Over the next fifteen years, I liked to tell myself I’d made meaning out of his life: planted the scanty seed of him and grown a magic beanstalk of what if? But I could never stop wondering about the actual him. Whenever someone asked me if the book was based on a boy I knew, I hedged: “Nah, I mostly made him up.” Gallantly protecting him, I wanted to believe, but more truly protecting myself from old, dismaying questions.
Why did it take me so long to think of tracking him down? In 2002, I’d published a novel that starred a boy inspired by him, and once I’d forged my fictional kid, I tried hard to smother thoughts of the real one.
