Max Janssen stood in the middle of the dimly lit stage in his 8:50 a.m. acting class, hunching his shoulders like 15-year-old boys do. He was supposed to give this three-minute monologue yesterday, but he chickened out.

"My teacher called my name, and it sort of hit me what I was going to do," Max said. Heart pounding, he told his teacher, "I can't do this today."

Becoming Max

It wasn't that he hadn't memorized it, or that he had stage fright. It was that what he was going to say might rock his world, change what his friends thought about him, possibly even freak them out.

The teacher, Craig Kosnik, thought he knew what Max was about to reveal and told him he could still switch topics. Max thought about it that night, but decided he had to go ahead with it.

"It's such a big part of me. I felt like it needed to be said," he says. "Anything else would have been a lie."

"Are you sure?" Mr. Kosnik asked the next day. Max was sure.

Onstage, he pushed up his glasses, took a deep breath, and began:

"June 20, 1996. Makenzie Ann Janssen."

And then Max simply said that he had been born on that day, a baby girl.

His eyes wandered over his classmates, who were seated in neat rows of black folding chairs, to where his teacher sat in the production booth in the back, near the red exit sign, nodding.

Max said that for as long as he could remember, who he is on the inside didn't match the body he had on the outside.

He told the class that feeling that way has a name -- "transgender" -- and that he finally began living as a boy two years before, then a year later legally changed his name, and how right he feels now.

At the end, he went back to the beginning:

"June 20, 1996. Max Andrew Janssen."

* * *

Boy or girl?

It is the first question we ask when a baby is born, and the answer sets all sorts of ideas about that child in motion.

She'll go home in a pink knitted cap, he in a blue one. Gender plays into countless personal choices, beginning with toys, hairstyles or clothing.

But gender also determines bathrooms, locker rooms and dorm rooms. It dictates whether a high-school athlete plays football or volleyball; whether a soldier sees combat; whether one worker will earn only 77 percent of what the other will.

And sometimes it doesn't feel right, not from the start.

Little boys may clomp around in mom's heels and play with their sisters' Barbies; little girls may pretend to be Batman or try to pee standing up. For most kids, the behavior is short-lived, a normal part of growing up.

But children with gender identity disorder don't stop at wanting to dress or act like the opposite sex. They truly believe they are boys instead of girls, or girls instead of boys, and their assertion is strong and persistent -- despite anatomical evidence to the contrary.

Experts are not sure why it happens. A diagnosis of gender identity disorder is psychological, but recent research has focused on possible biological causes, too: hormones, gene variations, even the way a particular person's brain is wired. Brain scans of transgender men -- born female and living as male -- can more closely resemble those of other males than those of females.

About 1 in 10,000 children has gender identity disorder, and the number seems to be rising, though not necessarily because more children have the disorder. Changes in society allow us to be more aware of it, and parents today are more likely to try to understand and support their child's tendencies than parents a generation or two ago.

"When I have a family in my office with a young kid presenting in this way, the goal is to educate the parents that the kid could be anything -- straight, gay or transgender -- and help them deal with the ambiguity of the future and to support the kid no matter what," said Dr. Scott Leibowitz, a psychiatrist at the gender identity medical clinic at Children's Hospital Boston. The clinic sees about 19 patients a year; in the late 1990s, that number was about four a year.

In the past, standard practice was to counsel such children to accept their biological gender, but now experts believe it's best to allow them to live as the gender they identify with, even kids as young as 4, but without labeling or influencing them in either direction.

It sounds crazy, allowing children, who still change their mind every week about their favorite color and aren't even old enough to drive a car, to make this kind of decision. But the word "disorder" in gender identity disorder refers to the extreme distress these children experience, not just that they identify with the opposite gender.

"We as people who are not transgender take for granted what life is like when our mind and our body are aligned with each other," Leibowitz said. "We don't go through the distress in our mind of feeling one way and our body is completely made up in a different way."

Kids who don't get counseling or medical treatment can face serious psychological problems. An estimated half of people with gender identity disorder attempt suicide.

When children insist they are not their biological gender, it can be confusing, awkward and raise all sorts of questions. It also tests our beliefs about what determines who we are -- our bodies or our brains?

* * *

Tammy and Jim Janssen brought their fourth daughter, Makenzie, home from the hospital to a house full of girls and girl things. Three sisters, ages 15, 12 and 4. An extended family of Barbies. A plethora of stuffed animals, pink bicycles and ruffled pillowcases. Trunks of dress-up clothes.

The family had moved to Chandler from Michigan four years earlier and bought a two-story home with a pool. Jim worked as a welder with heating and cooling systems; Tammy was starting nursing school.

By baby No. 4, they were old pros, sharing chores and kid duties in harmony. And they had learned, as parents do, that though their girls had the same parents and the same home, they were complete individuals.

Tasha, the oldest, was easygoing. Bethany was more high-drama, needing every bump kissed and bruise tended to. Shelby was the girlie-girl.

Makenzie was something else.

While Shelby loved to tie up her hair with ribbons, 2-year-old Makenzie wouldn't let anyone run a brush through her hair, let alone style it. Shelby twirled around the house on tiptoes; Makenzie stomped through, not a bit graceful.

"Yeah," Max says now, as if it should have been obvious then, "Boys are clumsy."

Makenzie preferred playing with toy trucks or her dad's tools. Her sisters had been more interested in what their mom was doing, but Makenzie became Jim's shadow instead, following him around the garage as he worked on the car or did home repairs.

She refused to wear any of her sisters' hand-me-down dresses or skirts, and absolutely nothing pink. On Makenzie's first day of preschool, she chose to wear a purple T-shirt and denim overalls.

Like many kids, Makenzie had been nervous about her first day. But when Tammy went to pick her up after school, she saw her daughter running toward her across the playground, a huge grin on her face.

She grabbed her mom's hand, and announced: "Mom! I know what I am! I'm one of those!"

Tammy's eyes followed Makenzie's outstretched arm to a group of boys kicking around a ball on the playground.

"A soccer player?" Tammy asked, looking down at her daughter's happy face.

"No! A boy!"

"Makenzie, you're a girl," Tammy told her.

"No, I'm a boy," Makenzie said, and she hugged herself. "I'm a boy on the inside!"

Tammy let the subject drop. But she thought to herself, "Well, you can dress the way you want, but you are what you are."

What the Janssens would later learn is that children develop their gender identity -- the understanding that they are a girl or a boy -- by about age 3. Over the next few years, they come to understand the difference between things that change -- your clothes or your hair -- and things that don't, like eye color or whether you are a boy or a girl.

With three sisters, Makenzie hadn't spent much time with boys until preschool. Tammy and Jim figured this was a stage and that Makenzie would outgrow it.

Shelby was about the same age when she announced she was going to be a Drumstick ice-cream cone. Makenzie's pronouncement seemed as unlikely.

* * *

In kindergarten, Makenzie told the other students what she believed: that she was a boy.

Her teacher knew she was a girl. But gender roles are less defined in kindergarten now, and few teachers line their students up with boys on one side, girls on the other. So in a gender-neutral environment, Makenzie could straddle the line. She even used the boysbathroom without incident.

The school counselor called once, telling Tammy that she thought Makenzie might have gender issues. Tammy said that she and Jim were aware and were allowing Makenzie to dress as she chose. The counselor approved and hadn't seem alarmed. So Tammy wasn't either.

Later that year, the family was dressing up to attend Tammy's graduation from nursing school. Makenzie wanted nothing to do with the dress her mother wanted her to wear.

Through gritted teeth, Tammy tried telling her resistant daughter that it wasn't actually a dress, but a very long shirt. It was blue and short-sleeved, with a button-up collar, and Makenzie could wear shorts underneath.

Makenzie wasn't buying it. Tears spilling down her face, she pleaded, "Please don't make me wear this. Please."

Tammy made Makenzie wear the dress. Even now, she blinks back tears as she talks about it.

"I wish you could have seen his face," Tammy said, reflexively using the male pronouns that are now commonplace in the family, even when describing these younger years. "He looked at me like I was a nut. I will never forget it. It hit me then that this was literally like trying to put a dress on a boy."

To Makenzie, she had.

She was 7 when her dad took her to get a haircut, and Makenzie held out a book of hairstyles and asked if she could get her hair cut like this. She was pointing to a boy who had an Opie Taylor haircut.

"Whatever you want," Jim said. "It's your hair."

He laughs now when he tells that story, but it wasn't funny at the time.

"I got in trouble when I got home," Jim says, looking sideways at his wife, and then at Max, who grins.

In fact, Tammy was horrified -- and then furious -- when she came home from work and saw Makenzie's shorn hair. She didn't like it when people assumed Makenzie was a boy -- even though Makenzie would light up when it happened -- and this haircut would make that worse.

What the Janssens would later learn is that Makenzie's short haircut made her happy because what she saw in the mirror then, and what other people saw on the outside, matched up more with how she felt on the inside.

"It so felt good," Max says now. "Even at that age, that's what felt right."

* * *

To her mother, it didn't feel right, not at the time. She wanted Makenzie to like who she was, not pretend to be someone else. She felt that it was lying to people to let them think Makenzie was a boy.

But Makenzie would wail, "Stop saying that, Mom. Stop telling people I'm a girl."

Makenzie was smart, devouring books and constantly looking up things on the computer. She would acknowledge that yes, she had girl body parts like her sisters, yet insist she was a boy.

Tammy would say, "But you can't be."

And just as firmly, Makenzie would say, "But I am."

Tammy would look at Makenzie's determined face and let it go, her heart aching. End of argument. To her sisters, Makenzie had become just Mack. But Tammy worried that not everyone would be as accepting of Makenzie.

After their kids were in bed at night, Tammy and Jim would sometimes talk about it all and tell each other that maybe once Makenzie hit puberty and her hormones kicked in, she might embrace being a girl. Or they thought she might be a lesbian, as is one of Tammy's aunts.

Jim wasn't so worried. He had learned with the first three kids that the things he and Tammy worried about the most often turned out fine.

* * *

On Makenzie's 9th birthday, the Janssens went to a restaurant to celebrate. But when the wait staff gathered to sing, they gave Makenzie a tiara and dubbed her a "Pretty Princess."

Makenzie slid off her seat and under the table, sobbing.

The waitstaff, of course, had no way of knowing. They stood around, shifting from foot to foot, until Tammy told them it was all right to go. Jim carried Makenzie to the car, still sobbing, her face buried in his shoulder, followed by a tearful Tammy.

Whatever this was, however it was going to turn out, it was not getting any easier with time.

Throughout fourth grade, Makenzie kept her hair short, though not cut like a boy's. Her friends were mostly boys, and they played video games and flag football after school.

"When you're a little kid, no one really cares what you wear or what you say about who, or what, you are, because you're a little kid," Max says.

But on the playground one day in fifth grade, a group of boys decided that they did care, repeating, "So what are you?" and shoving Makenzie each time they asked.

Tammy went to the school, where the principal said the students who were taunting her daughter meant no harm, and suggesting, a bit ironically, that boys will be boys. Tammy took Makenzie out of school; she would teach her at home.

It is during puberty that transgender children can feel the most disconnect between the gender their brains say they are and the gender of their bodies. Tammy remembered, for instance, that when her three oldest learned that they would start their periods during puberty, they were full of questions and a little grossed-out.

So it surprised Tammy as she taught Makenzie those same fifth-grade health lessons, because Makenzie didn't seem concerned at all. Only later did Tammy realize that was because in Makenzie's mind, none of that would happen to her.

"Girls will do that, but I'm not a girl," she thought.

Whatever Makenzie thought, her body had a timetable of its own, and neither boyish clothes nor haircuts could stop what was happening. Her parents' hopes that puberty would help Makenzie were dashed. It only made things worse.

Beginning at about age 4, Makenzie had worn only boys swimming trunks. That's not a problem as a little girl, and it was even OK with Tammy later on if Makenzie was just in the backyard pool with her sisters.

But Makenzie was almost 11 and heading into sixth grade. When other people were around, she needed to cover up. Tammy bought a blue swim shirt, but Makenzie hardly ever wore it. Instead, she mostly stopped swimming.

It was like the dress all over again.

Makenzie wasn't just being stubborn. She could understand what her mother was saying. It was just that nothing about the word "girl" seemed relevant to her.

"Boys don't wear shirts in the pool," Max remembers thinking back then. It just made no sense.

What the Janssens would later learn is that children with gender identity disorder often believe they will grow up to be the opposite gender. For Makenzie, the changes to her body seemed like a misunderstanding.

"You can know something is going to happen, but it didn't really click that it would happen to me," Max says now. "It was the revelation that I'm not going to wake up one morning and be a boy."

Imagine a typical girl, excited about her first bra and nervous about her first period -- instead developing a penis. The disconnect between Makenzie's body and her brain would be that dramatic -- and that traumatic.

* * *

Because as Makenzie's adolescent body changed, so did she.

Previously talkative, and interested in everything, Makenzie instead became sullen and withdrawn. She retreated to her upstairs bedroom for hours at a time, the blinds closed, the television on. When she did talk, she was short-tempered and dismissive. She often didn't come down for meals; instead, she would wait until everyone else was in bed, then eat alone.

Makenzie had gone back to a school at the start of junior high, where she was allowed to wear uniform pants instead of the skirt required for girls. But she also started wearing a baggy hooded sweatshirt over her clothes all the time, hiding the outward changes to her body.

After school, she'd crawl back into bed and wonder, "What is wrong with me?" But unlike for the millions of other kids asking the same question at the same age, there seemed to be no answer. Makenzie was slipping away.

"We were losing him," Tammy says. Even now, she looks scared when she says it.

"I was angry, angry that no one could understand, and there was no one else like me. I remember feeling so alone," Max says. "I just needed other people to understand."

Makenzie's parents were trying. She asked to go to counseling at 12, a good sign. But things got even more complicated. Makenzie told the counselor that no, she wasn't interested in girls. She liked boys.

"We didn't know what to do with that," Tammy says. She texted family and friends who, over the years, also had figured that would be the answer: "She's not gay."

Makenzie wasn't gay, but Max is. What the Janssens would later learn is that gender identity and sexual orientation are separate, and sometimes complicated issues.

Gender identity is who you are, and sexual orientation is who you love. And a change in gender doesn't necessarily have a corresponding change in sexual orientation, so while Max identifies as male, he also is attracted to males, making him transgender and gay.

If Makenzie wasn't a lesbian, though, Tammy and Jim were at a loss for another explanation. Of all the issues parents with kids this age face, being a boy with a girl's body is not in the Top 10. Gender identity disorder isn't a regular topic in parenting magazines or even mom chat rooms.

* * *

At 13, Makenzie was searching the Internet for something for school when she got sidetracked and came across an article about gender identity disorder. Lights went on for her. Bells rang. Any thoughts of homework disappeared.

"Yes!" she thought. "This is it!" She finally understood. The big words in the disorder's criteria read like her life story:

"A strong and persistent gross-gender identification, which is the desire to be, or the insistence that one is, of the other sex."

"Persistent discomfort about one's assigned sex, or a sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex."

Makenzie e-mailed the link to her mom, with a note: "We need to talk." And that evening, the three of them went to Starbucks, sitting close around a small table. Makenzie earnestly explained that she understood that biologically she was female, but in her mind, she had always been male.

"Ever since I was a kid, this is what I am, and this is going to be how I present myself," Max remembers saying.

Makenzie asked to "transition," a word she learned from the article. She wanted to live as a boy. To be a boy. The boy she felt she had always been.

"They didn't freak out," Max says. "I expected them to say no."

But they didn't say yes, either, not right away. Their minds were swirling. Tammy had heard the term "transgender" and knew a little about it. Jim had seen a television show on it.

Later, they searched the Internet for information on transgender children, read about treatment options, found a support group and asked a lot of questions. They found a new counselor for Makenzie, one who specializes in gender issues.

It was a lot to sort through, for all of them. But Jim and Tammy studied the topic just as they would any other medical issue facing one of their children.

"If there's something that can be fixed, you fix it," Tammy says.

Now that Makenzie had a word for how she felt, she began to change again. Her depression lifted. She was less anxious and happier.

"I had hope," Max recalls simply.

* * *

This isn't the kind of decision parents make lightly or quickly.

In the fall, Makenzie started high school. She dressed as a boy and told her teachers and other students to call her Mack.

In a high school with thousands of students, switching classes for every subject, Mack passed easily as a boy, even in ROTC. When one of the guys brought clippers to school so they could all shave their heads military-style, Mack did, too.

But three weeks into the school year, someone recognized Mack from junior high and told everyone that she was a girl. In a meeting with school officials, Tammy was told that because Mack was a girl, teachers would use female pronouns to refer to Mack from then on. And instead of using the boys restroom, Mack would have to go to the front office and use the bathroom there.

The next day, Mack had a panic attack and left school. At home, Mack announced, "That's it. I'm done being a girl. No more! Treat me like a boy from now on."

Had Makenzie been younger, say 8 or 9, doctors could have given her hormone blockers, which delay the physical changes that come with puberty. Doing so gives children and parents time to decide what comes next without the pressure of the psychological distress Mack experienced.

If the child ultimately transitions to the opposite gender, puberty never interfered. If the child is not transgender, the hormone blockers can be stopped, and natural puberty will begin.

In Makenzie's case, blocking puberty would have meant she would not have developed breasts or hips. Instead, she would have taken testosterone hormone treatment, never menstruated, and then grown facial hair and developed broad shoulders and an Adam's apple. Likewise, a boy would transition to a girl by taking estrogen hormone treatment and would develop breasts and a curvier shape.

There are strict protocols when it comes to treating children with gender identity disorder, including psychiatric evaluations and ongoing counseling. But hormone blockers are controversial; critics question whether a child should make such a life-changing decision. They also are expensive, about $1,000 a month and rarely covered by insurance.

At any rate, for 14-year-old Mack, who had already gone through puberty, it was too late for that.

* * *

Mack got closer to transitioning and wanted a new name, a boy's name. He liked Nathan. But Tammy didn't, and Mom always has veto power.

"It's a mother's right to name her child," she said, even when that child is almost grown. A name is a legacy, something to live up to and a hope. She chose Max, which means "great." It was a strong name for a man. And it was similar enough to Mack to make the change easy.

A year ago this month, the family went to court and made the change legal. And from then on, his parents have used male pronouns to refer to Max.

In July, Max began hormone treatments, consisting of an injection of testosterone every two weeks. The hormones triggered a second round of puberty -- this time, a welcome one.

Within months, Max's larynx began expanding to create an Adam's apple, and his voice was deepening, cracking like an adolescent boy's does at the most inopportune times. His hips are narrowing, his shoulders broadening.

When the hair above Max's lip thickened and darkened, Jim taught him to shave. Max says when he's old, he'll grow a long beard like Dumbledore from "Harry Potter," and then he laughs.

His parents laugh, too, not because that's so funny but because they are happy to hear the sound.

* * *

When Max finished his monologue in drama class at school that day, there was silence, still and heavy, and then clapping. One girl was crying. And as Max came down off the stage, he was caught up in hug after hug.

"I couldn't believe it," Max says. "I had never experienced such a positive reaction."

Actually the disclosure didn't cause much of a stir at New School for the Arts & Academics, a small charter school in Tempe where a boy with blue hair or a girl in a "Star Trek" uniform doesn't raise any (sometimes-pierced) eyebrows. Max wasn't even the school's first transgender teenager.

"I was just me," Max says.

Max expected more of a buzz around school. He says, "I was prepared, and nothing happened. No one seems to care." Actually no one even makes fun of his "Star Trek" lunch box.

Acting forced Max out of his shell and provided him a collection of instant friends. Theater kids are close-knit, notorious for being themselves and not caring what anyone else thinks.

Kori Evans sits on the edge of the stage next to Max, linking her arm through his. Jarrod Chaplin plops down on his other side and holds up his hand for a high five.

Max does well in his other classes, too, when he wants to. He is smart, quoting philosophers and reading books on comparative religion for fun. He is at times perhaps too idealistic, questioning the validity of some assignments, doing well on the ones he likes.

"I hate the totalitarianism of school," Max says.

That's fine, his mother tells him, but he'll repeat English in summer school.

* * *

Summer school seems a wonderfully normal teenage problem, and so does Max's crush on an adorable guy in ceramics and his attempts to get his mom to let him trade his glasses for contact lenses. This day, the two are at J.C. Penney at Mill Crossing in Chandler, shopping for dress clothes.

Men's associate John Straub asks, "Can I help you with anything?"

Tammy is not sure of Max's size, so Straub goes in search of a tape measure, and Max runs his hand across a table of shirts folded in perfect squares, narrow ties running down their fronts. He picks up a bright blue one.

"I don't like the blue," his mom says.

"I love the blue," Max says, then adds, "You don't have to like it."

"I have to look at it," she says.

Max rolls his eyes.

"Let's take the guesswork out of it," Straub says, returning and wrapping the tape measure around Max's neck.

"Fifteen inches," he tells Max. "You could wear slim fit," and then to his mother: "He doesn't need the bulk."

But Max does need the bulk, at least until he has a bilateral mastectomy, or "top surgery," this summer. To disguise his breasts now, he wears a compression shirt under his clothes that flattens them against his chest. It is hot and uncomfortably tight.

"By the end of the day, your shoulders hurt, and you want to collapse," Max says. After surgery, Max will be able to wear better-fitting clothes, go swimming, and, his mom adds, start standing up straight.

"It will be so freeing," Max says.

If a 15-year-old girl wants breast augmentation, she needs only her parents' permission and the money. For Max to have the opposite done, medical standards require 18 months of counseling and a doctor's approval. Once he has the surgery, he can legally change his birth certificate to read "male" in Arizona. The rules vary from state to state.

Max wants a shirt that will look good under a black vest, so Straub brings one over, and they try shirts underneath it, studying each combination.

Max wrinkles his nose at the turquoise one.

"You like blue," his mother says.

"I don't like that blue," Max says.

Max lays a narrow, sparkly gray tie across a purple shirt and smiles at his mom. Straub likes it, too. They'll take it.

On the way out, Max comes to a sudden stop in front of a red T-shirt with the "Star Trek" Enterprise on the front. His mom has said no more T-shirts until after the surgery, since he has plenty, and he'll likely be a different size.

"Oh, please! Just that one," Max begs.

"Oh, all right," she says. Max hugs her, quickly.

* * *

None of this has been easy for Jim and Tammy, watching their child's despair, wishing they could protect him from every unkindness and knowing they can't, and deciding to let him change his gender.

"You do what is right for your kid," Jim says.

Like glasses or orthodontics, "whatever it is, you fix it," Tammy says. Even if it is more complicated than eye charts, or braces, which Max has needed, twice. She is nervous about Max's surgery, because there are risks with any surgery. But she knows that if he should ever change his mind -- though she doesn't think he will -- it is reversible. And the only other path -- forcing Max to continue being a brutally unhappy Makenzie -- wasn't an option at all.

"Kids don't decide this. They don't decide, 'Hey, I'm going to be transgender.' This is hard," Tammy says. "With the statistics of suicide rates and the bullying that goes on against these kids, who would choose that?

"It is definitely not a choice."

Kids arrive in the world already wired, and although parents can make them behave, eat vegetables, go to bed on time, give them opportunities and expose them to different experiences, they are who they are.

"Look at his room. I can't make him clean his room," Tammy says. "I can't very well force his gender."

In his wallet, Max carries a picture of 4-year-old Makenzie, wearing a blue plaid sleeveless shirt. It was taken at preschool, and Max says it is the last time he really thought of himself as a girl.

"It's a personal, everyday reminder: This is who I was," he says.

Tammy says that she doesn't miss Makenzie, no more than she misses the little girls her other children used to be.

Tasha, with her red spiral ponytails. Princess Shelby. Bethany, who needed cuddling. Or Makenzie in a teddy-bear-covered nightgown.

"I have those memories. I remember those things," Tammy says, but each young child is tucked inside the older child of today. "Max just evolved into someone else, just as my daughters did."

For Jim, Max is just his kid, same as always. As a welder who works with huge metal ductwork but also crafts large metal sculptures of underwater ocean scenes, the fish twisted in delicate detail, Jim has never been much for gender stereotypes.

Tammy tells other parents with transgender children not to mourn their own dreams of what might have been.

"Those are your dreams, anyway. No matter your child's gender, they may not have lived the way you had hoped. They have their own dreams," she says.

* * *

When Phoenix Pride, a non-profit advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, asked for nominations for a youth ambassador for its annual parade in April, Max was nominated several times and chosen for the role.

He decided to do it in the hopes of helping other teens like him.

"I want to reach someone, someone who is hurting, someone who thinks there is no hope, someone who thinks they are the only one," Max says.

On parade day, Max rode atop the procession's best car, by his assessment -- a new black Ferrari with his name on a banner across the windshield.

This was his official coming out. There would be no going back now, not with press releases, news coverage, thousands of people in attendance, and his picture flashing on a big electronic screen at the end of the route.

Max said he wasn't nervous, but his parents, sister Shelby and her daughter, Malia, who's 2 and wearing a shirt that says "Rainbow Kisses," wait with him in the shade of a rainbow umbrella before the parade starts.

It's hot, even in shorts and a T-shirt. Many of the women are in bikini tops, the men shirtless. Next year, Max says, he's not wearing a shirt.

"You'd better start working on your tan now," his sister teases.

As the procession rolls slowly along Central Avenue from Thomas Road, Max waves, and people clap and take Max's picture over the heads of vendors selling rainbow boas and hats. They call out, "Way to go, Max!" and "Thank you, Max!"

Someone shouts, "Is that your Ferrari?" Max wishes. He just got his learner's permit.

Halfway along the route, his mom waves with one hand and holds a video camera in the other. His dad calls out, "Max! Buddy!"

"Look at him!" Rosalyn Mendez, a family friend shouts, springing out of her lawn chair. "He's not a little boy anymore! He's a young man!"

Farther along, on the other side of the street, Ray Bradford of Phoenix holds an orange poster-board sign listing the names of young advocates -- including Max -- that says, "Our real heroes." Bradford doesn't know Max personally, but he says, "I'm very proud of him for his strength and his courage."

At the end of the route, Max climbs out of the car and thanks his driver, who rolls up the banner from the windshield and gives it to Max.

"I'm thinking my arms are going to fall off from waving too much," Max says.

When he was younger and so miserable, struggling to figure out who he was, he says, "If you had told me that I would be riding in a parade like this, having people with signs thinking I'm a hero, I would have thought you were mental."

He heads back to where his family waits, weaving through the crowd that is still watching the rest of the parade. People call out to him, by name, and pat him on the back.

Reach the reporter at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com.