The One-in-a-Million Boy

by Monica Wood

How tranquilizing it was to arm yourself with information, how consoling to unpack the facts and then plant them like fence pickets, building a sturdy pen in which you stood alone, cosseted against human fallibility.

Ona didn’t know what to do with fragile people; she’d spent so much of her life around bullies.

It wasn’t that she was selfish, or indifferent. Just too full of her own wants. She wanted to see her hydrangeas bloom come fall. To vote in another presidential election. To see the end of this war. And to find her name in a record book. She preferred life to death, that’s all. Most people did.