Cammie’s been my best friend since sixth grade. But Jonah, through no fault of his own, has infiltrated every aspect of my life, and his reach is impressive. We became friends right around the time I was becoming more sensitive to people’s responses to Jonah, and more guarded. But Cammie was a good person, kind, and easygoing, and I felt okay about her being around. But Jonah as a little boy was different. Yes, he was messy and sometimes loud and he could be stubborn, but those things look different on a cute, chubby kid than they do on a towering giant of a young man.

And of course, with puberty, other things changed, too. And something happened last year that put an end to my having people over. Even Cammie.

The memory floods back. Cammie and I were in my living room working on a joint biology project on the effects of microwave radiation on seed germination. Her house was under renovations and the library was closed, and my mom insisted it was fine that we work at our house, even though she was still recovering from her latest round of chemo. I was joking around, naming the seeds according to what shape or animal the sprouts looked like to me, when I realized Cammie wasn’t laughing. She was staring across the room.

I followed her eyes to find Jonah making his way slowly down the stairs, buck naked.

I froze, horrified. Jonah stopped halfway down the stairs, and then I saw what he was doing, where his hand was, the way his penis pointed skyward. I wanted to scream at Cammie to stop looking, but instead I screamed for my mother, who was coming for Jonah as quickly as she could manage, which in her current condition wasn’t nearly quickly enough. She hadn’t even paused to grab the sky-blue stocking cap she’d taken to wearing as her hair fell out.

“Sorry about that,” she said to us, clearly mortified, presumably by Jonah’s nakedness, but maybe also by someone outside of the four of us seeing her baldness. When she reached him and saw what he was doing, her ashen face flushed noticeably. “Oh dear,” she said, turning him away from us. “Come on, Jonah, upstairs.” Her eyes caught mine for just a moment, and her expression was so defeated, so apologetic, that it was almost too much. I wanted to run, but where would I go? Instead, pushing down tears and avoiding Cammie’s eyes, I said to her softly, “Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t, Zoe,” she’d said, reaching for my hand. “You know I won’t.”

And it wasn’t that I didn’t trust her. It was that the possibility that she’d tell anyone, no matter how infinitesimal it was, and the way people might react or laugh or gossip if they knew filled me with panic.