It’s 1985. Summer’s around the corner, but since it’s SoCal, it never really left. In the outdoor courtyard where I, my schoolmates and the seagulls have been eating lunch every day of the school year, I hear a new taunt that carries over the stale cheese pizzas, past the smushed PBJs and into my receptive ears. I’ve been a collector of novel disses most of my short life and this one is as fresh as the guano on the blacktop. I only catch the latter half of the altercation.

“Oh yeah,” says Brad, the surfer with the sundrenched bangs. He’s staring down a guileless boy who was a few inches shorter than him. “Well, you’re a test tube baby!”

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