And the struggle with my parents had begun. Mom was against it in the beginning, and Dad was on my side. Ironically, after Mom was convinced, Dad began to have misgivings, and the two of us had to work on him.

But it had all worked out as I’d known it would, and here we were, sitting in an Olive Garden in Polk, a week before school started.

“Besides—” I finished eating the breadstick, then smothered a grin as Dad watched me mournfully. He really loved Olive Garden’s breadsticks. “You agreed it’s a good learning experience for me. And we agreed—two years here and I’ll make up my mind on my major, and then Harvard.” That was what Dad was most worried about—my indecision regarding my major. And while the money didn’t really matter, he was impressed that I didn’t want to waste money at Harvard trying to figure out my major. He thought it showed a responsibility toward money he really liked.

I didn’t really know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew I wanted to work in a field I found rewarding. Even after Dad sold his software company, he and Mom kept busy operating a charity foundation, traveling all over the world building health centers and schools. Some of my schoolmates at St. Bernard were aimless—despite the excellent education they were getting, they were really just counting the days until they were old enough to access their trust funds. Dad and Mom were always afraid I would turn out that way.

“Well, if you change your mind . . .” Dad’s voice trailed off as Colleen brought the bill. He slid a credit card into the tray and she took it away. He glanced at his watch. “Look at the time! We’ve got to get to the airport, Mandy.” Colleen brought the tray back, Dad signed the receipt, and slid five hundred-dollar bills into the little leather folder. As we walked out the front door, I heard a rather loud “OH!” from behind me. I looked back over my shoulder at Colleen, whose face had gone white. Her mouth was making a perfect “O” as she stared at the five hundred-dollar bills in her hand. I laughed to myself.

If I ever ate there without my parents, Colleen was going to be incredibly disappointed in her tip.

I hugged and kissed them in the parking lot and then waved as they drove their rental car out into the traffic on Shaw Avenue.

I got into my own car and started it, waiting for the air conditioning to cool it down before heading to my apartment.

I was nervous. I had been alternating between excitement and full-out terror ever since I’d arrived in Polk the day before. I would never let them know, of course—they’d just worry, and I figured they were already plenty worried on their own without any assistance from me. What if I couldn’t hack it in this environment? What if I couldn’t make any friends? What if the kids at St. Bernard were right and I was some kind of freak? I wasn’t worried about the academic side of things—I’d already preordered my textbooks, and none of them looked challenging.

But socially?

I reassured myself from time to time that it couldn’t be that hard to acclimate. If I didn’t fit in and make any friends to begin with, I would treat it like a scientific experiment. I would observe behavior, see what worked with kids who had lots of friends and what didn’t, and then adapt accordingly. It couldn’t be that hard. I was very smart—but I had to be careful not to seem too smart. I had started doing research online—leading social workers’ and therapists’ studies on group dynamics, power structures, and so forth, in my peer group. Some of the behaviors they deconstructed seemed a bit far-fetched to me. There was one in particular that I thought was kind of a stretch. A clinical psychologist named Dr. Mark Drake had done a study of a group of male college students who had, at the instigation of a “group leader,” behaved in some pretty horrible ways—drinking, date and gang rapes, and so on. Dr. Drake had concluded that the need for the group leader’s approval had convinced the weaker members of the group to do things they ordinarily, under normal circumstances, would never have done.

It seemed incredibly stupid to me, and weak was not a strong enough word to describe the followers who had allowed one person to have so much power over them—and could be so easily influenced into doing things they knew were wrong. I found it incredibly hard to believe, and I finally decided that Dr. Drake’s conclusions had to have been faulty.

Psychology, after all, was hardly an exact science.

And even if Dr. Drake’s conclusions were accurate, this activity had occurred at a small, elite college in the Northeast where all the students came from privilege; it surely wasn’t much of a reach to conclude that this conduct had been the result of ennui.

Surely the students at CSUP wouldn’t be like that. From all the research I’d done on the school, the majority of the student body came from the middle class. And I found it hard to believe that kids from a middle-class background would act as poorly as spoiled kids whose parents gave them everything on a silver platter. Some of the students at St. Bernard had fallen into that same category—and I’d avoided them at all costs.

But I was also incredibly excited. I had my own apartment—my own place—for the first time in my life, and I was starting a new adventure, a whole new beginning. I was going to be me for the first time. At St. Bernard, everyone knew who my dad was—we all knew who we all were—but I didn’t want to be known as Terry Valentine’s son. I wanted to be just Jordy Valentine, another student among the seventeen thousand or so at CSU-Polk. I wanted people to like me for me.

And there was another reason I hadn’t shared with my parents.

It wasn’t like they’d care one way or the other that I was gay. Of course they would be supportive—they always were. But while I knew at some point I would have to have a conversation with them about it, the whole thought of talking to my parents about my sex life made me squirm. I was a virgin, and I wanted to get that out of the way before I went to Harvard. I’d watched a lot of pornography I’d found on the Internet, and I couldn’t wait to give it a try. Maybe, if I was really lucky, I’d fall in love.

Mom and Dad were not homophobic. Dad’s assistant Lars was gay—and I knew Dad had written a check for several hundred thousand dollars to fight the passage of that horrible Proposition 8 ballot initiative he said was an insult to the U.S. Constitution. But knowing I was gay would just make them worry even more than they already were. The San Joaquin Valley was pretty conservative, and so was Polk. But the university had a reputation as one of the most progressive campuses in the state, and in California that was saying a lot. Polk also had a pretty strong and vibrant gay community. The Greek system was one of the few in the country that welcomed gays and lesbians with open arms. I figured it was better to get my feet wet as a young gay man in a smaller city with a strong community rather than jumping into San Francisco or West Hollywood or New York with both feet. No, these two years in Polk were going to be all about me finding myself before I left for Harvard.

So I was a little nervous but a lot excited.

I pulled into the driveway for the Alhambra Apartments and swiped my entry card at the guard gate. I’d wanted to live in the dorms, but this was a battle I let my parents win. The Alhambra was a gorgeous luxury complex with heavy security—way out of the price range of the average student—and I’d allowed them to get me an apartment there as a compromise. The security would make them feel better, and it was a really nice place. I’d picked out the furniture I wanted, and Lars took care of getting the apartment set up for me. He’d even stocked the kitchen with groceries. I drove around to the building I was going to call home for the next two years and pulled into a parking spot underneath a palm tree. I sat there in the car for a few moments, taking deep breaths. Opposite the building was a swimming pool. When I got out of the car I saw a guy climbing out of the pool, and I caught my breath.