Though the narration wavers between present, past, and future tenses, the story is told years after the central events’ occurrence; the story’s first-person narrator, as an adult, recalls the formative childhood experience. Sensitive and observant, Bobby notices the small details of his surroundings, and he intuits others’ emotions and vulnerabilities. His narration is often wry and ironic, qualities shown in his description of the teachers at the party as “independent spirits on a spying mission” (9) and the math teacher as “big and graceful as a parade float” (11).

The interiority of the narrative voice gives the reader a better sense of Bobby’s character arc, which is, on one level, a movement from ignorance to knowledge; more specifically, it is a movement from youth’s naiveté to a greater and more burdensome awareness of danger and mortality. In this sense, the narrative bears the earmarks of a coming-of-age story, a genre that focuses on the psychological or moral growth of the protagonist as they transition from childhood to adulthood. Though the narrative is too short to extensively show Bobby growing up, his experience with