The One-in-a-Million Boy

by Monica Wood

He’d read obsessively – instruction manuals, record books, novels far too old for him – picking up linguistic baubles like a crow mining a roadside.

most lives, comprised a pileup of ordinary days,

Regale me.

But what I meant was that the war changed Louise, too – she lost her two baby brothers in a single day – but you got the feeling it made her more of what she already was.

to this day I consider that moment – clink! – as the beginning of our friendship. I’m glad it made a sound.

was married to Howard for twenty-eight years and yet he made only a piddling dent in my memory. A little nick. But certain others, they move in and make themselves at home and start flapping their arms in the story you make of your life. They have a wingspan. . . . I would say so, yes. I would say that you are a boy with a wingspan.