Our classmates have instinctively made space in the center of the dance floor for us. Everyone’s expecting a ballad—including Cheng, who hates slow songs but likes being good to me. He’s gearing up to endure a cliché prom climax just to make me happy.

But I have something else in mind. “You Spin Me Round” fills the air and, after a moment to adjust, everyone’s bopping to a song our parents would’ve danced to. The DJ cranks it.

Cheng just shakes his head, grinning and obviously relieved. But I know he doesn’t quite get it. He leans close, almost shouting to be heard over the booming beat.

“Why this song?”

After everything I experienced, I could answer that I had to bring a little 1985 with me to prom. But instead, I tell him the truth.

“I just wanted to let you know how you make me feel.”

He stops dancing and pulls me close, resting his forehead against mine. “I know. I know.”

If I were ever to be trapped in time, I would pick this moment.

I could stay here forever.

A Note from the Author

A Note from the Author

When I was a kid, I read a lot. I mean, A LOT. My small-town library had a six-books-a-week rule, but a half-dozen books never lasted me a week, so sometimes the librarian let me cheat the system by also taking out books under my brother’s name. Hundreds of books a year (the best ones twice!) and never once, not a single time, did I read a book with a Cuban character, much less one who was my age. And gay? Not in that library. My story didn’t seem to exist.

My daughter, who is of African American descent, is growing up in a very different time than I did, but she, too, has experienced the comparative scarcity of characters of color, especially in the books chosen as required reading in school. She noticed early on how often the kids of color who do make it into a story are the sidekicks to the hero, not the stars of the show.

When I started Spin Me Right Round, I knew that kids of color had to be at the heart of the action, not just spectators. I knew I wanted a story whose hero is a queer kid—and that he wouldn’t be the only one. And I wanted it to be fun, the kind of book I’d have checked out of that tiny library more than once. It’s a thrill that I got to write the book I wanted to read as a kid, a book for me and my daughter and all of us hungry to see our stories filling the shelves.

Thanks for reading,

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments