Read Noggin for Free Online Page B

identity crisis. Maybe you can be gay and then not be gay a few years later. I wasn’t sure. That didn’t really sound right to me, though. But I’d been asleep for half a decade and was starting high school all over again the next day, so I didn’t have much time to figure it all out for him. Plus, who was I to disappear and then show back up all these years later and start calling people out on their problems?
    There are certain things that change with time, things like the skyline of your city, the size and shape of the cars beside you on the road, and even how people are wearing their blue jeans, really tight on their calves. But other things, things like your parents, don’t really change at all. And I knew this immediately when my mom and dad started arguing over where to go shopping.
    “The place with all the fancy stores? Do we really need to go there?” Dad asked.
    “That’s the one. They have everything. It’s a nice evening—we can take our time, get some fresh air walking around, and do a little shopping.” Mom was ready for his dissent.
    “Anywhere’s fine, really,” I said. “I just need some jeans and a shirt or two.”
    “No, Travis. You’re not going to keep wearing the same outfit I bought you in Denver. School’s about to start, and you’re getting whatever you want today, no arguments.” Mom was using the visor mirror of my dad’s car to put on her mascara, something she’d done since I could remember.
    “Sharon, if there were something he wanted, he’d tell us, don’t you think?”
    She ignored him, opting instead to continue talking to me and asking me what size pants I thought I needed now.
    “I dunno,” I said.
    “I’m thinking thirty-two thirty-four. You look a little bigger now. More filled out, I mean.”
    “You guys didn’t save any of my old clothes?”
    “No, honey. We gave most of them to your cousins. You know, Chase and Chad. The twins.”
    “Wow,” I said. “They’re old now, I guess.”
    “Fourteen last month.”
    “They’re even worse now,” Dad chimed in.
    “Ray,” Mom said. “They’re nice boys.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself, too.
    “Travis, believe me. They’re holy terrors,” Dad said.
    “They’re . . . unique.” Mom slapped Dad on the arm, her smile unable to be stopped.
    “Yes, Travis. They are unique. In that same way that serial killers are unique.”
    “And now they’ve got all my clothes. Great,” I said, laughing.
    By the time we found parking and were finally walking down the sidewalk, it was turning dark out and the lights from the insides of the large-windowed stores stretched at least halfway into the streets. For whatever reason, this made me remember going there with Cate and Kyle during one of my last healthy days. We had walked around, drunk coffee, and mostly played in the Apple Store while our phones recharged. Kyle had pretended to flirt with some girl at the Genius Bar, and Cate and I had made out by the iPods. It had been awesome, just a simple afternoon before everything got bad.
    Several people noticed me before my parents and I even made it inside the store. They knew me from somewhere—that’s what their expressions said, at least. I even saw some kid snap a photo of me with her phone and run over to her friend and start whispering into her ear.
    Mom kept piling clothes on me—T-shirts, jeans, pants, hoodies—everything she saw, basically. It was like wehadn’t really stopped moving from the moment we walked through the door to the time we’d made it to the dressing room. I could barely see over the clothes in my arms.
    “These are pretty tight,” I said, walking out to model a pair of jeans for my mom.
    “It’s the style.”
    “I don’t understand. I can hardly move.”
    “Do you want to try a bigger size?”
    I tried the bigger size, and even though they were easier to button, they still hugged me all weird around the thighs.
    “Are these girl jeans, Mom?”
    “No,