PROLOGUE
November — December 1988
“Honey, if you have any questions, you can ask me.”
Adam Winter cringed at the suggestion. “Mom,” he implored, avoiding eye contact at all costs. “Not now. I know. About girls…and stuff.”
“It’s natural to be curious. Your dad and I, we’ve never talked to you about this.”
“Okay, well…I should probably get in. I think they might start reading the Torah soon.”
Escaping the nails-on-a-blackboard almost-sex talk was not as hard as he imagined it would be — just a slam of the car door and a wave goodbye. Luckily, Adam was 31 days away from total liberation. Thirty days and twelve hours to be exact. That’s when he was scheduled to take his driver’s test at the DMV. After that, freedom.
Passing his driver’s test would be final hurdle in his effort to be pardoned from life as a dork. The commutation of his sentence had been painless. Within the past few weeks, Adam had said goodbye to coke-bottled glasses, a highway of braces, and an Alfalfa haircut. Thanks in large part to contacts and a salon haircut, Adam had stepped from the world of high school nobodies into high school high society. And his musical talent and sharp-witted humor really blossomed after the recent communiqué by the popular girls that Adam was cute. He’d survived dorkdom after all. The clumsiness that had plagued Adam melted away, revealing an excellent athlete. He was a shoo-in to be a starter on the varsity baseball team in the spring. During the winter, he was busy as Professor Harold Hill in the school’s production of The Music Man. Life in his hometown of Minneapolis was falling into place.
Savoring his post-pubescent renaissance, Adam strode into the reception hall of his synagogue. The filtered sunshine through the stained glass windows created bizarre shadowing on the 200 Jewish teenagers from all over the Midwest. The synagogue and the parents called it conclave where, according to the brochure, “Jewish teens gather to experience Judaism together.” But really it was a smorgasbord of well-intentioned events all unwittingly designed to foster the attendees’ already-raging hormones. Adam’s parents were happy because he was hanging out with other Jewish kids for the weekend. Adam was even happier — he was guaranteed to score points with his parents while at the same time throwing himself a cheap yet effective coming-out party.
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