Gene comes out looking very displeased as he walks across the lifeless brown lawn. Approaching him, I feel light-headed, agonized. I can hardly catch my breath, and it wasn’t that long a run.

“I’m so sorry about today,” I start.

“I’m sorry too,” he sighs. “About Helga and stuff. I know it’s a douche thing to do.”

I wave my hand dismissively. “Come on, run with me,” I say, touching his elbow gently. “It’ll be easier to talk about it if we’re running.”

He shakes his head, his shadow stretching up the dark lawn toward the house, where the lights are on but in none of the rooms I recognize.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you or let you in my house or anything,” I say. “I know it seems like a weird thing not to tell you about, but it’s so hard to explain feeling like I live in two worlds and I’m just kind of stuck in both of them because for some reason I just can’t—”

I look away as my tongue goes numb, then my lips, then my whole face. There’s nothing wrong with numb, though. Just ask the gods of Novocain.

“I’m sorry, Cham,” he says softly. “I had no idea. That’s literally the most you’ve told me about yourself since we started dating.” He looks down at his feet, and the silence is tense where I wish it were soft. He shifts awkwardly. “It’s just too late, you know?”

“Come on, Gene. We can move past it.”

“Cham.” He shakes his head slowly at me. “We’re graduating. It just doesn’t make sense—”

“Yes, it does. What about prom? And Nicaragua?” I imagine growing roots right here in his lawn. “You can’t just get feelings for someone else because I couldn’t come over and have sex with you.”

“It was not like that,” he says, sounding offended, even though I’m the one who should be offended.

“Okay, well, I’m here now, and what we had is still here. We’ll go to prom like we planned and—”

“I think we should just go with our friends as a group. One big good-bye to high school. It’ll be fun not being tied down to one person.”

“So now I tie you down?” The words jostle around my mouth, like cats trying to get out of a bag.

“I’m really sorry, Cham.”

“You can’t do this to me, not now.” An angry ball of energy is launched inside me. It’s a game of Ping-Pong and I don’t know how to play. “It hasn’t even been a day,” I say lamely, looking down at my shadow touching Gene’s shadow and thinking how sad it is that this is what touching each other has come down to.

“I know, but a lot changes in a day.”

I’m about to disagree, but then I have a vision of my dad in the hospital bed. It’s a quick vision, but it lasts long enough to chill me. A lot can change in a day.