Cal caught my eye and I shook my head, silently begging him not to say a word. Early on in our friendship, I made Cal promise not to mention our Brooklyn plans to Bob until the time came for us to go. He had agreed, but I think he found it disappointing that I wouldn’t tell Bob the truth.

When we got out of the car, Cal said, “Sometimes I question your commitment to our dreams, Harp.”

“You don’t understand. Bob would flip if I told him. He’d probably lock me in the house and homeschool me. And I know for sure he wouldn’t let me hang out with you anymore.”

That kept Cal quiet, but he was skeptical, and right to question my dedication. Unbeknownst to my best friend, I had already taken the SATs and ACTs and was working on applications to numerous California universities. I told myself I was just doing it to placate Bob, but there was a part of me that wondered if I was going to have the guts to go to Brooklyn with Cal.

I eventually applied to Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Santa Cruz. Stanford rejected me, but I got into the others.

“You’ll go to Berkeley, just like your old man,” Bob declared during the winter of my senior year as he stood over me in his kitchen.

I knew it was now or never, and I told myself to come out with it. After pacing around the deck outside and then calling Cal for advice, I walked back into the kitchen and asked Bob if I could talk to him about something important.

He made direct eye contact with me, and I started glancing around the room, looking for something distracting on which to focus. Bob’s kitchen looked like a dungeon. Everything was charcoal gray and blackened steel. The architecture of doom. Nothing calmed my nerves.

“Sit,” Bob said.

I sat at one of the tall stools flanking the breakfast bar and knew immediately that I’d chosen the wrong location. My feet didn’t touch the ground from there, and that made me feel already defeated.

I rested my arms on the cold countertop while Bob made himself an espresso. With his back to me, he said, “You’re not about to tell me you’re gay, are you? You and that Callahan?”

It was not the first time Bob had alluded to this possibility, and I suppose it wasn’t so far-fetched from the outside looking in. Cal and I spent virtually every moment together, and kids at our school called us fags all the time. I didn’t care. It was Bob’s tone that hurt me. He sounded like he was already against whatever I was going to say, and how was a kid supposed to have a heart-to-heart with his dad if his dad came to the table with such a bad attitude?

“No,” I sighed.

I was looking at the piece of art on the wall behind Bob’s head. It was a painting of three jockeys on horses, all racing toward a finish line. The two horses in the lead were neck and neck and were both painted dark gray, the same color as everything else in the dungeon kitchen. The horse on the far left of the canvas, a couple of lengths back, was red. I wondered why the artist had chosen to paint that horse red, especially because it was losing. It was the only splash of color in the whole room.