My eyes almost rolled into the back of my head when my best friend Alison begged me to go to the witchcraft store again. She was obsessed with magic, so regardless of how much I protested, she would end up dragging me there anyway. The last warm days of summer were fleeting, and Alison had kept me in that damn witchcraft store almost every day that summer. Once we got there, she zipped through the store, throwing anything with an inkling of the occult into her bag: Smelly incense? Check. Weirdly named candles? Check. Crystals that promised to absorb evil spirits? Check.

While she burned through her allowance, I walked around and stared at corny dragon and wizard statuettes, laughed at overpriced stash boxes pitched as "tarot card storage," mock danced to the spacey music flowing out of the hidden speakers, and then I saw him: the clerk. I didn't know his name, but he had brown hair, dark eyes, and leaned against the glass display counter with his expressionless face cupped in his hands. He fluttered his eyes at passing customers, yawned, looked at his watch, and exhaled, blowing his stringy hair out of his face. In this situation, being stuck in the witchcraft store, bored out of our minds, he and I were soul mates. Honestly, the only reason I went to the witchcraft store was because I hoped he'd devirginize me.

Alison had been my best friend since back before she transitioned. She was the goth type: wore black all the time, had dark make-up, and kept a Siouxsie and the Banshees poster permanently embedded in her locker. Sometimes, she'd wrap her Hot Topic rosary around her fingers, clasp her hands together, and pray to it, saying, "Hail Siouxsie full of grace!" then she'd kiss the poster, planting a big, red lipstick smear right on Siouxsie's cheek. Everyone at school thought she was a Satanist because she wore a "Hail Seitan" pin on her vegan leather jacket (they didn't get the joke). The only thing she didn't do was dye her hair black. She said that was too "conformist" . . . whatever that meant.

Alison rifled through all the books on the racks near the front counter, looking for the one that seemed "most legit." Her guidelines for determining legitimacy were constantly in flux. Sometimes she liked books that looked older—leather-bound tomes with non-descript covers—and sometimes she liked newer books that looked like they'd fallen out of bargain bins—laminated paperbacks that probably costed more now than they did when they were first put on shelves. After she moved on from the books, she eyeballed the candles. She waved me over, and we laughed at the candles because they had little, plastic labels beneath them with names like "Sexual Entity" and "Sensual Mystery" and "Erotic Daydream."

When Alison finished spending all her money, we returned to her two-story brownstone in Hyde Park. Alison's house was spooky on the outside—perfect for her—mainly because her mom and grandma refused to hire a gardener to deal with the ivy that had overgrown on one half of the house, all but engulfing her front stoop. Alison's mom, who was sick with cancer, was usually asleep upstairs, forcing us to perform our "spells" in the basement. Her grandma, a crotchety, old German woman, was either in the kitchen, mashing potatoes and sauerkraut into some unfathomable mixture and scowling at us as we snuck by, or she'd be teetering back and forth in her rocking chair in the living room, knitting and side-eyeing us as we maneuvered through the house.

Once we had descended the creaky, wooden steps into her basement, Alison forced me to pore through all her discoveries with her. She burnt different colored candles or incense while we read all kinds of silly spell books. I never cared for all the "magic." Alison would say: "Ryan, why're you so lame? Don't you want to sacrifice a chicken?" I never knew if she was serious or just messing with me. You could never tell with Alison. Regardless, I'm happy to report, we made it through that whole summer without sacrificing a single chicken.

We spent one day trying to learn object levitation, a spell Alison found in one of those clean your chakras in five easy steps books. Alison drew a pentacle on the dusty, cement floor and placed a sheet of paper in the middle of the symbol. Her basement was filled with moldering planks of wood that were lined up against the walls and piles of rusted, empty paint cans, sitting on wooden shelves and draped in cobwebs. I walked around the image, knowing if I stepped on it Alison would gouge out my eyes. Reaching the side adjacent Alison, I went to my knees.

"Okay, so we're going to do this levitation trick," Alison said.

"No chickens?"

Alison rolled her eyes at me. "No numb nuts. No chickens. Just plain ol' magic."

"So, what do we do?"

"Well, we've got to chant something. The book says what we chant isn't important as long as what we chant helps us focus on what we're trying to accomplish."

"Huh?"

"Look. The chanting, the pentacle, it's just there to help us imagine the spell."

"I don't get it."

"Well, that's why you aren't the brains of this operation. Now put your hands down around the ring and chant something."

"What?"

"I don't know just something that makes you think about floating... stuff."

"'Floating stuff'?"

"Ryan!"

"Okay, okay- floating stuff."

I placed my hands around the ring as she started chanting in Latin— well, it sounded like Latin, but it could've been anything I guess— so I muttered something in pig Latin: "oatflay aperpay" (I think). I concentrated on making the paper float, imagined it drifting up into the air like a feather and hanging there.

We chanted and chanted and chanted until I heard Alison gasp, and when I opened my eyes, the paper was floating in the air above the pentacle. We gaped at each other and both laughed. We didn't even have to keep chanting. As long as we imagined it levitating, the piece of paper stayed in the air like it was being held aloft by an invisible fishing hook.

"Oh my gosh, Ryan, we're doing it! We're really doing it!"

"Yeah. Holy crap, this is for real!"

"Alison!" Her mother bellowed from upstairs. The piece of paper fell, and Alison rushed to throw a tarp over the pentacle.

"Coming mom!" Alison replied. She craned her neck at me, so I followed her upstairs. I'll never forget that moment we made the paper float, though. I knew all our hard work had paid off. All those stupid books, all that nasty smelling incense- somewhere along the way we started learning magic.

***

This isn't happening to me again. I'm just going to walk in there, tell them all to go to hell, and they'll leave me alone. Maybe if I pretend to be someone different they'll treat me better? I just want to disappear. Okay Ryan, let's just get this over with.

That was me going through the five stages of grief every morning before school. No, no one died . . . just my soul.

High school was like a petting zoo where everyone hated me. I was the pissed off goat no one wanted to play with. They whispered things when I walked by, snickering because even though I was still in the closet, I had a reputation for being the weird gay kid. Sometimes strangers know you better than you know yourself. Maybe I was just as weird as they thought I was. A weird pissed off gay kid.

My school was a teenage waste bin. Hallway after hallway of disaffected kids, probably on their parent's pills, sitting on their phones tweeting, snap chatting, making videos, taking an infinity of selfies or whatever. Jocks manipulated impressionable cheerleaders into horrible dietary habits, guys in the band plotted romantic conquests of girls they'd never so much as talk to-it was all so depressing and alien to me. I felt like I was sheathed in a big pink bubble, and I had to make sure no one popped it. Alison said I was "defensive" and that I acted that way because I was bullied.

I was at my dingy red locker, pulling up the rusty lift handle after I spun in my combination, when Spencer Pratt, who insisted on giving me crap every morning, slammed the door shut and jarred me. "Hey!" he thrust his neck out and put his face right in mine. Spencer was a tower with a neck like a honey ham and ice-cold blue eyes; he would've been handsome to me if he wasn't such a horrendous jerk. He drew out his phone and scrolled through it. "I saw this movie about you on Netflix last night," he said. He chuckled and turned his phone to show me the title of a movie called Gayby. "So, is that what they call baby fags when they're born?"

Spencer had been picking on me since the beginning of high school, so I'd learned to tune him out. I sighed and opened my locker, but he slammed it shut again. I spun my head toward him and glared.

"Hey, gayby, I'm talking to you!"

"Hey, Spencer!" Alison called from down the crowded hallway. She wedged herself between two cheerleaders, who curled their noses at her as she walked through them, and approached us, drawing his attention. "You know for someone with a micropenis you sure do produce a lot of testosterone. Have you ever thought of submitting yourself to a scientific study?"

Spencer gritted his teeth as his cheeks flashed red. "Have you ever thought of dressing or acting like a guy?" he snapped back, "freak. You're lucky I don't put both of you in the dirt right now!"

As he stomped off, Alison flicked him off behind his back, then she smiled at me. "That guy is such a gorilla. You see Ry, if guys bottle up their gayness for too long they become Spencer Pratt."

I grinned at her as I finally opened my locker. "What?"

"Spencer Pratt has a huge crush on you. Duh."

"What're you talking about?" I looked at Spencer, who glared at me from his group of jocks and cheerleaders. "That guy hates my guts."

"Look at how he's staring at you. That's repressed longing. You remind him of what he can't have because of heteronormativity or whatever . . ."

I rolled my eyes and shut my locker. "Shut up, Alison," I said before heading to homeroom.

"What? You don't believe me?" she said as she followed me. "He's a wrestler Ry. It's scientifically proven that's the most homoerotic sport in the world."

School days dragged by like a wounded animal. I watched the clock until it was time for me to go into another room and watch the clock there. Most of the time, Alison texted me while I looked at memes. At the height of my boredom, I imagined a black mist filling our school's hallways as some threatening force invaded.

I looked up from my phone, and as my classmates cowered in one corner of the classroom, I stood, knowing I was the only one who could stop this impending evil. Then the evil emerged-which was usually some kind of intelligent monster, like a giant, talking troll or something. It pointed a claw at me and said, "Ryan, you must be destroyed!"

Then I returned with, "No! You must be destroyed!" as a sword materialized in my hands. I charged the fiend and leapt into the air. My classmates looked on in wonder as I—the weird, quiet, and probably gay kid who sat in the back of the classroom—deflected the beast's blows with my swordsmanship. They asked themselves, "Where did he learn to use a sword like that?"; then someone would probably make a gay joke about me being a "professional sword fighter", but it wouldn't phase me because I, I was their only hope for survival!

One swing after the other, I pushed the beast into the hallway where our clamber drew students out from their classrooms. They raised their hands to their mouths as I ran and kicked off walls and lockers, bringing my blade crashing down on the monster and sending sparks flying as my blows landed on the beast's sword or spear or whatever it was using.

I drove the monster into a hallway on the school's second floor that had floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the passage's length, then I pushed the villain through one of the windows, and we crashed into the streets below, where bystanders gasped as we continued our epic struggle. Then the bell rang, snapping me out of my daydream, and I ran the scenario again in my next class. Unless it was PE.

I wore my gym shorts under my jeans because I was too embarrassed to change in front of the other guys. Spencer, who had PE with me, approached me with his jock strap in hand while I was hunched over, with my foot on a rickety, wood bench as I tied my shoelaces.

"Hey, freak!" he said.

I looked up and scowled. I hated having to deal with Spencer, so I didn't say anything back.

"You perverts like stuff like this right?" he said, holding up the jockstrap. "Don't pervs like you sniff them or something?" I tried ignoring him, but he persisted. "Well? C'mon, you wanna' sniff it, pervert?" He grabbed the back of my hair and shoved my face into the jock strap.

At the end of the locker row, the coach spotted Spencer torturing me as he passed by. "Pratt!"

Spencer stopped what he was doing and hid the jock strap behind his back as he turned to face the coach. "Just messing around with him coach."

"Move it along, Pratt."

Spencer glared at me before walking away.

After school was over, I took the bus home. Alison didn't live far from school, so she walked. I was the only 16-year-old I knew that still took the bus. I slumped in the squeaky, vinyl seat, scanning my phone while kids screamed and flung spitballs and paper wads at each other across the aisles. Bus rides were a time for me to reflect on how much I hated my life.

Once I was home, I hurried to my room, passing the living room where my dad was sprawled in the recliner, staring blankly at the TV. He used to write for a blog until the site was sold and he was fired. That made my mom, the co-owner of a popular interior design firm, the sole breadwinner in the house until she cheated on my dad with her business partner. He won a hefty settlement during the divorce and now spent all his time at home, alternating between the recliner and the couch, occasionally freelancing for different websites. Meanwhile, mom moved out to live with her new beau, leaving me behind along with dad.

Maybe she was too embarrassed to face me after what she did, because I hadn't seen her since they divorced. She paid child support, which kept us afloat while dad was unemployed. Dad was so depressed, he either sat paralyzed in front of the tv for hours or lay on the couch all day. I tromped up the steps past the living room, slammed my bedroom door behind me, and threw myself on my bed with headphones on over my ears. Then I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut as I zoned out and listened to music.

My dad knocked on my door, interrupting me, so I sat up on my elbows and said, "What?"

"Hey kiddo'," my dad murmured behind the door.

"What is it, dad?"

"You want to go out and get something to eat or something?"

"No dad, I had a big lunch. I'm not hungry."

It took him a second to reply. Maybe he thought he should be more forceful with me. "Okay, kiddo," was all he said.

I turned on my side and stared at the wall, which was covered in band posters, some of whom I liked and some I didn't even know. I read their names over and over again to take my mind off my dad, off my mom, off Spencer-I didn't want to think about anything. I grabbed my pillow and covered my head.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, so I drew it out and checked it. Alison had messaged me to join her at the mall. Alison may not have been popular at our school, but at the mall, she was a local legend.

She made friends with all kinds of edgy outcasts: emos, ravers, goths, all kinds. I rarely hung out with her and her mall-friends, but I couldn't sit at home anymore.

***

I met up with Alison at the arcade in the mall. She was brandishing a blue, plastic gun and shooting at zombies in some game.

She bent her neck toward me. "Hey loser," she said as she pulled the trigger and blew off some zombie's head. She holstered the gun in a built-in slot on the arcade cabinet and threw her arm around my neck. "C'mon, Chloe and Kurt are waiting for us."

I rolled my eyes. Her mall-friends hated me. In the friend hierarchy, I was like her brother, and they didn't like that because, outside of being gay, they thought I was "too normal". One time, one of them said I was "twee" and that I should kill myself.

We joined Kurt, a blonde kid that carried his skateboard everywhere, and Chloe, a girl with neon-pink dread falls, at the food court after we got some Chinese food. Alison and I shared a plate. While I picked at a piece of broccoli on the plate, Alison kept turning her head and looking across the food court at something.

"What're you looking at?" Chloe said.

Alison spun around in her seat and said, "Nothing."

Kurt and Chloe exchanged a grin before Kurt said, "She's looking at that table of jocks over there."

Kurt raised a finger at the table, so I glanced to where he was pointing. It was Spencer and his group of brainless ogres. She was looking at Todd Pilkerton, one of Spencer's good friends, a dark-haired guy who, like Spencer, had a neck like a Christmas ham. Alison had been crushing on Todd for a long time. I chuckled, shook my head, and went back to stabbing the broccoli with my fork.

Chloe turned her sights on me. "What's so funny? Who's she looking at?"

I looked up from the plate, wondering who Chloe was talking to. When she raised an eyebrow at me, I said, "Oh, I don't know."

"Come on man, be cool for once in your life," Kurt said.

"Yeah, what's it going to hurt?"

"You guys quit," Alison said.

Kurt grabbed my shoulders and shook me. "Dude, come on, who's she looking at?"

Chloe climbed into her seat with her knees and perched her arms on the table, resting her chin in her hands and leaning toward me. "Yeah, tell us!"

They badgered me until I blurted the words, "Todd Pilkerton, leave me alone!", my volume drawing stern looks from the people in the table next to us.

Alison's mouth dropped open at me. "Ryan!"

I shrunk in my chair, sliding down, and mouthed the word "sorry".

Kurt adjusted his bucket cap and laughed as he slumped in his chair. "What's the big deal, it's just some dumb jock?"

"He goes to our school," Alison said through gritted teeth.

"So? Tell him you like him," Chloe said.

Alison shook her head and scoffed. "No! Oh my God, no!"

"Then I'll do it for you!" Chloe said as she rose to her feet and headed off to Spencer's table.

"No!" Alison yelped and reached for Chloe's arm, but Chloe was already halfway across the food court. Alison looked at me, bringing her eyebrows together as she chewed her lower lip.

We watched as Chloe waved her hands through the air, presumably introducing herself. The jocks at the table exchanged a few raised eyebrows before sitting up and watching Chloe like an alien out of a movie. Chloe pointed at our table, so all the jocks looked to where she was pointing. Then when she was done talking, they cast another wave of drawn eyebrows before they burst into laughter. Chloe puffed her cheeks, grabbed a cup off the table, and poured its contents all over Todd. We roared with laughter as Chloe launched into an invective, yelling at the jocks and calling them all kinds of names until the jocks shot to their feet.

"We've got to go, Kurt, tell Chloe we left okay?" Alison said, grabbing my arm and yanking me off my seat. We rushed out of the mall and started for the bus stop.

While we were walking, Alison said, "I can't believe Chloe did that, she's so weird. She thinks who I am is some big fashion statement."

"Fashion statement?"

"Yeah, like she's supposed to parade me around and fight for me all the damn time. I can't stand it. I'm like, this isn't Tumblr Chloe no one cares. And she's like blah blah social justice-"

"Isn't that a good thing?"

Alison stopped walking and glared at me. "Why're you still in the closet Ry?"

I looked at the ground. Everyone in school thought I was gay. They made fun of me for being gay, but I never actually said the words. "I don't know."

"Maybe sometimes you're a little safer when you keep secrets. Some people, no matter how smart you are and how well you argue your points, will never accept us. Chloe doesn't get that because she isn't like us." I saw tears in her eyes, so I hugged her. Then she said, "I love you Ry. I wish you weren't gay, so we could get married."

We laughed and kept walking.

When we were halfway to the bus stop, a car screeched to a halt in the road in front of us. Then Todd Pilkerton, Spencer Pratt, and two of their goons, Matt Bowler and Teddy Price, emerged from the vehicle. Spencer slammed the door behind himself and cracked his knuckles as they approached us. I grabbed Alison's hand and said, "Get behind me."

She pulled her hand away and anchored down where she stood. "Save the chivalry, Lancelot."

"Did you think that shit was funny?" Todd said as they circled around us. "You think trying to embarrass us is a good idea, freak?"

"She was just being a jerk, Todd," Alison said. "Just let us go. We didn't do anything to you."

Todd walked up, pushed me to the ground, and grabbed Alison by her shirt collar. I darted back to my feet, hoping to defend Alison, but before I could reach her, Spencer drove his fist into my stomach, winding me. I dropped to my knees, coddling my stomach.

Alison's eyebrows shot up when she saw Spencer hit me. "I swear Todd, we had nothing to do with that."

Todd chuckled and looked back at his friend. Then he wrinkled his nose at Alison and kicked her in the stomach, throwing her to the ground.

Tears glistened in my eyes as I fought to stand. "Leave her alone!"

Alison curled up on the floor as Todd and Matt stood over her. "You know the world would be better off if freaks like you just died!" Todd thrust his foot into her back. She yelped and gasped for air.

I stood up and shoved Spencer out of my way. "Goddammit stop!" I ran to help Alison, but Todd turned around and punched me in the mouth. I fell to the ground, spitting blood on the pavement. Then Teddy yanked me up by the scruff of my shirt. I struggled against his grasp, my shirt ripping under his fingertips, but before I could free myself, Spencer walked up punched me in the jaw, dizzying me.

While Todd's attention was diverted to me, Alison grabbed her keys and balled her fist around them, so they protruded between her fingers. Todd chuckled as he turned his sights back on Alison when she stood up and swung her fist at him, slicing him across the cheek with the keys.

"Fuck!" Todd belted out as he grabbed his bloody cheek. "You little freak!"

Matt grabbed Alison's wrist and squeezed her wrist until she screamed and dropped the keys, then he swung her back to the ground.

"Please stop!" I yelled, my face red with tears. Todd, Spencer, and Matt convened around Alison and kicked her while she lay on the ground. I kept fighting Teddy's clutch until he flung me against the trunk of their car, knocking my breath out. I fell to the ground, sharp pains coursing through my body. By the time I staggered to my feet, they were already backing away from Alison.

"Freak!" Todd said before spitting on Alison. "Maybe now you'll start acting like a man."

They got back in their car and squealed away, leaving skids on the road. I ran to Alison's side as she wobbled to her hands and knees, helping her into my arms as she sobbed.