In the mirror, I expanded my chest, stood straight, and said, "I am huge."

Two minutes later, I'd thrown on sweats (not to look like a jock but because all my pants were too short and they made me feel dumb) and I was upstairs, ready to face Aleah and her dad, to show that Reinsteins aren't just a bunch of freaks.

I walked into the living room. Jerri and Aleah's dad were sitting in the leather chairs talking about the college or something. Not a terrible scene. Aleah, who was wearing an orange sort of airy kind of sundress and looked completely, utterly awesome, sat across the coffee table from Andrew. They weren't saying anything.

"Hello," I said and smiled while I walked in.

"It's the paperboy," Aleah's dad said. "You look bigger in the daytime."

"I'm growing," I told him.

"You do look tall," Jerri said, then stared at me and cocked her head a little. She breathed out really hard. "Umm, I guess you've met Aleah?"

"Yeah," I smiled.

Aleah's mouth was open. Her eyes were watery. She looked sort of stunned.

"Uh, hiayoua"

"Hi. It's Felton," I said.

"Hi, Felton," she said.

And then I blushed. I couldn't take my eyes off her eyes. We were in this tractor beam of eyeball heat.

"I could be a zookeeper," Andrew blurted. "That wouldn't bother me in the slightest. I could pick up animal poop all day. I'd be happy working at the zoo."

"Oh," Aleah sort of whispered, still looking at me.

"I could be a veterinarian or an astronaut or aa" Andrew nodded.

"Andrew. Have you played anything for Aleah?" I asked without looking at him.

"That'd be great, Andrew. Play something for me," Aleah said without taking her eyes off mine.

"I wouldn't want to be a medical doctor. I don't like people," Andrew said. Then, he got up and played piano.

Andrew is really good. People hear him and they can't believe he's thirteen. He's small, like I'd always been before the fur growth, but with big hands (I also have really big hands), and he puts his face close to the keys and looks up at the music and then back at the keys, which is sort of intriguing because it is so odd, and it seems impossible a tiny guy, so frail, can get so much sound out of a giant piano.

Neither Aleah nor I heard a single note he played. He must've played for ten minutes while Aleah and I stared at each other.

Then Jerri applauded and Aleah's dad said, "Boy's got chops." Then there were crackers and cheese, which I didn't eat. Andrew talked and Aleah nodded. I made a joke and Aleah laughed. Her dad laughed. Jerri laughed, not in a psycho way but in the sort of sweet, singy way she used to laugh. Aleah and I looked at each other.

"I don't miss Chicago so much today," she said.

"I don't miss my old friend Gus that much," I told her.

Aleah and I looked at each other. Andrew talked. Jerri and Aleah's dad laughed. Jerri smiled huge. Andrew stopped talking. Andrew left the room. Jerri talked. Andrew came back dressed in his white orchestra jacket, wearing a bow tie. I laughed. Andrew played piano some more. Andrew bowed. Aleah and I looked at each other. Aleah's dad said it was about that time. Aleah gave me her cell number and told me she'd be playing piano for me in the morning. I walked her to the door, and I guess her dad was with her, and I guess Jerri and Andrew were probably at the door too. But I honestly don't remember. All I remember is Aleah walking to the car, backward walking so she could look at me and smile at me, and then she was gone. And I stared up the road, where dust from the Jenningses' car hung in the summer air.

"Felton?" Jerri asked.

"Ass brain," Andrew said.

"Hello," I nodded at them both.

CHAPTER 17: IT'S 3 A.M.

I just turned my light off.

I'm achy and would like to fall asleep thinking about Aleah at my house that first day because that was good. But I can't sleep. I can't. I can't!

In the past, after Andrew had a piano recital, which I would go to very grudgingly because I can be a jerk, he'd stay up until all hours of the night replaying the songs to try to burn it all into his memory or something. Jerri used to stay up with him, and she'd applaud after every replay and shout "Bravo!" They'd talk, and he'd play, and she'd clap and shout. I'd lie in the basement buried in pillows, going crazy, trying to get some sleep (even with my door shut, I'd very easily hear the piano vibrating through the floor like it was right next to my ear). He'd play and play and play. Crazy.

I understand.

I turned my light back on.

3 a. freaking m.!

Go. Go. Go.

CHAPTER 18: I LIKE ME SOME FRIENDS.

After the Jenningses left that day, I sat stunned in my room for a while. I wanted to tell someone about Aleah. Gus was the obvious choice, but I didn't want to send him email after email without him ever replying because I'd feel like a dork. I checked email again, hoping for Gus. No Gus.

I did have email though.

Cody sent me a link to a YouTube video of a dude named Jay Landry who is on St. Mary's Springs, the team Bluffton was to play in its first game of the season. Cody wrote: check it. he's a safety. big time. going to notre dame after next year. we'll beat him.

The video was set to some kind of screamy speed metal and was just a bunch of clips of this Jay Landry hitting people on the football field, totally killing them, knocking the ball out of their hands, hitting receivers trying to make catches, standing over kids he's knocked totally stupid, shouting, and flexing.

Oh my Jesus God, I thought. Is this really what's going to happen to me? Does Cody think I'm going to like football after watching this? I do not want to have my whole curly Jew-fro head knocked off my shoulders by Jay Landry. Jesus.

I closed the YouTube window and looked back at email.

No, no, no. Nothing from Gus. Man!

So I decided to be a dork. I wrote: what if i said i love beautiful piano girl who lives in your bedroom and also that i am on football team and i am d-i football prospect and i jammed a basketball and i am smelly and in love?

His response came back in two minutes: what in hell you talking about? mom annoying as crap and i cant be on computer and grandmas apartment smells like poop and everybody hates me. i hatea Before I finished reading Gus's message, I received another email and went back to my inbox. Three messages in one day that weren't all from Gus (only one was from Gus)? I was on record pace!

It was from Cody again: me and karpinski going to grill and watch longest yard (bad football movie) sometime next week. you wanna hit that?

I responded right away: sounds good, man. thanks for video. jay landry is an animal. scary!!!

Cody messaged back right away: landry is good, but you'll be better.

I jumped out of my chair and then sat back down. I shook my head. I'm going to be better than that animal? Then this occurred to me: I might suddenly have friends and a girlfriend. Are you kidding? That sounded really good, even if I'd have to grill out with Karpinski, one of the worst honkies on record (sorry).

What a day!

I mean, this is really the thing: I'd never had a girlfriend. The closest I ever came was in fifth grade when Abby Sauter lived in a house on the golf course, and we walked home from school together every day for about six weeks. One day, she said, "You're my boyfriend. I wrote it in my diary." After that, I almost passed out every time she was within twenty feet of me. I stopped walking home with her, running out the door after school to avoid her but tried to smile when I saw her in the hall.

By the next year, she was sticking pencils down the back of my pants and calling me Rein Stone in Mr. Ross's independent study hour, which I totally didn't get. Why is Rein Stone funny? It's just my name with a vowel changed. When I cried, Jerri told me that kids have funny ways of showing they like each other. Oh, right, Jerri. She liked me because she stuck pencils in my pants. Great! I harbored the totally ridiculous notion that Abby was my girlfriend for another year.

Then in seventh grade, Abby, who had just gotten really tall and gotten boobs, shoved me against a locker so hard my head bounced off the metal. She pinned me there and breathed on my face because she'd just eaten a bag of Doritos. Jess Withrow shouted "Gross!" I figured at that point, Abby had broken up with me. My stomach hurt for a month.

But not long after, me, Gus, and Peter realized that honkies were honkies and were different than us and that we hated them.

In eighth grade, I got called Gay Boy Rein Stone so much that I began to figure I was gay, even though I was attracted to girls, especially Abby Sauter, who I believed to be a terrible person, but I couldn't help it. I thought about how I'd like to smell her Doritos breath again.

Then, in high school, the upper classes changed my name to Squirrel Nuts or Squirrel Nut and didn't invoke Rein Stone as much, and I felt like Squirrel Nutsa"jumpy and flinching, staring out across the lunch room, nibbling my food fast. My shiny, secret rocks and crystals were squirreled away in my leather pouch in my pocket, and I was so wary of the dangers presenta"ready to hop and hightail it.

Romance, gay or otherwise, didn't occur to me, not even when I searched for Ladies in Swimsuits on the Internet (which I did a lot all sophomore year).

Then I grew tall and strong and hairy and fast and a famous African American pianist, the most beautiful person I've ever seen in my entire life, told me she'd be playing music for me when I showed up at her house in the morning to drop off the paper.

As I lay in bed that night, I thought, "Aleah Jennings, you are my girlfriend." Yes, that was a littleaWhat's that word? Presumative? Presumptive? Let me look it up.

Presumptuous!

Then, because I'd lifted weights and changed into another human being completely in one day (evolved from squirrel nut donkey boy to big) and was thus completely exhausted, I slept like a freaking rock.

CHAPTER 19: JERRI DRINKS SOME WINE.

I can't say that any real alarm bells had gone off before then. Yes, Jerri had called me an f-bomber, and yes, I'd made a pledge not to speak to her or Andrew ever again. But as I've said, Jerri had always been a little strange, and I'd just figured out that normal for me was not normal at all, not remotely, and I suppose I figured we'd just keep rolling along and we'd all figure it out or whatever, and I didn't follow through on not speaking to my family, and Jerri had seemed warm and happy while the Jenningses were over.

But the next morning was the first morning of the rest of my life.

My alarm went off, and I turned to stop its music but could almost not turn at all. "Whoa. Ouch." I struggled and had to basically fling my hand at the alarm clock because I could not control my shoulder muscles. "Owwww." I moved to leave bed, but everything burned. All my muscles were on fire. "Ahhhh!" I cried out. Had I caught polio or multiple sclerosis or cystic fibrosis or cirrhosis of the liver? Every little piece of me just totally killed. "Ahhhhh!" I had to lift my legs with my aching arms to get them out of bed. "What the hell is going on?"

I lumbered into shorts and a shirt and a windbreaker. I stumbled up the stairs, using my aching arms to steady me so I wouldn't fall over. I stumbled down the hall into Jerri's room, convinced she'd have to drive me on the route or I wouldn't make it because I'd caught multiple sclerosis.

But Jerri's room was empty.

The light was off. I pressed on the bed, but she wasn't in there. I moved to the door and leaned out into the hall. "Jerri?" I whispered, trying not to wake Andrew.

No one answered.

I lumbered back down the hall, holding myself against the wall.

"Jerri?" I said louder.

No one answered.

The light was out in Andrew's room, but the door was open a crack. I pressed my lips into the crack and whispered, "Andrew?"

No one answered. No one made a noise.

Andrew didn't seem to be breathing in there. I reached through the door and turned on the light in his bedroom. I poked my head in. His bed was made. He was gone.

"What the hell is going on?" I shouted. No one responded.

As fast as I could on my broken limbs, I rumbled through the house shouting, begging for a response. The house was totally empty. I began to panic. Had aliens attacked us overnight? Had they taken Jerri and Andrew and poisoned me so my body would not work, so I could not pursue them (I pictured poor Andrew and Jerri undergoing total butt probes and screaming in pain)? Had kidnappers released gas into the house, knocked us all out, robbed us blind, taken my little brother and mother? I flipped on light switch after light switch, shedding light in every room. Nothing was out of place. If robbers had robbed us, I couldn't see what they'd taken.

I tripped back downstairs calling for my family, nearly in tears from the pain and the loss of my potentially butt-probed family.

I do have experience with the world turning inside out. This was all so weird, like the day when I was five when my dad died. I was five. Five. But everything felt out of whack, was out of whack. Bizarro world.

While I stumbled around the house, everything felt out of whack.

Should I call the police, I wondered? I couldn't do it. Not yet. Maybe Jerri was outside. Maybe she was gardening at dawn. Maybe Andrew was helping her. Andrew never helped her, but maybe, because he knew he wasn't the best piano player in town, he was looking for a new career. As a gardener. Or a butt-probe victim.

"Oh my God. Oh my God," I mumbled, stumbling down the hall to the garage door.

I kicked open the garage door, terrified of what I might see on the other side (as I saw something terrible in the garage once before). This is what I saw: The light was on. Jerri's Hyundai was gone. Andrew was standing in there next to his bike, looking out the open garage. He turned to me and said, "Good morning, Felton. Ready to deliver some papers?"

"Where's Jerri?" I shouted.

"What's wrong with your head?" he asked. "It looks crooked."