“Don’t you quote Natalie Wood at me,” I said, mock-punching his muscular shoulder. “I’m the one who showed you Rebel Without a Cause, remember?”

“And where would I be without it?” he said. “James Dean was how I knew I was gay.”

I paused. Best to jump right into it. “You’re not with your aunt anymore?”

He shrugged. “Her son got evicted. He’s crashing with her, so I don’t have a room. She says I’m welcome to sleep on their couch, but the place is pretty crowded.”

Solomon’s father had never been in the picture. His mother had gotten locked up, right around the time she divorced Connor’s father, Solomon’s stepdad. He’d offered to let Solomon stay with them, but Solomon refused. Ran off. Got caught, brought back. Ran off again.

“I did something stupid,” he said, looking at his hands.

“What’s that?”

“There were three guys, and they were picking on this old lady, and I just lost it. One second I was talking to them normally, the next I was just yelling gibberish into the air. And I couldn’t stop. Like I could see myself, from the outside, and I couldn’t control what was happening.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “Where was this?”

“Fairview Plaza.”

“Jesus.” That strip mall was as close as Hudson came to an actual mall. And usually it was full of people. Any one of them could have called the police.

And the police didn’t tend to respond well to emotionally disturbed young men who were six feet tall.

“What did they do?” I asked. “The three guys?”

“They ran. I don’t know if they were scared of me or just didn’t like all the commotion I was causing. By the time I calmed down, they were gone. So was the old lady, for that matter.”

“Did anyone . . . I don’t know, try to help you? Try to talk to you?”

He shook his head, then lowered it into his hands. I reached out to take his hands in my own. “We need to get you some help,” I said.

“No one can help me,” he said. “Not the way I need to be helped.”

“How do you need to be helped?”

Again he shook his head, pulled his hands away from me.

I wanted to tell him about myself. About the meds, how they were helping. How I was trying. How he needed to try.

But whatever was going on with him, it was way worse than what was happening to me. The treatment options for him could be extreme. Plus, Solomon didn’t want to be medicated. He’d said so over and over again.

But I hadn’t either, at first. It was a journey, getting to the place where you could admit how you need help.