Two Boys Kissing(14)

“How’d that work for you?” Avery asks, letting his voice joke a little.

Ryan mocks up a sigh. “Well … I went out with Tammy Goodwin for almost a year, in fourth grade. Really serious. I mean, we bought each other stuffed animals on Valentine’s Day. That’s practically marriage in fourth grade, right? By high school, I knew who I was. And when I told Caitlin, she wasn’t shocked at all. She took me out on this river, in this canoe, and we’d talk about things. She’s not a whole lot older than me—she’s about to turn thirty—and she’s had about as much luck with guys as I have. She’s the one who convinced me I shouldn’t try to hide. She said hiding never worked. She told me my dad spent so much time hiding that it was impossible for him to be happy here. He isn’t gay—I guess that makes it sound like he’s gay. He isn’t. But he didn’t want to stay here. He never wanted to stay here. He just wasn’t strong enough to tell my mom until it was way too late.”

Ryan goes on to explain he doesn’t hear from his father much now. Just a phone call every now and then. Ryan visited him once in California, and it was a disaster. Ryan was twelve, but his father planned it out like he was seven. “He tried real hard, but in the wrong ways. He thought Disneyland could make everything better, you know? We ran out of things to say pretty quick. I emailed him when I was coming out to everyone, and his reaction was one of the best ones I got. He told me to do what I wanted to do. But part of me felt like it was easy for him to be okay with it because he’d given up on me a while ago. Like, he wasn’t as invested as everyone else.”

Ryan stops now, self-conscious the moment he steps out of the story. “Gosh,” he says, “I’m talking a lot.”

“No,” Avery says. “Go on. How did everyone else react?”

“Oh, you know. Mom cried. A lot. Don was angry. Not at me, really. But at the manufacturer for giving him a defective stepson. My sisters, though, were fine. And so were most of my friends. I mean, a couple of them flailed a little in their first reactions—some of the guys were wondering if I was secretly in love with them. Which was only right in one case, but that went nowhere. The girls were by and large cool, even the churchy ones. Well, with one exception there, too. The inevitable rumors started, and I decided the only thing to do was confirm them, so I dyed my hair and started putting LGBT buttons on my bag and made noises about starting a GSA. The assholes in school had the typical asshole reactions. But there were a couple of other gay kids, so we banded together. I dated this one guy, Norris, for about two seconds, which was as long as it took for us to realize that the only thing we had in common was that we were gay. Our GSA advisor, Mr. Coolidge, is super cool, and has gotten a lot of things done, including the dance last night. That was his idea. The gay prom. We contacted every GSA in the area. Is that how you heard about it?”

“A friend linked me to the Facebook invite,” Avery says. “Our GSA is kind of lame.”

“Well, whatever got you there, I’m glad you made it. I guess that’s the latest plot twist in my story, isn’t it?”

Avery thinks it feels like a responsibility, to be a part of someone else’s story. He knows Ryan is saying it playfully, not heavily. He knows Ryan is saying it to show that he’s done with his own storytelling, which means it’s time for Avery to start. Avery isn’t sure that Ryan is a part of his own story yet, but that could be because he doesn’t feel anyone can be a true part of his story until he or she hears it and accepts it.

They’re drifting on the water—not much, just a gradual pull. Avery finds his mind drifting to a small part of Ryan’s story, a small point of comparison. When he emerges from that brief thought, he sees that Ryan is watching him, waiting to see what he’ll say next.

“I was just thinking about you and your aunt in this canoe,” Avery explains. “How nice that must have been, to talk here. For me, it’s always a kitchen-table war council. Us against the world. Coming up with a plan.”

“That sounds stressful.”

“Yeah, but at least everyone in my house is on the same side. I know how lucky I am about that. And unlucky in other ways.”

“Unlucky how?” Ryan asks.

And this is it. This is where Avery must decide how much to tell, how much to let Ryan in. Like everyone else, Avery considers his inner world to be a scary, convoluted, inscrutable place. It is one thing to show someone your best, cleanest version. It’s quite another to make him aware of your deeper, jagged self.

Here in the daylight, does Ryan already notice? Does he already know? If he does, it doesn’t seem like he cares. Or maybe that’s just more hoping on Avery’s part.

Enough, Avery tells himself. Just talk to him.



The first sentence of the truth is always the hardest. Each of us had a first sentence, and most of us found the strength to say it out loud to someone who deserved to hear it. What we hoped, and what we found, was that the second sentence of the truth is always easier than the first, and the third sentence is even easier than that. Suddenly you are speaking the truth in paragraphs, in pages. The fear, the nervousness, is still there, but it is joined by a new confidence. All along, you’ve used the first sentence as a lock. But now you find that it’s the key.



“I was born a boy in a girl’s body,” Avery begins. Then he stops, takes in Ryan’s reaction. Which is surprise. His eyes widen a little. Then narrow as he takes a long look at Avery, figures it out. Avery feels like a body on display.