Scintilla, Star

In the old place, there was no place that did not see me. Wherever I went mothers whispered about me like a Greek chorus: I heard that boy...    I heard that. I was just a boy. But it was true, what they said, that I liked other boys, that I had stolen Sarah’s, though he was four years older and they were very much in love. I made him break up with her in a Chili’s parking lot while I waited inside. I was fourteen. How embarrassing to have been fourteen, to have eaten at that Chili’s, often. That summer I had no taste for anything but him. Faintly of chlorine. When he left for college I had no one. Sarah’s friends stared me down at school. I found it was better, if I could not be no one, to be someone. Small, but particular. Specified, which was an apprenticeship for special. Cold, another word for cool.