Read The Youth & Young Loves of Oliver Wade: Stories for Free Online Page A

The inner ring spins, and you see the pics through the window. and the movement makes them animate, like a flip-book. IN
THEORY! However, I made the inner ring too big, so it’s too tight. and the
bastard does not SPIN.
    Boydyboy: so what! Mr gruber is a lightweight... as long as you made the effort he’ll grade you OK. it
sounds somewhat cool.
    OwOw0: HAHA! “Somewhat.” Eat a dick, Boyd.
    Boydyboy: haahahaha
    OwOw0: everyone is gonna look at it and say “What’s a zoo-trophy?”
It’s pitiful, you’ll see. However: the way I wrote “Zoetrope” on it is fucking
awesome!
    Boydyboy: That should get you a B+ right there.
    OwOw0: I don’t even care. I’ve got other more important things to
worry about in life than zoo- trophys .
    Boydyboy: seriously. fucking sci fairs.
we’ll be out soon though. i can’t wait till college,
Ollie bolly bo bolly .

 
    Yeah, everything Boydyboy said made me happy. The way he
gave me shit about stuff, the way he bounced my name across the screen like a
rubber ball: Ollie bolly bo bolly . The way he
almost never talked about girls and the way he griped if I logged off too
early. At the end of our chat sessions, which sometimes went three or four
hours, my face hurt from smiling.

 
    ***

 
    At the science fair Boyd froze a wart off the vice
principal’s thumb but his project didn’t win. Probably that was because his
liquid nitrogen sat undemonstrated for most of the fair while he hung out at my
table, on the other side of the school gym, playing with my zoetrope.
    “Look,” he said, showing me how he’d gotten the inner ring
to spin more freely. The little animation was flowing better. “Your car cartoon
actually moves now.”
    “How did you do that?”
    He handed me the zoetrope and I saw that he’d folded a
wrinkle into the posterboard to make the ring
smaller.
    “Well aren’t you a genius, Professor Wren,” I groaned.
      Smugly he crossed his
arms over his thin chest and perched his butt on the edge of my table, behind
which I sat like I was having a yard sale. I looked at his back, at his thin
yellow t-shirt, and the butt of his favorite pants, brown corduroys he’d had
since freshman year. I had watched, over time, those corduroys grow worn spots
on the bum and knees that eventually opened to holes that showed underwear and
skin. I thought of them as my holes: I’d been around when they were born and I’d
loved them as they grew. Sometimes when he was sitting I could glimpse pale
white moons of his skin through the holes in the thighs.
    Scratching his blond, cowlicky hair he said, “It looks like I’m being judged.”
    I looked over to his table across the gym. Mr. Gruber was
standing beside it with a clipboard. “You should probably go over there,” I
said.
    “Eh.” He sighed.
    He went, though—stopping on the way to tie one of his
black Adidas soccer shoes. I watched him explain his project to Mr. Gruber,
while with one finger I idly spun my zoetrope.

 
    ***

 
    Because Boyd seemed to like my little animation of a car
chase, I spent the whole next weekend creating a real-life, stop-motion version
on my bedroom floor. Using a feature on my family’s camcorder I filmed Matchbox
cars I had dusted off from childhood skidding across carpet, zooming around
bureau legs. Frame by frame. It took me hours to create fifteen seconds of
video. There were small plastic animals involved, and an explosion made from
crumpled scraps of yellow and orange construction paper. On Monday at school I
lent him the animation on videotape and that evening suffered through
thirty-one disconnects waiting to hear what he thought of it. When I finally
got online he was there. A message popped up.

 
    Boydyboy: i watched your lil movie 6 times

 
    Six times. I could feel myself glowing. At some point he
had become someone I wanted to impress.

 
    Owow0: Oh yeah? Cool. you like it?
    Boydyboy: yeah, its fuckin awesome. those
explosions must’ve been impossible!
    Owow0: