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gay.”
    We all went to sit down in the TV room, where Taber The Giant was stretched out watching SportsCenter.
    “When’s the Midsummer Party?” I asked.
    “June 20,” Tom said, sounding tired, as if it he was the one making the fairy costumes himself.
    June 20 was my birthday. I was turning eighteen. Though I would be a senior—if I bothered to set foot in a school again, that is—I was always the oldest kid in my class, as my mother had held me back from kindergarten. My mother hadn’t been one of those grasping, hovering moms—I mostly remember her as a very calm woman who was always reading—but apparently she thought me too much of an idiot to handle sitting still for storytime with everyone else. But for some reason, being held back like this made me feel stupid, so I never mentioned my birthday as a rule.
    “We should do the ’shrooms on Midsummer,” Jim said.
    “That would make it less gay.”
    “Looking at a bunch of glitter and rainbows isn’t gay enough?” Tom asked. “You want to hallucinate on top of that ?”
    “I can’t figure out what Baker’s mom is doing with that gay guy,” Taber said suddenly. “I mean, he teaches yoga? To goats?”
    This was very funny to me, mostly because Taber talked very slowly, like he’d taken too many hits on the football field without a helmet.
    “It’s a sheep farm,” Jim said. “Keir just teaches yoga on the side. But they sleep together,” he added. “Baker says they share a bedroom.”
    “Maybe they just do each other’s hair?” Tom said.
    “No, it’s some fucked-up feminist thing,” Jim shook his head. “Some shit where you act as gay as Christmas and women think it’s hot. At least weird professor women like Brenda think it’s hot.”
    “What’s she a professor of?” I asked.
    “History or something.” Jim was all pissy, like it made him mad that people did history for a career. “I think the dumb non-monogramy thing was Brenda’s idea too.”
    I was kind of loving it that he mispronounced this again and might have laughed, but I had to let it ride, since he’d been smoking weed and I was lucky to string together three words in a row when I was high.
    “What does that even mean?” Tom asked.
    “It’s like an open relationship,” Jim explained. “We’re together, but we can see other people. She said it’s that or we just break up completely. At first, I was like, ‘Okay, is this a trick?’”
    Jim’s head lolled back on the sofa, like he was exhausted by such complexity. “She thinks it’ll make it easier when we leave for college, because she doesn’t believe in long-distance relationships.”
    “Where’s Baker going to college?” I asked.
    “Out in Oregon somewhere. But I don’t think she’ll hook up with anyone else. She’s so fucking picky about everything.
    Like she’ll be able to find anyone who’ll do everything how she wants.” He didn’t sound exactly smug about this but more like he recognized that his own stellar capacity struggled to keep up with her requirements.
    Aside from his super-white teeth—which were somewhat gay to me, in all their upkeep—Jim was a handsome guy. Easy to see why any girl would want him. He had normal hair—
    not all gelled and stupid—and the muscles I would like to have but never do because the strutting-douche quotient in school weight rooms is always too high. Still, Jim looked like the kind of guy whose favorite place to eat was a sports bar. Who’d probably grow up to be the vice president of something and make more money than was reasonable and who’d marry a superhot chick but still secretly go to titty bars. I naturally leaned toward hating such a guy—would’ve hated him before my elf ears and chemo hair patheticness too.
    “Hey, maybe all the girls will decide to go for that …
    thing ,” Tom said, not mentioning non-monogamy, as if he wasn’t sure how it was truly pronounced.
    Then Kelly K. dribbled into the room, looking all girl-wasted, and