He was unremarkable. He had no diagnoses. No dyslexia or numerophobia or even ADHD, which at least would have earned him time-and-a-half on the SAT. According to the official records, he had a normal attention span. Average math skills. A moderate interest in history and science—he was in chemistry now and felt a quiet fondness for the periodic table printed on the inside cover of his textbook. There was an order to it, a totality, that reassured him. He hated English, which was all opinions and loose ends.
At school, he was well aware of all the ways in which he was not enough. For example, in history class it was not enough for him to know the basic components of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. He was expected to grasp its nuances, its causes and implications. More than this, he was expected to have an opinion—to be like Abigail Cress, who could articulate a fully formed thesis about any topic imaginable. He had heard her debate the New Deal, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Sunnis and the Shi‘ites, evolution versus creationism, the proper technique for dissecting an earthworm, the literary merit of Harry Potter, and the superiority of Lanc?me mascara. He was in awe of her, and a little afraid. He knew that in his parents’ eyes he ought to be like her. If only he would work a little harder.
On his report card, it was not enough to have that hard-won column of B-pluses; in his parents’ eyes he might as well have failed. In group presentation projects, it was not enough for him to do exactly his share of the work (three slides, two references, two minutes on the Key Components of the New Deal) and no more. Yet this was what he did. He left it to the Abigail Cresses and the Nick Brickstons to show off—Abigail did this by making seven extra slides with historical photos from an expensive Internet archive and delivering a memorized speech aided by color-coded notecards, Nick by patching together a single slide with nothing but jokes about President Roosevelt’s wheelchair and Mrs. Roosevelt’s horse face and then charming their teacher by stretching his allotted two minutes into six with what could only be described as a last-chance audition for an improv troupe, as Abigail seethed behind him.
After school, Dave played soccer. An average member of an average team. Every afternoon, he arrived at practice on time with his shorts and jersey clean, cleats tied. He ran the warm-up lap and drills knowing he was not the fastest or the slowest, not the preternaturally graceful Ryan Harbinger yet not a klutz. He rarely scored goals but happily assisted other, better players in the mad pack-run down the field. Most of his friends were on the team, and he loved to practice. But he hated the games, because his parents attended. As soon as he felt them there, he had to strive for points, elbowing opponents and herding the ball toward the goal line, all the while sweating under his oppressive swoop of hair that he could not cut because to do so would be to break his mother’s heart.
—
After dinner Dave retreated to his room and closed the door, but his mother pushed in anyway.
She stood on the square red rug in the center of the room, which was lit by the gentle glow of Dave’s soccer-ball desk lamp. The room had light blue walls, bare except for one Ansel Adams poster—a black-and-white photograph of Muir Woods redwoods reaching into gloom—that had hung above Dave’s bed for as long as he had slept there. The bed’s beige comforter masked Superman sheets. Beside it sat a small maple desk, so close that he could roll out of bed and into the black desk chair with hardly a step between. His desktop was bare except for the soccer-ball lamp, a Mason jar of mechanical pencils, a tray of paper clips, and a laptop computer.
Dave’s backpack slumped on the floor by the desk, yawning to reveal a crowd of books and binders. His desk drawers were full as well—of papers tumbled and dog-eared and torn; broken sticks of lead and crumbles of eraser; movie-ticket stubs; scribbled-on school pictures; four Harry Potter figurines and a pack of Batman Silly Bandz from when he was a kid; a hot-pink condom handed to him by a member of the HIV Awareness Club on the first day of his freshman year; a crumpled picture of Kate Upton in a white bikini, ripped from the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue that Jonas Everett had brought over; a pile of metallic origami papers from sixth grade; a half-drafted love note to Elisabeth Avarine that would have looked to anyone at first glance like a list of SAT Most Commons (abundance, adulation, impetuous, inevitable) and which, after what had happened to Tristan Bloch, he knew better than to send—but these were Dave’s secrets. The drawers were shut.
“David?” his mother said. “Why are you hiding here? We’re not finished with our talk.”