A Little Excerpt

Spring 2019

“What was the weirdest thing that ever happened to you?” Kevin Maggliardi asked Rhody Bacaluso-Leyman. They were watching TV in Kevin’s apartment that he shares with a few of his friends, and they were waiting for everyone else to come home from the nearby coffee shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Oh boy, here’s a good one,” Rhody replied. “When I was a junior in college, I was at a bar with a few friends. There was a girl who thought I was really cute who randomly asked if she could feel my heartbeat.”
“Wow, I’ve never heard of that one before. What was your response?”
“I played along. I let her feel it, and then she gushed over how cute she thought I was. And honestly, I probably had enough drinks in me to be cooler about it.”
“A lot of girls thought I was cute all through grade school and even in college. I met my ex at a party at another school,” Kevin responded.
“Oh yeah. I also met my ex at a party. Now what was the weirdest thing that ever happened to you?” Rhody asked.
“Well, a lot of strange things happened to me when I was younger. But a month after I had my tonsils removed, I had a pretty bad cold. So that wasn’t the best summer for me.”
“How old were you when you had your tonsils removed?”
“I was twelve or thirteen. I don’t quite remember.”
“I actually had mine out about a year after Levi had his removed. There was one day when my throat was so sore, and I was in a very bad mood. I tried to eat ice cream, and it had melted enough that I didn’t want to eat any of it, so I threw the whole container out the window.”