Chapter 35

This caused something of a stir at my family’s Christmas. Nobody cared that I was gay, you understand; we’d crossed that bridge pretty much for once and for all when I was thirteen and insisted on dressing up as Miss Universe for Halloween—for the fourth year in a row. But I kept scrunching up the right sleeve on my sweater to watch my most prized possession glitter and glow in the lamplight, and I gushed on and on about Byron this and Boyfriends that until my dad paid me fifty bucks to stop.