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announced the name of the previous year’s recipient: JORDAN CHARBONNET
    Stephen stared blankly at the name. At first it didn’t register.
    His eyes traveled up to the young man’s face. Jordan Charbonnet’s black hair was as sculpted as the proportioned, muscular figure that was clearly contained beneath his blazer and tie. Jordan’s brown eyes and slightly full, auburn lips gleamed against immaculate olive skin.
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    Dread left Stephen. As he gazed up at Jordan Charbonnet, he felt a sudden quiet pass over his soul. Jordan Charbonnet was a vision, a god, and Stephen Conlin was hungry for the divine.
    Jordan Charbonnet.
    Finally, it registered. Brandon’s brother.
    Stephen had only glimpsed Jordan several times, years before. His only knowledge of him had been the tales of his sexual conquests that Brandon had related to all of them—stories that repulsed Meredith, fascinated Greg, and flushed Stephen with an excitement he could not yet understand.
    On that November day, Jordan Charbonnet stood before Stephen Conlin smiling with a pride that Stephen felt had been stolen from him. The purity of desire filled him for the first time with sustenance rather than envy. Jordan Charbonnet’s beauty spoke to Stephen louder than the whispers of the three friends who had abandoned and branded him. And Stephen knew that a feeling so strong and so immediate could not be destroyed by the cruelty of others. His desire offered him promise. It would, he hoped, armor his soul, protecting the most vital parts of who he might someday be allowed to be.
    I must dream about you, Stephen thought, I must take you from this picture and place you firmly in my soul.
    Five minutes had passed. Stephen thought it had been an hour. He gauged the distance between himself and the picture, and the front doors. He took one step forward, and then lifted the picture off its nails. Without a single witness, Stephen walked out of Cannon with Jordan Charbonnet under one arm.
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    M eredith’s fifteenthbirthdaycameonemonthafterThanks-giving and her father gave her a car, a brand-new Toyota 4-Runner fully equipped with CD changer and leather seats, to which Trish Ducote commented, “He could at least have waited until Christmas!”
    As Meredith would realize later, her father had an ulterior motive for making a gift of the car. When Ronald Ducote divorced Trish, he un-protestingly departed their Garden District mansion, the Dubossant residence, which had originally belonged to Marie Dubossant, Trish’s grandmother, and surrendered any claim to Trish Ducote’s sizeable inheritance and mutual funds. The car was meant to prove that Ronald now had money of his own and Trish could finally just give in and go back to her maiden name. Why Trish kept her married name baffled most people, but Ronald had told Meredith he thought it was a deliberate gesture meant to intimidate his girlfriends. Ducote was a
    “yat” name, indigenous to the less wealthy residents of New Orleans who were more Italian than French and lived in the suburbs hugging the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. A “yat” had a Brooklyn-esque accent, a mother with big hair, and a tendency to use the expression “Where y’at?” when inquiring about someone’s well-being. Hence the term yat, and hence the reason Meredith’s parents had divorced. Meredith knew her father had been a yat, much in the same way that Stephen’s mother, Monica, had been a poor Irish girl from the wrong side of Magazine Street. While Trish Ducote had spent her youth at debuts and Mardi Gras balls, Ronald had attended crab boils and gone on fishing trips to Manshack.
    Christmas break was several weeks away the day Meredith skipped cheerleading practice and drove to an area along the Mississippi River known as “the Fly”, a stretch of grassy, hillocky riverbank that was 34
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    home to middle school soccer games and several jungle gyms. Meredith came here to contemplate most things she