Chapter 2

While I was recovering, I did some speaking gigs around the area about fire safety. Nothing like the poster boy for what can go wrong to scare the shit out of people, right? I didn’t really like it—it made blocking out the nightmares that could still sneak up on me harder—but it turned out, I was good at it. I needed that. I needed to be successful at something, you know?

One day, I was at an elementary school, and this boy asked if he could see my leg. I stepped out from behind the podium to show him, and the teacher in charge immediately cut me off.

“You don’t want to embarrass Mr. Almonte, now do you?” she said to the kid.

I tried to say it wasn’t a big deal, but she was firm. After they went out for recess, she explained she didn’t want to scare the other kids. Like my leg was some creature from a horror film they needed to be protected from.

I didn’t argue with her, but I couldn’t get what she said out of my head. So what if my leg looked different than theirs? It’s a part of me, and I had no reason to be ashamed of it.

But I realized something else, too. I hadn’t fought to show them because deep down, I was embarrassed by it. It was the sign I’d screwed up. I was using it as an excuse for a lot of things. Not looking for a new passion to make my career. Not going out with friends. Not dating.

TheNaked Remedyis the record of how I’m trying to change that.

I read on, absolutely enamored with the path he’d chosen. Because of the incident at the school, Fisher decided to bare his leg with pride at least once a week. He chose an outdoor location, found an adequate time to get a nude photograph without garnering negative attention, then posted the pictures on Monday mornings. The rest of the week, he talked about his recovery and his personal life with such intimate detail, it felt like I was taking part in a group confessional.

No ads, no product pushing, nothing but Fisher and his life and his insecurities and everything that he decided made his life great.

By the time I clicked back to his main page, I was more than a little jealous.

Crushing on him, too. How could I not? He was cute, he was open, and he was living a life I could only dream about. I dared to click on the link to leave a comment and wrote it out before I lost the nerve.

You might be the bravest person I’ve ever seen. Thank you.

“Noah! Come set the table!”

With a sigh, I closed my laptop and clambered off the bed to carry it to the chipped corner desk I’d had since junior high. I hated sitting at the thing. I was eleven inches taller and sixty pounds heavier than when Dad caved on my begging for a desk of my own in seventh grade. Since I had the smallest room in the house, he got a pressboard one from Target that tucked away in the corner. I didn’t have the space to replace it, so I used it as a charging station and did all my gaming and surfing stretched out on my bed instead.

I wandered out to the kitchen to find my mother bent over in front of the stove, pulling out the chicken tetrazzini we always had on Wednesday night. According to her, it was her good luck dish. It was what she’d made for my dad the night he proposed to her, and what they’d been eating when her water broke when she was pregnant with my oldest brother Seth. She always made it on the SuperLotto Plus drawing nights. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her it couldn’t be very lucky if she’d never won the big prize.

She gave me a wan smile when she straightened, pushing a sweaty strand of thin gray hair off her forehead. “Jackpot’s up to thirty-two million tonight. Think of what we could do with that much money!”

I wanted to say, “We’d never have to eat chicken tetrazzini again,” but that would just be mean. Mom had very few vices. She didn’t smoke, she only drank on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and she never indulged in overpriced lattes at the sole coffee shop in town. Instead, she spent ten dollars a week on the California SuperLotto Plus, five tickets for Wednesday night’s drawing, five more for Saturday’s. Whining about the rituals that came with it would only make her feel bad, and what place did I have to do that?

Besides, just because she’d never won the big prize didn’t mean it was a complete waste of time. Once every few months, she got the mega and at least one other number, and about once a year, she managed to snag fifty or sixty dollars with a win. It was enough to keep her motivated to keep playing, and we got to go to the Chinese buffet in town to celebrate. What was the harm?

So instead of whining, I played along. “A new car,” I said. I placed the rainbow melamine plates around the table and went to the silverware drawer. I’d bought the new dishes for Mom last Christmas when I was debating coming out, but then Seth and Lisa had used the holiday to tell her she was going to be a grandmother for the first time. I couldn’t say anything then, because I’d have to live forever with the reminders about how I’d spoiled the announcement for everyone

“I thought you got your brake lights fixed,” Mom said.