“You sure he’s g*y?”

“I’ll sing you show tunes if you want me to prove it,” I volunteer.

Justin slaps me on the back. “No, dude, don’t do that, okay? Go dance.”

So that’s how it comes to pass that Rhiannon is leading me to Steve Mason’s basement. As we hit the stairs, we can feel the bass under our feet. It’s a different soundtrack here—a tide of pulse and beat. Only a few red lights are on, so all we can see are the outlines of bodies as they meld together.

“Hey, Steve!” Rhiannon calls out. “I like your cousin!”

A guy who must be Steve looks at her and nods. Whether he can’t hear what she’s said or whether he’s trashed, I can’t tell.

“Have you seen Stephanie?” he yells.

“No!” Rhiannon yells back.

Then we’re in with the dancers. The sad truth is that I have about as much experience on a dance floor as Nathan does. I try to lose myself in the music, but that doesn’t work. Instead, I need to lose myself in Rhiannon. I have to give myself over entirely to her—I must be her shadow, her complement, the other half of this conversation of bodies. As she moves, I move with her. I touch her back, her waist. She comes in closer.

By losing myself to her, I gain her. The conversation is working. We have found our rhythm and we are riding it. I find myself singing along, singing to her, and she loves it. She transforms once again into someone carefree, and I transform into someone whose only care is her.

“You’re not bad!” she shouts over the music.

“You’re amazing!” I shout back.

I know that Justin is not coming down here. She is safe with Steve Mason’s g*y cousin, and I am safe knowing that nobody else will interfere with this moment. The songs collide into one long song—as if one singer is taking over when the previous one stops, all of them taking turns to give us this. The sound waves push us into each other, wrap around us like colors. We are paying attention to each other and we are paying attention to the enormity. The room has no ceiling; the room has no walls. There is only the open field of our excitement, and we run across it in small movements, sometimes without our feet leaving the ground. We go for what feels like hours and also feels like no time at all. We go until the music stops, until someone turns on the lights and says the party is ending, that the neighbors have complained and the police are probably coming.

Rhiannon looks as disappointed as I feel.

“I have to find Justin,” she says. “Are you going to be okay?”

No, I want to tell her. I won’t be okay until you can come with me to wherever it is that I’m going next.

I ask her for her email address, and when she raises an eyebrow, I tell her again not to worry, that I’m still g*y.

“That’s too bad,” she says. I want her to say more, but then she’s giving me her email address, and in response I’m giving her a fake email address that I’ll have to set up as soon as I get home.

People are starting to run from the house. Sirens can be heard in the distance, probably waking up as many people as the party has. Rhiannon leaves me to find Justin, promising me that she’ll be the one to drive. I don’t see them as I run to my car. I know it’s late, but I don’t know how late it is until I turn on the car and look at the clock.

11:15.

There’s no way I’ll get there in time.

Seventy miles an hour.

Eighty miles an hour.

Eighty-five.

I drive as fast as I can, but it’s not fast enough.

At 11:50, I pull over to the side of the road. If I close my eyes, I should be able to fall asleep before midnight. That is the blessing of what I have to go through—I am able to fall asleep in minutes.

Poor Nathan Daldry. He is going to wake up on the side of an interstate, an hour away from his home. I can only imagine how terrified he’ll be.

I am a monster for doing this to him.

But I have my reason.

Day 6000

It’s time for Roger Wilson to go to church.

I quickly dress myself in his Sunday best, which either he or his mother conveniently left out the night before. Then I go downstairs and have breakfast with his mother and his three sisters. There’s no father in sight. It doesn’t take much accessing to know he left just after the youngest daughter was born, and it’s been a struggle for their mom ever since.

There’s only one computer in the house, and I have to wait until Roger’s mother is getting the girls ready to go before I can quickly boot it up and create the email address I gave Rhiannon last night. I can only hope that she hasn’t tried to get in touch with me already.

Roger’s name is being called—it’s church time. I sign off, clear the history, and join my sisters in the car. It takes me a few minutes to get their names straight—Pam is eleven, Lacey is ten, and Jenny is eight. Only Jenny seems excited about going to church.

When we get there, the girls head off to Sunday school while I join Roger’s mother in the main congregation. I prepare myself for a Baptist service, and try to remember what makes it different from the other church services I’ve been to.

I have been to many religious services over the years. Each one I go to only reinforces my general impression that religions have much, much more in common than they like to admit. The beliefs are almost always the same; it’s just that the histories are different. Everybody wants to believe in a higher power. Everybody wants to belong to something bigger than themselves, and everybody wants company in doing that. They want there to be a force of good on earth, and they want an incentive to be a part of that force. They want to be able to prove their belief and their belonging, through rituals and devotion. They want to touch the enormity.