payment page
Summary
Crush (March - April)
March
Charlie is eager to meet Nick’s dog Nellie, so Nick invites him over. Charlie trims his own hair before going. Nick notices immediately and tells Charlie that it looks good. They hang out, playing with the dog and playing video games, when it starts to snow. Nick loans Charlie his hoodie, and they go outside to play with the dog in the snow. They throw snowballs and make snow angels before heading inside. Nick wraps Charlie in a blanket to warm him up before Charlie heads home, wearing Nick’s hoodie. Nick’s mom compliments him on Charlie as a choice of friend, noting that he seems more like himself around Charlie.
At home, Charlie’s older sister Tori asks if he’s okay. He confesses that he is in love with Nick. The following Saturday, Nick shows up at Charlie’s house and asks him to teach him how to play the drums. They sit together at the drum kit, and Charlie’s hands close over Nick’s as Charlie teaches him to play, but then Charlie stands up and turns his back to Nick. Later, while the two are doing homework together, they wrestle, and Nick ends up on top of Charlie, teasing him until Charlie blushes and suggests they play video games. Charlie falls asleep while the two are watching a movie, and Nick has the impulse to reach out and hold Charlie’s open hand. Charlie wakes and Nick says he has to go home. Charlie walks Nick to the front door and the two hug. After Nick leaves, Tori appears out of nowhere and tells Charlie she does not believe Nick is straight. Nick goes home and stays up all night searching the internet to try and determine whether he is gay.
April
During a school rugby match, Nick plays while Charlie sits on the bench as a reserve. He texts Tao to tell him that he thinks Nick likes him back. Tao says that Nick is rumored to have liked a girl named Tara for three years. Nick’s team wins, and he rushes over to celebrate with Charlie. Nick’s rugby friends are confused about Nick and Charlie’s relationship and begin to wonder whether they are romantically involved. Their coach Mrs. Singh tells them that people can have a wide variety of sexual preferences and that it’s rude to speculate about others’ sexuality.
Sometime later, Nick invites Charlie to a birthday party for Nick’s friend Harry. It turns out to be a huge rave at a fancy hotel, and Nick and Charlie are both relieved to take refuge in the bar. Birthday boy Harry hunts Nick down to tell him that his junior high school crush Tara is there. Harry drags Nick down the hall to meet her, and as they talk, Charlie walks away. He runs into Ben in the hallway. Meanwhile, Tara tells Nick that she’s gay. She introduces him to her girlfriend and asks about Charlie. Suddenly, Harry and all of his friends start asking Nick why he hangs out with Charlie. Harry is particularly condescending towards Nick and says it’s sad that Nick has a crush on a Year 10. Nick tells Harry that he is a jerk and leaves in search of Charlie.
Nick finds Charlie in the ballroom at a corner table, alone. Nick apologizes for his jerk friends, and Charlie tells him that he saw Ben and that Ben tried to apologize. But then Ben got belligerent, so Charlie stood up for himself and Ben backed off. Holding hands, Charlie and Nick leave the party. They race down the hallway and up the stairs. Alone in a large room filled with fancy furniture, large floral arrangements, and gorgeous artwork, Charlie asks Nick about his crush. He says that he has one, but it’s not Tara, and it’s not even a girl. They kiss, and blush, hold hands, and kiss again, while a picture emerges of flowers blooming behind Nick’s head. Someone from the party comes searching for Nick, and Nick leaves, muttering a half-hearted excuse. The last panels of Volume 1 show Charlie in the room by himself, saying “I’m sorry” to no one in particular, over and over again.
Analysis
In this part of the story, Nick and Charlie spend a lot of time together, and while their relationship is certainly friendly, the evidence suggests it could be romantic as well. Not only does Charlie cut his hair before heading over to Nick’s house, seemingly in response to a teasing gesture Nick made at school, but Nick also notices the new look immediately, an unusual degree of attention for two male friends to pay to one another’s physical appearance. Nick allows Charlie to wear his hoodie outside in the cold and then home, which is a rite of passage in the world of adolescent relationships. Nick also engages in the intimate gesture of wrapping Charlie in a blanket to warm him up and telling him he looks cute and snuggly. And their intimacy transcends the physical. They enjoy many of the same hobbies, and they like sharing new activities as well. Nick is surprised to learn that Charlie is a skilled Mario Kart player, and Charlie laughs at Nick’s feeble first attempts to play the drums. People closest to the boys notice the profound effect they have on each other, suggesting a bond deeper than friendship. For example, Tori notices that Charlie is filled with a different energy on his way to see Nick. Nick’s mother comments on how relaxed and fulfilled he seems around Charlie, commenting that the friendship seems to make him more himself.
Questions about Nick’s sexual identity help to drive the narrative forward as both he and Charlie try to understand the nature of their relationship. The question worries Charlie because he fears he might lose a new friend on whom he is developing a crush. Once at the drum kit and again in a wrestling session in the living room, Charlie turns away from physical contact with Nick. Tao and Tori, protective of Charlie, worry because they don’t want Charlie to read too much into his friendship with Nick and get his feelings hurt. Similarly, Nick’s rugby teammates are thrown by Charlie and Nick’s closeness, resistant to the idea that their friend, who they’ve assumed is straight, might be different than they thought. Harry also demands that Nick be the person Harry believes him to be, literally dragging him away from Charlie to see a girl he hasn’t seen in three years. Meanwhile, the person most affected by the question of Nick’s sexuality, Nick himself, struggles to understand his feelings. He has not historically liked or had crushes on boys. But he finds himself increasingly drawn to Charlie, emotionally and physically, and it remains a tension between the two throughout the novel.
Charlie’s confrontation with Ben at Harry’s birthday party has significant implications for Charlie and Nick if they are to move forward as a couple. Though Charlie has pushed back against Ben’s advances repeatedly, the fact that Ben continues to harass Charlie suggests that he remains an unresolved issue in Charlie’s romantic life, as he has a shadowy hold over him. To be free of their toxic dynamic and able to choose his own romantic partner, Charlie must confront Ben and finally put an end to the abusive entanglement. Charlie encounters Ben at a vulnerable time when Nick (albeit involuntarily) has left him alone to reunite with a previous crush. This is a sensitive time for Charlie, suggesting he might fall back on a bad habit simply to reassure himself of his own desirability. The narrative initially leaves their meeting unresolved, while Nick decides how to move forward. That time lag becomes particularly suspenseful because of the unbalanced power dynamics of Ben and Charlie’s relationship and Charlie’s vulnerability. When Charlie describes the outcome, Nick is relieved to know that the two can move forward freely into a relationship with one another.
Harry represents a stereotypical bully, whom Nick needs to face down in order to define himself on his own terms. Exemplifying the characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors that led to other schoolboys’ bullying Charlie, Harry demands that Nick and others around him conform to Harry’s preconceived notions. Tara acknowledges this bad behavior when she tells Nick that Harry seems to be the only person who does not understand that she is gay. He responds aggressively when Nick tries to break free from this behavior and begins to taunt Charlie—and by extension Nick—and mock the mere idea that Charlie and Nick might have a romantic involvement. By standing up to Harry, Nick, in effect, stands up to all those who have bullied Charlie throughout his life. At the same time, he is standing up to the voices within himself that demand that he conform to certain ideas about his gender and sexuality. It is only through this confrontation that Nick is free to begin to explore his attraction to Charlie.
