‘Boys And Girls Like You And Me’ by Aryn Kyle

Boys And Girls Like You And Me by Aryn Kyle, 2010

The magic trick:

Shifting the narrative style to direct address in the final paragraphs

This might be the quintessential Aryn Kyle story – rife with all her usual strengths and weaknesses.

The problem is that she occasionally can’t resist a joke or creating a melodramatic scene, so as a result this, like the other stories of hers I’ve read, contains at least three or four moments that defy logic. Something a character says that slips outside the contained picture the previous 10 pages of story had created. Something another character does that seems wholly inconsistent with who you thought they were – if not inconsistent with any human you’ve ever known in this reality.

But let’s set those false notes aside.

Even with those moments of inconsistency and incredulity, the story – also like the others of hers I’ve read – makes you feel something. The closing paragraphs here are particularly effective. Kyle is so good at isolating those periods of time in our lives when our bad decisions lead us into strange situations with strange people. And in “Boys And Girls Like You And Me” she not only portrays a time like that in our narrator’s life, she comments on it.

The closing two paragraphs are remarkable, shifting the narrator’s communication into a direct-address “you.” Who is she talking to? The reader? Iris? That entire time in her life?

It’s a beautiful way to put a bow on a story without being too obvious or direct.

And that’s quite a trick on Kyle’s part.

The selection:

This is how you ended up here: You were poor or unlucky or unwise. You told a lie or broke a rule or wanted something you weren’t supposed to have. You ended up here because you didn’t care where you ended up, because you were selfish or impulsive or naïve, because you made a bad decision, not once, but again and again and again and again. You ended up here because you could not see what any idiot could see: This is not a place where people come to build a life—this is a place where people fall apart.

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