I wasn’t looking for a friend or anything like that. I was bored. And Zeke, this new boy who seemed stunned to find himself in this dinky little town, was something that could occupy my time.

Two days after we’d first met at the public pool, after I gave him a little piece of paper with my address on it, Zeke rode his bike over to my house. He had on an oversize black Road Warriors T-shirt, two angry wrestlers, their faces painted, weird shoulder pads. My brothers loved these dudes, too. I couldn’t imagine people who seemed more different than Zeke and my brothers, but if you were a boy, there were just things you loved, I guess.

“Hey,” he said, smiling. “I live, like, four blocks away.”

I just shrugged, unsure of what to do now that he was here.

“Thanks for inviting me,” he said. I shrugged again. What was wrong with my tongue? Why did it feel so fuzzy?

“This town is weird,” he said. “It’s like a bomb was dropped on it, and you guys are just getting back to normal.”

“It’s pretty boring,” I finally said, and my jaws ached with the effort.

“It’s always better to be bored with someone else,” he offered. I gestured for him to follow me inside, into the air-conditioning.

I didn’t know exactly what to do with him, but I wanted it to be clear that we weren’t going to have sex in my empty house. I had been nervous over the past two days, worrying what I was or was not getting myself into, all the things that I did not yet want to do. I needed Zeke to know that it wasn’t that kind of thing, so we just sat on the sofa and watched horror movies on VHS, eating Pop-Tarts, which felt so far away from what I thought sex might be that it seemed safe. I was trying to put off talking for as long as possible, until it became inevitable. By then, I thought, I’d have something interesting to tell him.

“Do you like it here?” Zeke asked me while I was taking out one tape and trying to put in another. And now we had to talk. I guessed I was okay with this.

“It’s fine,” I said, crouched over the VHS machine. And it was, honestly. What would I do in a city? Go dancing? Eat a fifty-dollar steak at some fancy restaurant? Well, I mean, maybe go to a museum. That would be fun. But I was sixteen. I lived inside of myself way more than I lived inside of this town.

“But,” he said, pressing me, “what do you do for fun?”