He showed up at my best friend Mary’s New Year’s Eve party at her parents’ apartment on West End Avenue. No one knew who invited him. Jason Brennan, I once heard a boy say. Wasn’t his nose once broken? And his mouth is too big? Jason was beautiful because he wasn’t perfect. His nose did look as if it had been half smashed a long time ago, but that made him more alluring. Tall and skinny with long limbs that always seemed to get tangled with each other. Eyes that were green or gray or even blue, depending on the light. His too-large mouth made him look like Mick Jagger. He always wore a denim jacket with one torn sleeve. He could be every rock star that stared down from framed posters on my friends’ walls. He didn’t go to our school but to the Bronx High School of Science, which was several long and confusing subway rides away.
— “Blue Moon on Riverside,” Story # 5 in Penny Jackson’s My Daughter’s Boyfriends
Kanlaon 