But this summer is going to be new in other ways, too, because Lance is changing. Since spring, he’s abruptly grown five inches without gaining a pound, leaving him thinner than ever. He can basically wrap the old belt of Johnny’s twice around his waist, and has to keep it cinched tight or the jeans that are long enough to cover his ankles won’t stay up.

And that’s not all. He’s got three dark hairs on his chest, and his voice has gotten rough and scratchy.

And that’s not all, either. He’s been having a certain kind of dream.

Lance isn’t totally naive. He knows this sudden rebellion of his mind and body, this new awareness of his own skin and total inability to control his random and inconvenient erections, is all normal. He’s maybe a hair ahead of schedule, but there are boys his age who are further down this path. Of course, there are also boys his age who aren’t on the path at all—who may not even have the path in sight—like Danny, who’s now the shortest boy in their grade and still has the narrow chin and big, glaring eyes of the eight-year-old who first sat next to Lance on the bus almost five years before.

What’s not normal, Lance also knows, is that the main trigger for all of Lance’s new, riotous hormones seems to be his best friend’s much older brother.

In addition to finding himself staring and blushing around Robbie all the time, he also has to be careful that he doesn’t smell Robbie’s jacket when he walks past the coat hooks on the porch, or let their hands touch when Robbie hands him a glass of water at dinner. Or look at the vee in the collar of Robbie’s shirt where a few dark hairs curl. Or, or, or. If he does any of the things on that growing list, he has to clamp his hands over his lap and get out of sight as fast as possible.

And at night, he feels the worst kind of shame when he grinds against the blankets of his bed, face pressed into his arm and pillow, praying his father won’t hear him—and the only thing that can push him past the horrible pressure and into a half-painful release is the thought of Robbie. Not even Robbie’s nakedness, which he doesn’t know how to imagine, or even his touch or kiss, which would be incomprehensible. Just his smell and his laugh and his outline, and even the way he walks. All of the details that Lance has been storing up for years, as though he’s accidentally calibrated himself to only want Robbie in this, the most hopeless of ways.

On the third day of summer, grade cards come in the mail. Parents can check them on the computer, too, but Lance’s father doesn’t have a computer, and the beginning and end of his effort around Lance’s education is to grudgingly enroll him in school every summer, despite the inconvenience of going by the school at the appointed time.