AWEEK OR so later, when Casey calls me and tells-not asks, tells-me that we’re going shopping, I find myself saying yes before I have time to think about it. It’s like instinct. Shopping isn’t my thing, but a shopping trip with my first gay friend I’ve ever met? Too perfect. Hell, I might be able to get some leather pants out of the whole thing (note to self: keep the immature gay jokes at a minimum around new gay buddy).

When I emerge from the Union Square subway station, I see Casey, wearing a large, puffy North Face jacket and talking to a boy dressed to kill with stringy black hair and sunglasses. There’s an argument going on, but a jovial one, where no one’s worried about what might come of it. Casey throws up his arm a lot and yells out his answers between cackles, while the other kid uses his cigarette as a classroom ruler and growls out his parts of the argument with a clever little smile on his face, which lets me know that he’s very nice and not to be trusted.

As I approach, the stringy-haired boy points at me and says something, to which Casey turns around and waves.

“Locke! This is Brent. Brent, Locke.”

Brent puts his hand out and I shake it-warm, steely, a businessman’s grip. “Ah, Locke, you’ve been mentioned. Casey tells me you were molested by him.” Casey smacks him in the arm and swears laughingly under his breath. My face ignites with blood and timidity, and I pull out a cigarette of my own, which Brent willingly lights. “Nah, just fucking with you. You’re Randall’s friend, right? He calls you ‘Stockenbarrel.’”

“Right. You know Randall?”

“Met him here and there through this fag over here.” Another playful arm slap. “Does he call you that ’cause you’re named Locke?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Brent grimaces. “Randall and I shall have words.”

I bet he’s told them about me.

He wouldn’t dare.

Randall is proving himself surprising. Talk to him or I will.

Sadly, it’s got a point. There is something massively discomforting about finding out that there’s a body of people out there who you’ve never met, and that this body knows who you are and what you’re like.

“We’re heading out,” says Casey, giving Brent a pat on the back. “Tell Sam I’ll give him a call, okay?”

A knowing nod. “He’ll really appreciate that. Have fun, kids.”

“I bet. Later.” Casey and I start walking slowly toward Broadway, our hands in our pockets, the wind blowing our hair back. “Brent’s cool. He’s the devil in our tarot deck.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Casey nods, beaming. “No one is. You probably wouldn’t like him. He and his friends can be a bit intense. They party really hard. He’s going a little crazy now, though.”

“Why?”

“One of our friends just had a nasty breakup. Long story. C’mon.”

“Where are we going, anyway?”

“I wanted to go to Leather Man on St. Mark’s. They have an adorable pair of chaps that fit me like a goddamn dream. I was thinking about buying a cowboy hat, too.”

“Oh, wow. Really?”

“No, of course not. Man, do I seem gay enough to pull off leather chaps?”

Have I mentioned I’m a towering rube? I’m a towering rube. And now I seem like an ignorant fool of a towering rube. Splendid. “Sorry. I’m, uh, still a little…” What, you moron?

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Worry not, young Jedi. We’ll teach you the ways of the pink lightsaber yet.”

Now that was pretty fucking gay.

I swallow the venom and walk.

Shopping is a nonstop blast. We rip through the Virgin Megastore like a swarm of critical locusts. I never knew I could get so invested in a conversation, but our argument about the Strokes proves me wrong-I posit they have drive and energy that sets them apart from most of the other bands in their genre, and Casey thinks they’re “utter hogwaste.” After that, it’s ripping on Emily the Strange clothing and flipping through horribly pornographic manga. It’s stuff like this that makes me happy, things that I spend most of my time being paranoid about getting laughed at for. Randall is too straight and cool to appreciate things like this: He has somewhere to be, someone to impress, something to uphold. Casey doesn’t seem to care in the least about wandering around for the sake of doing so, and instead points out horrific images in the comics we’re reading and cracks jokes like, “That girl is having her period of the black” and “Oooh! venom orgy with huge eyes!” And it’s nothing more than fun. My eyes don’t glance worriedly around at people near me. The room isn’t squeezing the air out of my lungs. The burden is, maybe momentarily, lifted. The venom works in mysterious ways.

Halfway through a collection called Ultra Gash Inferno, Casey’s head turns with a smile and he says, “Sssoooooo, how’d things go with Renéeeee?”

I glare at him. “Shouldn’t you know already? You people seem to have this little conspiracy routine going on.”

“Okay, point taken, but I want to hear about it from you.”

I bite and relay the entire meeting, give or take a juicy detail. When I get to my sudden revelation about Andrew, Casey nods knowingly.

“Oh, Andrew,” he says, sighing, “constant proof that caveman still exist. Honestly, don’t worry about him, he’s basically harmless.”

“You don’t have to go to school with him every day.”

“No,” says Casey in a harder voice, “I’ve just had to deal with that idiot’s bullshit every day I’m over there since I came out. Andrew always sort of liked me, but the minute I told Renée and she told him, he’s let me know what Middle America thinks of me. But in all honesty, it’s a lot of hot air. Just forget him and think of her.”

“Well, at least you don’t pose a threat. You’re her gay guy friend. There’s no problem.”

“That may be true,” he says, “but you’d think that getting tormented for who I am is a lot worse than for what I could do.”

Times like this remind me how utterly naive I am. Jesus Christ, Locke, wake up, the playing field has changed. Casey’s honesty, though, lets me know that he’s the person who I have to ask, who’ll answer the question that’s been eating away at the back of my head.

“How’d Renée’s parents die, Casey?”

Casey won’t look at me; he just nods and pulls his lips tight and looks up and down the comic-book shelf. “How’d you find that out?”

“Randall told me.”

“He shouldn’t have. It’s not his story to tell. It’s Renée’s.”

“He thought it would be important for me to know, but Andrew was there, and he couldn’t…Please, man. What happened?”

His mouth flaps open and closed again and again, but eventually he just shakes his head. “Not right now,” he grumbles, flipping through more graphic novels. “Now’s not the time. I don’t really want to dive into that yet.”

“Please, Casey.”

“Locke, this isn’t a joke,” he snaps. “Let me think about it. She should tell you, ’cause…” He trails off, waving his hands.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

There’s a flutter of venom. “How bad?”

“Worse than you think.”

In the New York Milkshake Company on St. Mark’s, I take my mind off this afternoon’s craziness by informing Casey that he has no friggin’ idea how to drink a root beer float.

“What’re you doing?”

He looks up. “What? What do you mean?”

“I mean, what are you doing?” I ask, jabbing at him with my still-dripping spoon.

He glances down at his cup and then back at me. “I’m eating my ice cream. What does it look like?”

I sigh dramatically. “Bad enough you get chocolate ice cream in your float-”

“I hate vanilla, I told you.”

“-but you’re eating it wrong.”

Casey puts up his hands in defense and leans back in his chair, saying, “Elaborate, sensei.”

“Well, it’s okay if you eat a bit of the ice cream and drink a bit of the root beer”-I take a sip to illustrate-“but then you have to let it sit awhile, y’know, stir it every few seconds, until some of the ice cream melts.”