Page 89 of How to Be Remy Cameron

“Yeah.” I hiccup. “Yes.”

Lucy twists loose hair around her finger. Her eyebrows do this funny dance when she’s thinking: wiggle-wiggle, up-down. “No,” she replies coolly. “I know the things people see me as—Latinx, brown skin, seventeen, a girl whose dad threw her the deuces because responsibility isn’t on his agenda.”

I bite my lip hard. The skin around Lucy’s eyes tightens. She doesn’t look mad, more annoyed. I shouldn’t have asked.

“I know who I’m going to be, though.” She sits up straighter, shoulders pulled back. “A leader. A legend. I’m going to make Latinx people in political office the standard instead of an abnormality.”

I grin. “SAT word.”

She smacks my shoulder. Then, serious as ever, she says, “I’m going to kick down a lot of doors, Rembrandt. For my mom. For my sisters. For me.”

This has always been Lucy: confident, groundbreaking, a superhero.

I slump in my chair. Pink and yellow spots crowd my vision like exploding pixies. My brain melts like a popsicle in mid-June. This is another confirmation, another reminder. Everyone around me knows who they are or are going to be. I know nothing.

“But what if—” I can’t look at her. “What if you don’t know who you’re going to be because you don’t know who you are currently?”

We’re quiet. Cars cruise by playing music or talk radio. Kids run from an SUV to the ice cream shop. Traffic lights dance from yellow to red to green.

Lucy says, “But you know who you are.”

“I don’t. I mean, I did and thisthing,” I wave a hand at my laptop, “came along and now there are so many questions.”

“Questions are good.”

“Are they?”

“Sure.” I can hear the smile in her voice, even though I still can’t look. “Questions are how we start to discover things.”

I don’t tell her how I don’t want to discover anything. For seventeen years, I’ve been Remy Cameron, a music junkie. I’ve been that boy who got hard when Dev Patel sneezed. I was the boy with a cute dog, a beyond-awesome little sister, and two marginally cool parents that everyone knows. A picture-perfect reality.

Now, I’m squinting at my world, discovering all the cracks. Mrs. Scott sees me as a gay, black teen she can guide to success. Everyone at school associates me with being the GSA president or Dimi’s ex-boyfriend. The neighbors think I’m Willow’s babysitter; not her brother. I’m a lost adopted boy instead of a boy in love with the family he was given. My world is filled with identities overshadowing who I am. Who IthinkI am.

Lucy folds her hands and rests her chin on them. “You didn’t know who you were at eleven when we forced Wyatt Matthews to eat a mud sandwich.”

I chuckle. “We were criminals.”

“We were vigilantes. That asshole said Rio looked like a lumpy squash when she wore that epic sunflower dress. He deserved it.” He did. “And you didn’t know who you were the summer before freshman year.”

I rub my curls. The age of BCO—Before Coming Out.

“You didn’t know who you were last summer.”

“I was a virgin. A relatively awesome virgin.”

“You were passable on the awesome scale.”

“True that. Dimi brought down my stock.”

“You set the standards too high with him.”

We crack up. My cheeks are damp, and I hope it’s from the laughter. I hope Lucy doesn’t notice.

When we stop, Lucy’s voice is gentle, far away. “Point is, you found out a little more about who you are. You always do. Life is a journey, Rembrandt. You don’t know all of it at seventeen. Or as an adult. In fact, I think when you finally do know all of who you are, the universe stops the clock and ends the journey.”

“That’s kind of morbid, Lucia.”

“Shut up. I’m going through an emo phase, like your wardrobe.”

---