Do you want to see something cool?

"Do you want to see something cool?"

His opening line.

I was five years old. Of course I wanted to see something cool.

His idea of cool and mine were like night and day.

The chocolate was cool. I never got chocolate.

The pens and pencils and fat erasers leaking their pleasant bookstore scent were cool. My fingers itched to hold them, make marks on sheets of white paper only I knew the meaning of.

The idea of a secret was cool. To be trusted with clandestine information no one else knew.

Seeing what lay beneath his clothes was cool. I had wondered what boys had.

Touching the flesh and watching it move and change was cool.

The rest wasn't.