Anything Could Happen by Will Walton (review)

Fifteen-year-old Tretch is in love with his best friend, Matt, even though Matt is clearly straight. Since Matt’s fathers are gay, Tretch knows that coming out won’t end the friendship, but he still doesn’t want to risk it. Instead, he goes along with whatever Matt wants to do, from tagging along on a date with a girl Matt likes, to double-dating with a girl who is obviously interested in Tretch. Meanwhile, he fantasizes, and worries, and dances. Matt is certainly lovable, if a bit hard to picture as a character; his dialogue settles somewhere between emotionally intense and cornball, and his frequent physically affectionate gestures with Tretch make it easy to see why Tretch might be attracted to him. However, the plotting falls short of coherent. Random incidents follow one another, punctuated by stilted dialogue and choppy scenes that neither flow into one another nor connect thematically. For instance, after thinking about his great-uncle, a Vietnam vet who took his own life, Tretch goes out to stargaze on a frozen lake in the middle of the night and falls in, only to be rescued by his father, who happened to follow him. Later, the boys are called on to help Tretch’s squeamish farmer grandfather deliver a breech calf in the middle of the night, Tretch makes up with a homophobic bully by yelling at him for smoking, and he then cuts a fine rug at a New Year’s Eve dance after coming out to his date. It’s hard to tell whether the bumpy dialogue is because the characters are not realistic or because they are too realistic for art, but ultimately this requires readers with a high tolerance for literary and character awkwardness.