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“It sucks that you have to wait four more years to graduate,” I say.
Theo claps his hands urgently. “I’m going to need to ask everyone to go home so I can have the entire place alone with my boyfriend.” There are a couple of laughs but mainly just blushing and wide-eyed looks from our parents. “Please leave all the gifts.” He looks around. “Wait. There aren’t any gifts? New mission! Please leave and go buy me something nice and return in a couple of hours. Thank you.”
No one leaves to buy Theo gifts.
His parents offer him a sip of celebratory wine, maybe half believing it might actually be his first sip, but he passes once he sees me holding a green graduation cap I bought off some graduating senior earlier this month. Theo lowers his head and lets me crown him. Everyone stops what they’re doing to get photos of Theo in his cap. Russell encourages our squad to get together for what he calls a “family photo.” I wonder how much of a family we’ll be once it’s just Wade and me and Theo is in California, but right now we’re at our tightest since Theo and I came out.
“You’re a mind reader,” Theo tells me.
“Not really,” I admit. “A lot of your confusion about whether you should stay or go had to do with not seeing high school through until graduation. You never got your glory.”
“And now I’m saying peace out before I can be declared valedictorian of my year,” Theo says, as if graduating school a year early isn’t a bigger win. “I’m sure Suzanne Banks will get it now, but she’ll always be salutatorian in my heart.”
“Check your pillow.”
“Is something there?”
“If Wade is good at favors, there should be.”
“It’s there,” Wade says.
Wade and I follow Theo into his room where he rushes to pick up the fake diploma I created for him:
theodore daniel mcintyre
valedictorian and
the most badass human in the universe
TODAY
Thursday, December 1st, 2016
Once Jackson gets off the phone with his mother, I’ll wish him a happy birthday. It’s five in the morning in Santa Monica, but I’m not surprised that Ms. Lane is the kind of mother who wakes up this early to call her son on his birthday. I’m impressed she beat me to the punch, considering Jackson was sleeping six feet away from me.
I sit up in bed, thinking about how December is kicking off with a few firsts. It’s the first month you’re not alive, which also means we’re approaching one whole month without you. It’s Jackson’s first time celebrating his birthday in New York, away from his parents. It’s the first snow day from school—a cancellation we were happy to receive last night from the school board even though I hate blizzards.
I, uh, need a fourth first . . .
Okay, okay.
I’m having trouble. Help me out here, Theo. You used to be so good at helping me even things out. I’m trying to guess what you would say right now. I look around the room, which you always advised was a good place to start. Most times you’d save me from the landslides of panic; I feel one bouldering through me now.
I don’t know if I’m imagining it or not, but my heart is speeding up faster than usual. I’m desperate for anything, sort of like when two people are having an awkward silence and everything would be slightly better if someone said something . . .
I got it! Today is the first time I will go out into the snow and play as a present to Jackson.
Damn it. You should’ve reminded me I’m meeting Jackson’s friends later for the first time; you know we have dinner plans. I can’t get it out of my head now; it’s clicked as a fifth, registered itself in my head. I need a sixth first now. I’m in a good place if I think up something else after the sixth since I’ll hit a seventh and maybe even an eighth, and, wow, if I hit all those, I will be pretty close to ten firsts today. Hitting that record is tempting.
I can’t.
My heart is rioting, my chest is tightening, my throat is swallowing nothing, and my fingernails are going to war against my palm.
Jackson notices. But he’s in the middle of pulling on his second sock, and he stops. He moves the phone away from his mouth and asks me if I’m okay.
“Put your other sock on, please,” I say.
“I have to call you back, Mom.” Jackson hangs up on his mother and immediately pulls on his other sock. I need the balance of two socks on two feet almost as much as I need a sixth first.
