.

  Stevie chuckled.

  I really hate it, the way certain guys chuckle.

  I’ve only eaten lobster once. I’ve for sure never eaten it in Brevard, the North Carolina mountain town where I live with my mom.

  I was born in Brevard. I’ve lived here all my life. But Mom grew up in Atlanta, and my grandparents live there still. They belong to a fancy country club, which is where I tried lobster, which was delicious. It was covered in crushed saltine crackers, all drenched in butter and baked to golden perfection — the tackiest white people appetizer ever, according to Mom.

  I love my grandparents a lot. Granddad takes me to Waffle House every time I visit, as well as Krispy Kreme, where we pick up a dozen glazed originals to “bring back to the ladies.” He has an app that lets him know when the doughnuts are ready. It’s called Fresh Off the Grease.

  Grandmom likes art, so she and I go to museums and art shows. I’m hoping one day she’ll take me to New York. New York has a Gucci store and Louis Vuitton and a brick-and-mortar Off-White boutique. Going there would be dope.

  Grandmom and Granddad spoil me because they love me, but also because I’m their only grandkid. I almost had a sister, but she died before she was born.

  Her name was Willow.

  Anyway, one of Granddad’s favorite sayings is, “Walk into a room like you own it, and everyone will assume you do.”

  That’s what I tried to do when I strode into the cafeteria on the day of Stevie’s lobster presentation, and I guess it worked, because Stevie spotted me from his table and waved me over.

  Ah, shit, I thought. It wasn’t Stevie I wanted to impress. I’d hoped I was done with him, or he with me.

  I told myself to be cool. I crossed the room, brown paper lunch sack in hand. Ernie Korda held out his fist as I passed, and I gave him dap.

  When I reached Stevie, I said, “’Sup?”

  “Sit,” Stevie said.

  I dropped into a chair and nodded at the others: Stevie’s friend Matt and two girls, Lily and Sabrina. I upended my lunch bag, emptying its contents before me.

  “Takis. Excellent,” Stevie said. He snatched the green foil bag, ripped it open, and shook some into his mouth. “May I? Excellent.”

  “You used excellent twice in a row,” Lily pointed out.

  “Not in a row,” Stevie said. “‘In the same sentence family’ would be more accurate.”

  “You should work on your adjectives,” Lily said. “Variety’s the spice of life.”

  “Mmm. Spice. I like a girl who’s spicy.” He dipped his hand into my bag of Takis, helping himself to more. He licked his fingers and smeared Lily’s cheek with Takis spit.

  “Gross,” Lily said. She swiped at her cheek with her napkin.

  “I marked you. Now you’re mine,” Stevie said.

  “No.”

  “You have to be my sex slave and rub my feet.”

  “No, and again, gross,” said Lily.

  “Why your feet?” Sabrina asked Stevie. “Not that I’m knocking foot rubs, but of all the body parts in the world to make your sex slave rub . . .”

  Lily shoved Sabrina. “Oh my god!”