It was the year of funerals and weddings. People celebrated life and death. The smell of flowers invaded homes, casseroles invaded fridges. I attacked both with the same level of ferocity, and thus grew my love for sunflowers and tuna fish. Dad made big bucks that year and the funeral parlor had never been busier. All my relatives and friends of the family were getting married, one by one, and I wore my best suit so many times that I rubbed a hole on the collar by fidgeting all too much.

Whenever a funeral was over, I would make a wish in my prayers. The wish would go with the new angels up to heaven, where God would see them and grant them if he liked. The angels would watch over them and maybe they would come true. I once wished for money to buy a pair of sneakers I really liked. The next day, Mom asked me whether I wanted new shoes. It was nothing other than a coincidence, but I like to pretend that wishes bring me luck. I don't believe in magic, but I believe in miracles.

It was also the year that I realized that I was different from all the other boys. I knew I didn't look much different. I had dark gray eyes, perhaps a little bit more solemn than my peers, short, neat dirty blond hair, and average height. I was neither skinny or fat. I fit in perfectly with everyone else. We played with the same cars and we ate the same ice cream. Yet at age twelve, when everyone started confessing crushes and dressing up, I liked people that my friends didn't. And as I got older, I slowly grew to understand what that meant for me. I would not mention any guys, because that wasn't who guys were supposed to like.

It's not like I didn't want girls to like me. It seemed like the normal thing to do. Sometimes I hoped that they would so much that I would waste a wish on it. Somehow, those never came true. Mia always said that I was too pretty for girls to not like me. But I think she was just saying that to make me feel better. Besides, if she was really right, then she would've liked me by now anyway.

It was the year of Felix. He is an inexplicable thing of atoms and ears and eyes and tufty hair and lanky arms and steady smiles and video games. Felix came suddenly in another funeral, where all the participants cried and blew noses like mad. I had to run to get enough tissue boxes to last the entire event, and Felix used one up entirely by himself. Other than blowing his nose, he didn't make a sound. His brown eyes were watery and his nose was so runny and I remember thinking that he looked like the family dog, Moss. That's why I liked him. I didn't know who the funeral was for at the time, but he did eventually tell me later on that it was for his aunt, who he was very close to.

Mia says that I took a liking to Felix just because he looks like Moss (which was partially true). I never did reply, but Felix and I were like Moss and his bone. We became inseparable.

I don't know how it started. I wish it never happened. I wish that I was normal so bad that I would do anything to forget Felix's face, his laugh, the way his eyes scrunch together when he's laughing, the way he sneezes, the way my heart beats so ever fast whenever his hand brushes against mine. I wonder how people manage to not break apart when it's so completely easy to. I wonder why this boy of bare feet and summer and rain came to me and I him.

If this was love, then I didn't want to feel it.