All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

by Bryn Greenwood

The sort of boy who thinks he’s the center of the universe.

Mr. Arsenikos said if you knew the constellations you would never get lost. You could always find your way home.

Her school registration form. She’d filled it all out, but she needed a parent’s signature and the twelve bucks to register. Nobody had registered her for school, and that morning was the first day.

Nothing like that happened. It never did when you wanted it to.

As I pulled up in the line, I glanced out of the corner of my eye and caught Wavy staring up at the stars. She was the prettiest girl there easy, with her hair blowing back like a flag. Amazed me how fast she was growing up.

All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.

could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less.

I’d been afraid of so many things: sex, graduating, college, leaving home, falling in love. Life. Now I’d fallen in love, gotten my heart broken, and had meaningless sex. Those scary things were over.

Those letters seemed so wonderfully tragic to me. Each one a message he would never get. A note in a bottle, bobbing on the ocean. Lost.

Seeing them together as the sun went down and the stars came out, my heart did a little leap of joy. I wanted a fairy tale ending for Wavy, because if she could find happiness, there would be hope for me, too.