“And from just above, a star blasts a trail across the night sky—like a visor of fire on Libby’s head—leaving it glowing a finger-painted smear, something human and touchable and reachable. Like maybe I could make the same kind of mark in New York, somewhere that might actually understand me.”

From the very start, 13-year-old Nate Foster is painfully aware that he is a fish out of water in Jankburg. New York doesn’t simply represent a chance at an acting career, but personal validation of his worth as a human being.

“(My sexuality, by the way, is off-topic and unrelated. I am undecided. I am a freshman at the College of Sexuality and I have undecided my major, and frankly don’t want to declare anything other than ‘Hey, jerks, I’m thirteen, leave me alone. Macaroni and cheese is still my favorite food—how would I know who I want to kiss?’”)

Nate explicitly states his sexual ambiguity at the outset. However, everybody else in town is eager to label him. This is because Nate is unique in a way that makes the townsfolk uncomfortable. They link Nate’s love of acting and singing to him being gay.

“I didn’t want to let on. That everything is riding on me making this happen. That I have to return home as good as Anthony is, at something. Anything. Or not return home at all, preferably.”

All his life, Nate has lived in the shadow of his older brother Anthony. He finds it difficult to see his own value because nobody around him has helped him do so. The Fosters focus on Anthony—therefore, Nate uses him as a measuring stick to determine his own self-worth.