3
  Owen takes control I had found my way to Jenna.
  It wasn’t much different than kissing a girl, and once I allowed Jimmy to feel as if he 
had seduced me, that I was the unwilling partner, it was easy to hold his attention. He 
told me to close my eyes and pretend he was a girl, to just let him do things to me, to 
just keep the image of a beautiful girl in my mind while he did things.
  Jenna was the only face I saw.
  I knew that once I had Jimmy McTeague of the Ivy League in my arms, once I had pressed 
myself into him, owned him, dominated him, that Jenna would be mine.
  I look at the boy that I was then: Owen Crites. Mooncalf.
  He mounts the rich boy and he drives his point home.
  And no, I’m not gay. I had no thrill from what I did to Jimmy McTeague, how I made him 
feel tenderness and acceptance and release that night. It felt less like sex to me than 
stabbing someone over and over while they curl around you.
  How I caressed him as no one ever had, to the point that he wept against my chest.
  It was purely because I thought of Jenna.
  My love for her.
  Love is purity.
  My next decision, as I lay there with that puppy whispering his soul into my ear, was 
just how I was going to murder him.
  
  
  
  PART TWO
  The Last of Summer 
  
  Chapter Six
  Jimmy McTeague keeps a diary 
  1
  Need to train better. Work on backswing, damn it. Wake up an hour earlier every 
morning. Run two miles. Then practice. Then row.
  July was a waste. Feeling like I’m getting lazy. More strength training.
  Check out the sucky gym in town.
  Jenna’s a bitch. She thinks she knows. She doesn’t know. She’ll never really know.
  Need to get back with Jenna. Need to figure this out.
  I can’t resist him. It’s awful what we’re doing. But I know I can stop. I know if I 
just stick with the program I can stop. I think he’s evil.
  What we did was wrong. I know that. What Jenna and I can build is right.
  Call the Padre and Madre for more money.
  Become a better person. Quit all the lying. Lying is bad. There’s no reason. If you 
feel the way you feel, let it all out. Don’t keep holding it in.
  Doesn’t matter what dad thinks. Doesn’t matter if you know what you need from life. You 
can let it out. Other people do. Other people need those things, too.
  Maybe it’s not real. Maybe it’s just sex. Maybe I shouldn’t let it happen.
  But now all I think about is him.
  Jenna and Mooncalf.
  Mooncalf.
  He told me something really smart. Just shows that you don’t need all these prep 
schools and universities to be smart. He said, “Love is purity.” It is so true. It’s 
something I couldn’t say out loud. But it’s so true. But there's more to life than love. 
You can’t survive on love. You can’t have the important things in life just because of 
love.
  No one pays for three houses and European vacations and clothes from Italy and Rolls 
Royces with love.
  2
  My name’s Jimmy McTeague. It’s safe to assume you know that because you are me sitting 
here reading my diary. Since after all no one else is going to read this if I can help 
it. It’s also probably safe to assume that you’ll burn these pages someday to make sure 
no one else reads them. But for now, writing it down seems right. My favorite movie is 
probably still the Little Mermaid, which I saw when I was nine years old and I still 
watch it on video once a year at least. Why? Because it was about sacrifice for what you 
wanted. I’ve always sort of believed in that. My dad doesn’t understand why I watch a 
cartoon to inspire me. Sometimes I watch it before a match because it gets me going. 
I don’t see why being smart and grown up has anything to do with abandoning the things 
you believed in when you were a kid.
  I’ve wanted to keep a diary since I was about nine, about the same time as I saw that 
movie, but I didn’t start til I was twelve, and then I threw it all out, so after another 
brief attempt at sixteen, I’ve decided now that I’m about to enter Harvard, it’s time for 
me to keep one. I’m not only about tennis, anyway. I get tired of that dumb jock image. 
My SATs were through the roof.
  I get good grades and am totally wrapped up in Medieval History, which I figure I might 
pursue even after I graduate. If I graduate. If I make it through.
  If all the bad things that I’ve found out about don’t happen in the meantime and it all 
ends.
  This part of the diary is about my summer. Jenna and I were having a great year 
together, although I wasn’t always there for her, I suppose, because of the matches I had 
in England and out in California, and then she spent Spring Break in Aruba, so that last 
week in May was really our first full week together, which is why I took the Karenina out 
of the yacht club and we sailed lazily up and down the coast for a few days. I was so 
pissed off at Dad over a lot of things. First and foremost was the talk he gave me, about 
how I needed to uphold the family and how I needed to look at life differently, not as a 
kid but as someone who had responsibilities and wanted to live a certain way with certain 
kinds of people. I didn’t forget about Chip, but I guess that’s one of those things I 
have to put aside. My dad says so anyway. Chip was really aggressive anyway, and the time 
we spent together wasn’t really very meaningful because the whole time I kept thinking to 
myself: where will this go? Two guys can’t marry. I’ll lose everything.
  And Chip was all about loins, anyway. I shouldn’t even write about it here. What if 
someone finds out? I’m not really gay anyway, I just get in these situations. I suppose I 
fall in love with people. And Chip turned out bad anyway. All that mess about fighting 
and arguing and him claiming I broke his arm when I didn’t break it and if he fell it was 
his fault anyway for standing in my way and not letting me pass. He did that sort of 
blackmail thing too, but I showed him that I wasn’t going to put up with that kind of 
shit.
  I fell for Jenna pretty hard. I mean, who wouldn’t? She’s gorgeous and full of life and 
her brain is just amazing. And the money. To pretend it’s not there is like not noticing 
her bra size. All the guys seem to want her, and I really had to fight off that bulldog 
from Choate with the Ferrari, but it wasn't too hard to dazzle her on the courts. She’s a 
big fan of tennis, which helps, and that night we went for a walk back in the city really 
turned things around for me. I mean, we were walking down Fifth Avenue, and she was 
talking about what she wanted from life, all the wonderful things, to see the world