For all this “remember what happened” talk, nobody actually knows what did happen that night. Chaz was in Mom’s class, but he missed prom, too. They found his body, still in his tux, at the base of the Ledges, an abandoned quarry deep in the woods across from the campus. There were no signs of injury that couldn’t be accounted for by the fall from such a height, and the school solemnly announced that it was a suicide. Among his classmates, it was whispered that he killed himself because he was gay. Mom wasn’t so sure. From what she tells me—and, trust me, she has told this story a hundred zillion times—he never had a boyfriend or anything. He was just too pretty, too quirky, too unconcerned with how to “man up” to ever really fit in with the straight guys. And the girls were split about two to one between those who found him unsettling and those who wished more boys were like him.

Even though he wasn’t actually out, a few of the guys had picked on him, including Gordo (she hated to admit). Still, she isn’t convinced the teasing was the real problem; if he did kill himself, she thought Chaz was probably more concerned with his salvation than his classmates. (Though, jumping off a cliff does not seem like a way to solve that.)

Suicide wasn’t the only theory. A rumor went around that Townies had attacked him. All bad things get blamed on outsiders, eventually. And there was no evidence to support this, but it wasn’t impossible. Fights occasionally happened between academy kids and Townies, who had “raided” campus for a little petty vandalism once or twice during my mom’s time at the school. She always favored this theory—not because it was less awful, but because she and Chaz were friends; it was unbearable to think of him feeling so terrible about himself that he’d end his own life.

Mom’s lack of surety about how Chaz died didn’t change the fact that he did. She can picture every possible scenario, and she doesn’t want them to happen to me. I mean, I’ve never given her reason to think I’m a suicide risk, but I can see why she’d worry about gay-bashing. And as she likes to remind me, Chaz Wilson had a mom, too.

I asked her once if my dad left us because of me. I mean, please—from the time I discovered that toy stores had wands and tutus, they knew what kind of boy they had on their hands. She always says no, not at all, but I still think about Chaz and the fact that my own father was apparently a dick to him, and I have to wonder.