Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne Page A

different person to me. All his usual hard edges had been smoothed. He seemed like someone I might want to talk to once in a while, someone who could take a joke. I wondered whether I looked different to him, too. It was probably just a lot of hormones getting released into my bloodstream, causing me to see things in a whole new light.
    The honk of my mother’s car horn broke the spell.
    â€œCome on, let’s get out of here,” I said, grabbing Leonard and pulling him along toward the car.
    â€œBut—”
    I was not about to let him finish his sentence.
    â€œJust get in.”
    I took the front seat. Leonard climbed into the back.
    â€œWho are those two boys?” my mother asked as she checked out her hair in the rearview mirror.
    I rolled the leftover taste of Travis around in my mouth, savoring my success.
    â€œThat’s her new boyfriend,” Leonard chimed in from the backseat. “That one. The one on the left.”
    â€œShut up, you. He is so not my boyfriend. And you of all people should know it.”
    â€œI hope not,” Mom said as the car pulled away from the curb. “Neither of them look much like boyfriend material to me.”
    I sat there in the front seat of Mom’s car, fingering Leonard’s stupid money clip inside my coat pocket and feeling that little lift that comes when I’ve scored. As someone who has had some experience in the world of shoplifting, I’ve learned that the release of endorphins is definitely one reason to take the risk and pocket merchandise. I mean, for people like me, it’s rarely a matter of actually needing the stuff. It’s the high I’m after, the lift.
    When I was good and ready, I reached over into the backseat and presented Leonard with my balled-up fist. Then slowly, really slowly, I opened my fingers one by one until the money clip was visible in the sweaty center of my palm.
    â€œHere,” I said.
    Leonard’s mouth literally dropped open.
    â€œBut how…”
    Even after he had grabbed hold of the clip and then sat there staring at it, I could feel the ghost of the thing still in my hand. When I looked, there was a deep impression in the middle of my lifeline.
    Leonard looked at me as if I were the Blue Fairy in the Pinocchio story, the one who had the power to turn him into a real boy. There were actual tears in his eyes, and he mouthed the words “thank you.”
    Jeez , I thought, I’ll never get rid of him now.
    And that’s when I burst out crying.
    Don’t ask me why. Maybe the wiring of my deep inner emotional life had gotten crossed and I had lost the ability to tell the difference between happiness and sadness. Maybe crying was just a new form of laughing, and vice versa.
    When we got home, I marched Leonard out behind the house, sat him down on the trash bin, and told him the story of Winona Ryder. Because I had once been a huge Winona Ryder fan, even going so far as writing letters to her and sending them to her talent agency, I knew her E! True Hollywood Story by heart and had no difficulty working it into our conversation. Even though she had already had a whole career by the time I was old enough to appreciate her and had gone into semiretirement when I was about ten, she still held some kind of fascination for me. Her story was enough to inspire anybody.
    â€œWinona was, like, eight or nine years old and living in Petaluma with her family. She was a total tomboy, and the first week at her new school, these kids attacked her, called her a wuss and worse. Then, for good measure, they gave her a beating. And you know why?”
    Leonard was engrossed in the story; he stared at me and didn’t seem to realize that the question was, in fact, directed at him. So I repeated it.
    â€œDo you know why they beat her up?”
    â€œUm … I dunno. Because her last name used to be Horowitz?”
    Frankly, I was surprised as hell that Leonard knew this. But that