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maybe she was. Lately she had beenacting so erratically he had no idea what she was thinking. All he knew was that whenever his mother, or anyone for that matter, insinuated that he should get married and become a husband, he panicked. It just felt wrong. The only thing that made him feel worse was that, to everyone else, it felt perfectly right.
    Just as his breathing returned to normal, he heard the medicine cabinet open, which could mean only one thing: His mother needed some comfort. Maybe it was the white pill; perhaps tonight it would be the blue pill. It didn’t matter. Michael didn’t have to see into the bathroom to know that his mother was taking a pill to calm her nerves. A pill before bedtime was the only thing that seemed to help her these days. That and a nice glass of white wine.
    What happened to the mother who used to help me with my homework after dinner? Explain to me how to figure out percentages and the differences among the three branches of government. When did she stop wanting to help me and start wanting to create me in her image?
Now Michael was pacing his room, back and forth, trying to figure out why his mother was no longer on his side, pacing, pacing, pacing, until he forced himself to stop moving. He gripped the windowsill and looked out into the night. The moonlight allowed him to see only a few yards of the dirt road; the rest was hidden in darkness, out of his reach once again.
Why do I hate it here so much?!
Maybe, just maybe, it had to do with what was taking place downstairs.
    “Again with the wine,” Michael’s grandfather snickered.
    “Should I drink whiskey?” Grace asked. “Would that make you happy? Oh, that’s right, there’s nothing that would make you happy.”
    “Don’t you talk to me like that!”
    “And don’t you dare tell me what to do!”
    That was different. Michael’s mother didn’t usually talk back to her father. Guess the pills and the wine weren’t working as quickly to calm her as they usually did.
    “Maybe if you weren’t drinking all the time, you’d be able to straighten out that son of yours.”
    “You leave him out of this,” Grace said, much quieter.
Ah, now the pills are kicking in.
“He’s a good boy.”
    “He ain’t no boy!” his grandfather shouted. “He’s like that fairy husband of yours!”
    “He’s nothing like Vaughan!”
    “Is too! A sissy boy and he ain’t gonnna ’mount to nothin’! Mark my words!”
    “You shut your mouth, Daddy! Shut it! Michael is not … like
that.
He’s perfectly normal!”
    But Michael knew his mother was wrong. He wasn’t normal. His grandfather didn’t have to come right out and say it; Michael knew what he was. He stared at his reflection in the window and he could see it in his own eyes. What he saw made him disgusted, scared, but yes, just a little excited even though he knew what he was seeing wasn’t right. Tomorrow at church he would pray that it would all go away,that he would be able to change who he was, but tonight … tonight he would lock his bedroom door, block out the sounds coming from downstairs, and think about R.J. And he would convince himself that it was the most natural thing in the world.

chapter 2
    Not a word was spoken during the half-hour drive to church. It would be optimistic to think that Michael, his mother, and his grandparents were all engaged in private meditation, but the truth is, they had nothing to say to one another. At least nothing that would be appropriate to say en route to God’s house.
    They took Grace’s gray Ford Taurus, complete with its new fog light, but Michael’s grandpa drove because Grace, who sat in the back with Michael, was too tired to drive. Hungover was more like it, but no one contradicted her. Why point out the obvious? So the only sounds that filled up the emptiness were the whir of theair conditioner, the crunch of the tires on the dirt road, and then the softer hum when they merged onto the highway. And of course the