TWENTY MONTHS after he developed a crush, 18 months after he’d fallen in love, Diego, who is enormously appealing but also very canceled, boarded the bus with Jenni and Dave. They were going to the beach, and it wasn’t a big deal—except for the fact that pretty much all of Diego’s friends had dropped him, so, yeah, it was. The three, all 17, sat in a row of orange seats that ran the length of the bus, Diego’s eyes dark, goofy, and sad; his body freshly stretched to almost six feet; his oversize Carhartts ripped on skateboard ramps. This could have been in any American city this past January, on any bus. (First names in this article are pseudonyms.) Jenni kept her face tilted down toward her lap, hidden by a scrim of shoulder-length hair.
Then, a stop away from school, another high-school student boarded the bus. Just one more kid with a backpack in a hoodie, and at first Diego waved and Jenni smiled. Diego because he wanted to show he wasn’t scared, as this kid had thrown accelerant on a stupid mistake Diego had made, thus blown up Diego’s life. Jenni because she’s pragmatic enough to play along with social rules, plus this kid sat right in front of her in AP Statistics. But instead of waving and smiling back, this boy just stared, his eyes flat and certain. Jenni began to hyperventilate.
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