When I am upset it is harder to ignore the sounds. If I turn on my music, it will press down on top of them, but they will still be there, like toys shoved under a thick rug. I put my groceries away, wiping the beads of condensation off the milk carton, then turn on my music. Not too loud; I must not annoy my neighbors. The disk in the player is Mozart, which usually works. I can feel my tension letting go, bit by bit.

I do not know why that woman would speak to me. She should not do that. The grocery store is neutral ground; she should not talk to strangers. I was safe until she noticed me. If Emmy hadn’t talked so loud, the woman would not have noticed. She said that. I do not like Emmy much anyway; I feel my neck getting hot when I think about what Emmy said and what that woman said.

My parents said that I should not blame other people when they noticed that I was different. I should not blame Emmy. I should look at myself and think what happened.

I do not want to do that. I did not do anything wrong. I need to go grocery shopping. I was there for the right reason. I was behaving appropriately. I did not talk to strangers or talk out loud to myself. I did not take up more space in the aisle than I should. Marjory is my friend; I was not wrong to talk to her and help her find the rice and aluminum foil.

Emmy was wrong. Emmy talked too loud and that is why the woman noticed. But even so, that woman should have minded her own business. Even if Emmy talked too loud, it was not my fault.

I need to know if what I feel is what normal people feel when they are in love. We had a few stories about people in love in school, in English classes, but the teachers always said those were unrealistic. I do not know the way they were unrealistic. I did not ask then, because I did not care. I thought it was silly. Mr. Neilson in Health said it was all hormones and not to do anything stupid. The way he described sexual intercourse made me wish I had nothing down there, like a plastic doll. I could not imagine having to put this into that. And the words for the body parts are ugly. Being pricked hurts; who would want to have a prick? I kept thinking of thorns. The others aren’t much better, and the official medical term, penis, sounds whiny. Teeny, weeny, meanie… penis. The words for the act itself are ugly, pounding words; they made me think of pain. The thought of that closeness, of having to breathe someone else’s breath, smelling her body up close… disgusting. The locker room was bad enough; I kept wanting to throw up.

It was disgusting then. Now… the scent off Marjory’s hair, when she has been fencing, makes me want to get closer. Even though she uses a scented soap for her clothes, even though she uses a deodorant with a powdery sort of smell, there’s something… but the idea is still awful. I’ve seen pictures; I know what a woman’s body looks like. When I was in school, boys passed around little video clips of naked women dancing and men and women having sex. They always got hot and sweaty when they did this, and their voices sounded different, more like chimpanzee voices on nature programs. I wanted to see at first, because I didn’t know — my parents didn’t have things like that in the house — but it was kind of boring, and the women all looked a little angry or frightened. I thought if they were enjoying it, they would look happy.

I never wanted to make anyone look scared or angry. It does not feel good to be scared or angry. Scared people make mistakes. Angry people make mistakes. Mr. Neilson said it was normal to have sexual feelings, but he did not explain what they were, not in a way that I could understand. My body grew the same as other boys’ bodies; I remember how surprised I was when I found the first dark hairs growing on my crotch. Our teacher had told us about sperm and eggs and how things grew from seeds. When I saw those hairs I thought someone had planted the seeds for them, and I didn’t know how it happened. My mother explained it was puberty and told me not to do anything stupid.

I could never be sure which kind of feeling they meant, a body feeling like hot and cold or a mind feeling like happy and sad. When I saw the pictures of naked girls I had a body feeling sometimes, but the only mind feeling I had was disgust.

I have seen Marjory fencing and I know she enjoys it, but she is not smiling most of the time. They said a smiling face is a happy face. Maybe they were wrong? Maybe she would enjoy it?

When I get to Tom and Lucia’s, Lucia tells me to go on out. She is doing something in the kitchen; I can hear the rattle of pans. I smell spices. No one else is here yet.

Tom is sanding the nicks off one of his blades when I get to the backyard. I begin stretching. They are the only couple I know who have been married so long since my parents died, and since my parents are dead I cannot ask them what marriage is like.

“Sometimes you and Lucia sound angry at each other,” I say, watching Tom’s face to see if he is going to be angry with me.

“Married people argue sometimes,” Tom said. “It’s not easy to stay this close to someone for years.”

“Does—” I cannot think how to say what I want to say. “If Lucia is angry at you… if you are angry at her… it means you are not loving each other?”

Tom looks startled. Then he laughs, a tense laugh. “No, but it’s hard to explain, Lou. We love each other, and we love each other even when we’re angry. The love is behind the anger, like a wall behind a curtain or the land as a storm passes over it. The storm goes away, and the land is still there.”

“If there is a storm,” I say, “sometimes there is a flood or a house gets blown away.”

“Yes, and sometimes, if love isn’t strong enough or the anger is big enough, people do quit loving each other. But we aren’t.”

I wonder how he can be so sure. Lucia has been angry so many times in the past three months. How can Tom know that she still loves him?

“People sometimes have a bad time for a while,” Tom says, as if he knew what I was thinking. “Lucia’s been upset lately about a situation at work. When she found that you were being pressured to take the treatment, that also upset her.”

I never thought about normal people having trouble at work. The only normal people I know have had the same jobs as long as I have known them. What kind of trouble do normal people have? They cannot have a Mr. Crenshaw asking them to take medicine they don’t want to take. What makes them angry at their work?

“Lucia is angry because of her work and because of me?”

“Partly, yes. A lot of things have hit her at once.”

“It is not as comfortable when Lucia is angry,” I say.

Tom makes a funny sound that is part laugh and part something else. “You can say that again,” he says. I know this does not mean that I should say what I said again, though it still seems like a silly thing to say instead of “I agree with you” or “You’re right.”

“I thought about the tournament,” I say. “I decided—”

Marjory comes out into the yard. She always goes through the house, though many people go through the side yard gate. I wonder what it would feel like if Marjory were angry with me the way Lucia gets angry with Tom or the way Tom and Lucia have been angry with Don. I have always been upset when people were angry with me, even people I didn’t like. I think it would be worse to have Marjory mad at me than even my parents.

“You decided…” Tom does not quite ask. Then he glances up and sees Marjory. “Ah. Well?”

“I would like to try,” I say. “If it is still all right.”

“Oh,” Marjory says. “You’ve decided to enter the tournament, Lou? Good for you!”

“It is very much all right,” Tom says. “But now you have to hear my standard number-one lecture. Go get your stuff, Marjory; Lou has to pay attention.”