Nobody sang happy birthday to me when I turned eighteen. Instead, I was gifted a bargain-outlet suitcase to pack my belongings. They said that they needed the bed for another boy in need. I guess once you turn eighteen you're suddenly not considered a boy anymore. If only my shaking hands and panicked heart would get the message. But I would survive, as I had always done, despite my best efforts to the contrary. Having a home was overrated anyway. That's why couches and park benches existed, right? All things considered, summer wasn't such a bad time to be homeless in Boston. And, hey, without parental oversight, I could go anywhere I wanted. I could even go looking for that something that had always niggled in the back of my brain ... that fine line between pleasure and pain. Nobody would yell at me for being out beyond curfew, and nobody would call me a freak if I found someone to show me the ropes, literally. And if that creepy old codger, Vern, continued to follow me in the shadows everywhere I went, well ... that was his problem.