He figures he'll use a nom de plume for his zine, and signs it 'Giovanni.' Still, he's not sure if all everything she writes is true, or if it's just for her zine.She lays it all out on the page, revealing that she's adopted, a lesbian, and hasn't lost her v-card. John's struck by how well Marisol seems to know herself.He learns a lot about Marisol's life from her zine, like the fact that her dad is a Cuban immigrant who teaches college and that her mom has a Dorothy Hamill haircut. It's written by a seventeen-year-old named Marisol, though John thinks she's too cool to be in high school.

John thumbs through another zine he has lying around, called Escape Velocity.

This is his first zine, and he calls it Bananafish.

The story is for John's zine, a homemade magazine with articles and drawings, all done by John a bunch of high school and college students make them around where John lives.

He's never had a conversation like this one with Al, but writing it makes it seem true, which is part of what he thinks makes writing so interesting.

John tells us he's not sure what it means, but that it makes him think of Al, his mom's boyfriend.

The boy wants to hang out with his new stepdad and pull pranks together, but the guy didn't sign up for that.

The guy isn't all that interested in the kid, but he's sweet on the kid's mom, so he's going to stick around.

You probably guessed it's an interview between a kid and his new stepdad.

Brian runs off to the auditions, and John heads home, where he writes 'Interview with the Stepfather.'.

He doesn't have time for chicks and certainly doesn't want to hang around watching Brian make a fool of himself.

Brian wants to audition for The Sound of Music at school because his latest crush, Violet, is Maria in it and he figures that if he gets into the musical, he'll get to spend a bunch of time with Violet and she'll like him, too.

In fact, when we first meet the guy, he's purposely annoying his buddy Brian just to see what happens.

John is immune to emotion, or, so he says.

Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger