Now I recognize him-a young Leonardo da Vinci from Assassin's Creed. "No, but I am looking for original characters, not fan art." Phew. A legitimate reason actually popped into my brain and came out of my mouth!

Challis's arched eyebrows form a straight line.

"And"-I fish for another brilliant answer-"I'm really looking for art that I can pair with writing, like a story set in the Renaissance and a painting inspired by da Vinci-that'd be cool."

This explanation does nothing to lift the eyebrow frown from her face.

I try again because I like Challis. "And I'd kill for a graphic short-give me one of those, and I'll get it in."

"A graphic short story?" she echoes.

I nod. Truth is, I admire Challis, maybe even wish I was more like her-out, proud, and in the GSA. Plus, she's an amazing artist.

"Any topic?"

"Um-" Eden chimes in, as if warning me against agreeing to this.

"Anything I can get past Taylor. So, like, no f-bombs, okay?" I clarify, already imagining how a comic would look awesome in Gumshoe.

Challis bites her lip while the corners of her mouth curl up into a smile. "You'll accept it?"

"Uh-huh."

"'Cause it'll be a ton of work," she explains.

"Yeah," Eden says. "Original characters are more time consuming."

"Promise," I tell Challis. "Original characters, and it's in."

After school Mason sags into the locker next to mine. "Gabe got my shift," he says about his brother. "Wanna save the world from the zombie apocalypse?"

"Sounds great," I say, and glance over at him. He looks like he always does at the end of the day, tired but content, and as if he just put an X through the calendar square in his day planner. His curls have straightened a little, and they hang in a curtain around the frames of his glasses. See, I tell myself. He's not that cute. No way I have a crush on him.

I throw my books in my backpack, and we walk out to the student parking lot, grumbling about the pop quiz in government. Mason tells me the correct answers, and I calculate that I scraped by with a C. I drive the three blocks while Mason cranks the radio.

After a few hours of Mason killing zombies and my character getting killed by them, Mason's cell chirps with a text. He pauses the game to read it. He frowns.

"What?" I ask.

"My mom's working late," he says.

Mason's mom works at the twenty-four-hour supermarket, and late can mean really late. But this isn't why he's frowning. "And I'm hungry."

Personally, I'm famished. One of Mrs. V's home-cooked meals would have really hit the spot.

"She said there's hamburger in the fridge," he adds, standing up.

Soon we have a couple of burgers sizzling in a skillet on the stove, and rolls are toasting in the oven. Mason has his head buried in the pantry, looking for a can of chiles, when his dad and Gabe come in.

"Smells good," Gabe says. "What's for dinner?"

"Ham-" Mason starts to answer, appearing again with a can in hand.

But Mr. V cuts him off, asking questions in his rapid-fire Spanish. Not angry but not kind, either.

"At work," Mason manages to answer one before another round of questions begins.

I pull two or three words from the volley: little girls and cooking or maybe kitchen.

Mason presses his lips together, his skin darkening with embarrassment or anger before he tries to hide it. He opens a drawer and rummages around for a can opener.

Mr. V continues, gesturing to the backyard and saying something about huevos.

I flip the two burgers over, getting the gist. We are, in his opinion, playing house like little girls by cooking in the kitchen instead of grilling like real men.

Gabe finds two beers in the fridge and gives his father one, ushering him out of the kitchen. "Put on another two, would you, Mace?" he asks on his way out.

"Effin' A," Mason mutters. "Make your own goddamn dinner."

We eat our chile and-cheese-topped hamburgers on the steps that lead to the backyard, sharing a bag of chips and drinking orange soda from cans. We're quiet for a while, and I remember when Mason went from idolizing his father to antagonizing him.

The summer after seventh grade-the summer Mason spent in Mexico-was the worst summer of our lives. Mine because Mason was gone. His because he dug up a family secret. See, Mason's father has two families: one here and one in Mexico. Mason is the youngest of five children total, Londa and Gabe being his full brother and sister.

His half sister, Clara, had come to visit the summer before. The trip was a birthday present. She had just turned twenty. She made the best tortillas, and we ate our fill while teaching her dirty words in English. We said she'd need to know them now that she was living in the States. She laughed, ruffled Mason's hair, and said he was just like their brother Pedro. He'd shrugged off her comment, thinking he was nothing like Pedro. Pedro, he imagined, was more like Gabe, a tall, muscular teenager interested in cars and girls. Or maybe girls, then cars.

But when he met Pedro the awful summer that followed, he learned Clara was right. Pedro wasn't much older than Gabe like he had thought he would be. He was fourteen-just a year older than Mason and me. And the math was off. Seriously off.

Gabe confirmed Mason's suspicions-that Pedro was their half brother and, yes, his father had cheated on their mom with Clara's mother. Pedro was the result. Mason asked Gabe why no one in the family ever told him about the affair. And Gabe said, "You've always known about Pedro. I just didn't know you thought he was eighteen."

In Mason's mind, Pedro's age changed everything.

He had heard the family story that his father wasn't there when he was born-a month premature. He knew that his mom had named him Mason and that his father didn't like it-he had planned on naming him Diego so all five of them would have Spanish names. Now Mason knew about Pedro, and-according to Londa-that their father had been in Mexico with Pedro instead of at the hospital with their mom.

Mason is his mother's maiden name, and it fits-because he is pretty brick-headed sometimes. That summer, Mason built a wall between himself and his father. He stopped speaking Spanish. Not a word. He signed up for French the following year, even though he could have tested out of all the foreign language credits, like Gabe and Londa did. And now? Exchanges between Mason and his father sound pretty much like what just happened in the kitchen.

"Do you think Sal would hire me?" Mason asks, breaking the silence.

"You want to mow lawns?"

"More like I don't want to work for my dad."

"Probably," I say. "I'll tell Frank you're interested."

"Thanks," he says, and takes a bite of his burger. When he's finished chewing, he changes the topic. "You should ask that art-geek girl to prom. I think she likes you."

"Challis? She's a lesbian. And pissed that she didn't get into Gumshoe," I say, even though Challis would be a perfect prom date. If she wasn't mad at me.

"No. The other one. The one you sit with?"

"Eden O'Shea?"

"Yeah."

"Eden likes me?" I never got that vibe from her. I mean, we're strictly platonic.

"In a googly-eyed-fan-girl way, yeah."

"It's not like that."

Mason presses his lips together, but the corner of his mouth curls up in a grin.

I elbow him.

"Sooo . . . ," he drawls. "You're just friends, huh?"

"Yeah. Just friends."

"Girls don't want to go as friends, though," Mason says. "They want romance, slow dancing, hotel rooms."

"Hotel rooms?" I hadn't thought of that.

"Yeah, duh. Why do you think prom is at the Riverside Hotel?"

The color has probably drained from my face. There is no way I'd be caught dead in a hotel room with a girl. Okay, well, maybe if I were dead.

"Kidding," Mason says quietly, bumping my shoulder.

I bump his shoulder back and let the silence fall around us once again. We don't talk, just eat. Our elbows brush each other's on occasion, but neither of us moves away.

FIVE.

Michael has a date. Mason has a date. The popular guys like Brodie and Kellen have had dates since elementary school. I still do not have a prom date.

But this doesn't stop me from marching up to the prom ticket table after school. "Two please," I say to Bahti.

"We're sharing a limo," she says in her British-tinged accent.

"Yeah." I hand her the money.

"Who's your date?" she asks, friendly because we know each other from band.

"Dunno."

"You don't know?" she asks. "Prom is a week and a half away, Jamie. All my friends are taken."

Thank God, I almost blurt. Because Bahti's friends are supersmart-like Mason-and I don't want to spend the evening comparing GPAs. (For the record, I am not a runner-up for anything.) Then I remember my manners and say, "That so?"

"So sorry. Good luck." She hands me my tickets with a smile that's edged with pity.

At home I drop my backpack on the floor, shout "I'm home," and head to the kitchen for a snack. I make a triple-decker-raspberry-jam PB&J, take the carton of milk into the living room, and collapse on the couch in front of the TV. A Jerry Springer rerun is on, and I watch it on mute-Mom doesn't want the twins to hear people argue like that. It's funnier this way, anyway. A heavy chick's arm flab jiggles as she jabs a finger at a rapping midget.

Ann Marie waddles in, holding out my English notebook as if it is some sort of present.

"Thank you," I coo to her sweetly, while my mind says, Oh crap.

The twins got into my backpack. Or, well, Elisabeth has it hiked up over one shoulder and is dragging it around behind her, upside down, its contents spilling out in a slow-motion avalanche.

I take another bite of my sandwich and tiptoe after her-so she won't break into a run.

"Oh, honey, thank you," Mom says in the other room. Ann Marie must have given her some of my homework to do.

I coax my backpack away from Elisabeth by convincing her it's time to play baby dolls, then I sweep my stuff back inside before Ann Marie returns for another load.

I'm sitting on the floor of the twins' room, rocking a doll in one arm while Elisabeth holds a bottle to its lips, when my mom appears in the doorway.

"Who's the lucky guy?" she asks, fanning herself with my prom tickets.

"Mom!" My cheeks grow warm.

"Oh, you don't have to tell me," she says. "I was just curious."

"It's just that-Well, I don't know yet."

She laughs gently then asks, "Can I pay for your tickets anyway?"

I nod, not having the heart to tell her that I'll probably chicken out and ask a girl, not a guy, to prom. Which I could, technically. But it doesn't seem worth the fuss, even if I liked someone, which I don't. Lincoln High isn't exactly crawling with cute gay guys, except maybe a sophomore or two. I wonder if Mom will be disappointed. She's been this way-eager-ever since I came out to her, as if she can't wait for me to bring a boyfriend home to meet her.

"Burp," Elisabeth says.

I shift a doll over my shoulder and pat its back absentmindedly.

I never had baby dolls, never played dress up in my mom's high heels, and never wanted to join the cheerleading squad, so it wasn't like my mom knew I was gay. So I had to come out to her and Frank. Believe me, it was the worst thing ever. It's not like they kicked me out of the house or sent me to boarding school or anything, but it was awful. I wanted to tell them before they got married, just in case big guy's guy Frank had a problem with having a gay step-kid. But as the weeks and months passed by, they picked out flowers, hired a photographer, and ordered cake-and I kept choking on the words. The longer it dragged on, the harder it got to say. I couldn't sleep at night, and my stomach was a constant knot of worry. I lost a few pounds, dragged myself out of bed in the morning, and watched way too many talk shows after school.

My mom was convinced that something was wrong with me and made a doctor's appointment for me. Then, when the doctor confirmed that I was physically fine, she made me an appointment with a counselor. And counselor is a nice word for shrink. So I said it. In the car, on the way to the shrink's. "Mom, I'm gay."

She pulled over-right there on Capitol Boulevard-and gave me a great big hug. She started crying, and I thought it was because she was upset. No one wants a gay kid, right? All parents want is weddings and daughters-in-law and grandchildren, right? Well, no. My mom was happy about it! She asked if I was seeing anyone. And her face fell a little when I said no. But I was in ninth grade, for Pete's sake.

"You have to tell Frank and Grandma," I informed her. Coming out once was all I had in me.

"You sure?" she asked, mopping up tears with a yellow Wendy's napkin she found in the console. "It's your special news."