Chapter 27

Stepping back to study his work one night over Christmas break, AC got a strong pang of loneliness. Every one of his brothers had been Casanovas in high school. In college, they’d all had steady girlfriends. Now, three were married. At age seventeen, AC had never even kissed a boy.

He thought about giving his sculpture a name. He imagined it being real, a real boy, and then he kissed it. He kissed him—Christopher—on his half-formed lips where the plaster was nowhere near dry. Once, twice, a dozen times, at the end of it, AC’s face looked like he was ready for a shave.

Seeing the mess he’d made of his work, instead of taking care not to make things any worse, AC threw his entire naked body into Christopher’s. He wrapped his arms around him, and pulled the wet, creamy sculpture close, smearing his own body, his real flesh and hairiness, in white gooey plaster as he writhed and ground against it.