I play through my favorite minor chords. Then the major. I thought that orange was the only word not to rhyme with anything, but Gabriel doesn’t seem to rhyme with much either.

From our fourth-floor apartment, the city looks like just a bunch of lights. Streetlamps. Storefronts. Cars. Windows.

Behind each one, a story, I guess.

People fighting and falling in love. People having sex and having doubts.

I want someone to tell me how it happens. Growing up. Finding your place in the world.

The houses and the lovers and the jobs and the thoughts and the drama of it all. How do I make it my own?

The next day, I ask James if he’d consider writing lyrics for a song for me.

Oh, you wouldn’t want that.

Wouldn’t I?

Lyrics aside, I want my guitar to sound like The Edge, but it always comes out more like Paul Simon.

Flipping through channels at James’s before the stations sign off for the night.

Hey, look, he says, nodding toward the TV. He comes back to sit on the couch. Taps on the top of a cigarette pack. Puts it down.

I don’t really have to. I’ve seen this before. David Bowie on an old Saturday Night Live rerun from the seventies. He’s wearing a blue dress and heels like a stewardess, and, behind him one of the singers, a performance artist James likes, named Joey Arias, wears matching red, right down to his hair.

But I know who has James’s attention. Wearing all black, white-faced Klaus Nomi doesn’t normally sing behind rock stars. On his own, Nomi does this odd mix of opera and cabaret, and James is obsessed.

I wait until the show is done. Then ask, So you don’t want to…I mean, you don’t sing opera.

Oh, lord, no, James says. I just want to be that brave.

Brave?

James stares at the screen, which is still glowing bright, even though the set is turned off. Yes, he says. To be myself.

I glance at James. At his black-and-white striped T-shirt. Red bandanna around his neck. White vinyl boots laced up to his knees over black parachute pants.

And pretend I understand.

HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR screams the Post’s headline.

Honestly. You can’t make this shit up.

Becky sometimes makes her own clothes on a sewing machine she found on the curb outside her building.

It’s a little beat-up, but still works, and lately she’s been making increasingly odd headbands with things glued on top. Today, she’s wearing one that has a tiger with a key around its neck.

What’s the key for? I say.

My mom’s car, she answers.

I know better than to ask.

I dream about Gabriel. About being kissed. About what comes next.

Becky sits in front of me in Mr. Solomon’s class and I pass her notes:

How do I know?

What if?

What does it feel like?

We’re supposed to be writing down questions to ask a class visitor, a girl who volunteered on a kibbutz in Israel, a kind of communal living thing.