Dennis The Wallflower

In the gym, seeing the girls go and dance so easily with boys who only asked them - who suffered no ordeal, who didn't earn the right - made him sick and sad and wild and angry and broken and invisible. He cried in the bathroom sometimes, Dennis, on those friday nights smelling of Old Spice, a heart full of smoldering rubble again. Dennis was a kid who read signs in the movement of birds. He knew the moon, the sound and feel of wind, like friends. The others weren't sure what he was, and mostly stayed away. I'm only a kid, he thought, I should be having fun. He walked home alone under cold silent stars, watching the steam of his breath, feeling the strong pump of his heart, so alive he wanted it to stop.