“And I learned, really quick, that life wasn’t going to be pretty. Not until . . .” Until . . . me? I put the pieces together. His dog at seven, the party at eleven, and how his father yelled at him and how his demeanor had already started to go downhill. I had nothing to do with any of that. “I was so alone,” he explained from somewhere on the other side of my room. “I couldn’t talk to people. I didn’t have any friends. I was scared all the time.” His voice was thick with memory, as if it had all happened just yesterday. “I just wanted to be invisible, and if I couldn’t be invisible, then I
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