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Clover chases me out the backdoor.

The world is starting over.That’s how it looks from my current view. Dad and Uncle Dawson built this wooden patio four years ago in a summer of sweat and shouting and shared beers with two-too-many close-calls at the emergency room. The patio is slightly raised, enough for my feet to dangle off the edge, but barely stretches into our backyard. A perfect place for barbeques and sitting.

Dad calls it his Home Depot victory. It’s a cool place to soak up sun in the spring, so I’m willing to call it whatever Dad wants.

Clover chases an old, drool-soaked tennis ball I toss for her. Tail wagging ecstatically, she brings it back. We love this game, though it never lasts long. But it’s a moment of innocence—a boy and his dog, a bond not explained by words. I’m in love with how, sometimes, we don’t need words for relationships to exist, just a look, a trust, an action.

Clover quits to lay out in the sun. I can’t blame her. I recline on my hands to look at the sky. I love how the sky can look like the sea—blue and endless and hopeful—and how water can look like the sky—quiet and gentle and beautiful. My mind is nothing like either of those things. It’s in a tsunami brought on by three earthquakes: the things Aunt Sandra said and Mrs. Scott’s expectations and the Essay of Doom.

Who is Remy Cameron? Who, who, who?

How the hell am I supposed to know if I don’t know a damn thing about where I come from? About the people who created me? If I knew, would I be someone different? Would I be more like Father X rather than Dad?

“Is this hiding spot from the boring adults exclusive to cool teens or is anyone allowed?”

I look up. There he is standing over me, Uncle Dawson: perfectly straight, pale-blonde hair and acorn-brown eyes squished by his crooked smile. Everything about him is the opposite of Aunt Sandra and Dad; he has sharp features and is tall but thin, a marathon runner’s build.

I grin as though the sun lights me from the inside out. “Uncle D!”

“Remy!”

He settles next to me; his longer legs reach into the grass. “C’mere Clover!” Uncle D is one of the few people Clover eagerly waddles to; her head flops into his lap. Uncle D is also someone who doesn’t need words. He likes quiet. I do too, in doses.

The afternoon sun flicks gold bars across the yard’s yellowing-green grass and against the cedarwood fence. Giant octagons of light brush over the swing set I helped Dad put together on Willow’s fourth birthday. A funnel of leaves shakes free from the sugar maple’s limbs like a tornado made of fire.

We breathe. We sit in quiet. Uncle D, Clover, and I exist.

“How’s school going?”

“Come on, Uncle D.” I nudge our shoulders together. “We don’t talk about boring crap like that.”

“You’re right. We don’t.”

As far as cool points go, Uncle D has earned them all. He skips the usual adult-to-teen topics—school and money and responsibility—to talk about the latest comic-book movie or my new music finds. He was the first adult to give me The Talk, the first adult to make sure I understood what it meant to be safe, to know where to find condoms, to know about the importance of consent.

“Let’s talk about boys.”

“They suck,” I moan.

Uncle D lifts an eyebrow. I shudder. That’s right—The Talk also came with an e-mail, an online tutorial about using protection during oral attached.

“I mean, they’re the worst.”

“Some days.”

“Some days,” I agree, forcibly ejecting any thoughts of Ian. He’s not an option. Ian is just a guy I’m not getting attached to.

“We’re not rekindling things with Dimi, then?”

There’s that “we” thing adults love to use again. No offense to Uncle D, but when Dimi took my heart into his hands like paper—light, easy to shape, easier to rip apart and discard—there was noweto stop the half-hour of shaking under a lukewarm shower.Wedidn’t help me get out of bed every morning when all I wanted to do was sleep away the pain.Wedidn’t wipe away all those tears, day after day. There was only me.

“Nope,” I say. I can feel him studying me. “He’s moved on.”

“Asshole.”

“Uncle D!” I say, partly shocked, but also truly laughing.

“He is.”