In the public bath in April, he and I looked at each other for three seconds. The water vapor gathered and dispersed between the two people. I saw his pupils dilate and saw myself reflected in his eyes - like a mirror, reflecting the eighteen-year-old boy who was holding the note and not daring to hand it out.
I was his class teacher, and he was my student. There were podiums, test papers, and a classroom of forty people between us. But after June, that line disappeared. With an age difference of fifteen years, it took the two boys who grew up in a small county town twenty years to dare to say to themselves: So you are here too.
