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In the fall, Eli and four other campers convened for a mini-reunion, sprawling out on couches at a local mall. Eli had been excited to see them, but now that they were together, he felt a familiar sinking feeling of being excluded. Whenever he began to speak, someone would cut him off after approximately five words. They talked about Spanish class. “Oh, yeah! In my Sp—” Eli began, then was cut off. They talked about their high school football teams. Eli asked, “Do you know if th—” and was cut off. They talked about Virginia. Eli started to say, “Have you ever noticed how—” and, again, was cut off. Eventually he gave up. Half-listening to the conversation, he stared ahead with the same fixed face he adopted when he was bored while driving.

Eli left with Raj, his closest friend from camp. “You are so awkward,” Raj said when they were out of the others’ earshot.

“What do you mean?” Eli asked. He hadn’t expected a camp friend to say so.

“We were all sitting there talking and you didn’t say a word! You were just sitting with your legs crossed. You were even in the center!”

“Yeah, well, every time I tried to say something, I got cut off, so—”

“Whatever,” Raj interrupted. “You need to talk more. Like what do you do at parties?”

“I’ve never been to a party,” Eli answered. No one had ever invited him.

“We need to change your social life. Lesson one: Talk more. You are going to have a party.”

“Hahaha, no I’m not.”

“Well, you need to start going to parties.”

Eli gave an exasperated sigh. “What am I going to do? Invite myself?”

“Start by talking to people more in school,” Raj suggested.

“Okay, I’ve been going to school with these people for years and their opinion of me isn’t going to change if I try to start talking to them again.”

“Just talk about something. Do you watch any sports?”

“No.”

“What about movies?”

“My taste in movies is different.” Eli preferred thrillers and Hitchcock-era black-and-white films.

“Music?” Raj tried again.

“Okay, so I’m just supposed to walk up to someone and go, ‘Hey, what do you think of so-and-so?’ ”

“Yeah, why not?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Just talk to people.”

“Okay, you have no idea, do you?” Frustrated, Eli was on the verge of tears. This felt like one of those conversations instructing him on how to be “normal.” Eli got enough of that at home. “I try. Like I say, ‘Hey, what’s up’ to people in the halls and stuff, but—”

“It’s not the same. You need people you can depend on.”

“I depend on myself. It’s high school. I’ll be fine,” Eli said as he pulled up to Raj’s house.

Eli thought about the conversation for the rest of the night. He explained later, “The fact that he was telling me that my social life was a failure wasn’t necessarily true, but the fact that it holds such importance to him bothers me. I don’t think being on the social scene is really that important.”

Everyone else seemed to think so. Even Eli’s mother had been jubilant that he was leaving the house to meet with camp friends. Eli was convinced his mother thought he was “nerdy,” he said, “because she always says, ‘Honey, why don’t you ever go out on a Friday night? No normal teenager sits at home with his mother.’ ”

Eli’s mother had played the ‘normal’ card for years, even when he was small. “Honey!” she said, “normal guys don’t study maps, do they?!” “Normal guys don’t spend that much time coloring!” “Normal guys don’t study on weekends.” “Normal guys don’t watch cooking shows.”

Sometimes Eli believed his mother was embarrassed by him. “I swear, my mom thinks if I do one thing differently than the average person, I’m weird,” Eli said later. “It’s like she thinks I’m a freak or something. No matter what I do, it’s not ‘normal’ enough for her.”

ELI LOVED ACADEMIC BOWL more than anything else at school: the anticipation of the questions, the slap of the buzzer, the pride when he answered correctly and swiftly. Sure, sometimes teammates told him to take it easy and stop “freaking out on the buzzer,