He found his room and slung his bag over his shoulder so he could turn the big knob with both hands. On the other side of the door, the long room was nearly empty. A few feet away a woman sat with her feet atop a desk and a book propped open on her thighs.
“Name?” she asked.
Instead of replying, Davey strode forward and handed her the paper from the lobby-girl.
“You’re not supposed to bring your bag in here,” she said. “Didn’t you get a locker?”
“Locker?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” she said slowly, “get a locker from Melissa.”
“Okay,” said Davey, reaching over and scratching his arm.
“Just put your bag there for today,” she pointed to the corner near the door.
“It’s just my baseball clothes,” he said.
She continued to hold her arm out, aimed at the corner, until he dropped his bag there and returned.
“Everyone’s out in the courtyard until one,” she said. “Then Mr. Nguyen comes back for afternoon stuff.”
Davey stood nervously, awaiting clearer instructions, but the reclining woman had already returned to her book.
“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” she asked.
“No,” said Davey.
“Then you can go to the courtyard.” She nodded towards the back of the room.
Davey finally saw what she meant—near the far corner of the long room, a set of double-doors blended into the windowed wall. He crossed the big, empty room and pushed the bar to let himself out. Compared to the air-conditioning of the building, the heat was instantly oppressive. Davey squinted as he descended the few stairs to the dry, dirt yard.
Surrounded by the two-story Center, the courtyard felt like a mockery of outdoors. Davey had spent his morning doing drills in catcher’s camp—an activity that he had previously considered to be the antithesis of play activity—but compared to this place, it had been a lush paradise. Davey shaded his eyes with a hand just in time to spot a kickball hurtling towards his face.
He ducked, reacting without thinking. The ball grazed the top of his hair, and smacked hard into the glass that made the top half of the door.
The woman from the desk appeared at the door almost instantly. She rapped her knuckles on the pane several times and then pointed while glaring. Davey followed her finger and saw an older boy with long blond hair sitting on the back of a bench. The blond boy ignored the woman and stared at Davey.
Davey turned left and headed toward the other end of the courtyard, where some younger kids played in the shadow of the building. He shuffled towards them trying to see if he recognized any of their faces before he committed to joining their number. Nobody seemed familiar, and the biggest boy looked to be a full year younger than Davey. He sat near the outskirts of their group and listened to two boys playing with small action figures.
From his new vantage point, Davey could survey the entire population of the courtyard without meeting the direct gaze of the blond boy. What he found disheartened him further. The small group of younger kids to Davey’s left were closest to Davey’s age. Everyone else was at least a couple of years older, and to Davey’s eyes they looked like trouble. In groups of two and three they had formed little cliques and circles. Aside from the two who appeared to be punching the ground, most of the older kids simply talked to each other, sometimes drawing with their fingers in the dirt, or tossing pebbles.
“I’m Evan,” a plump kid landed in the dirt next to Davey.
“Hey,” said Davey, eyeing the boy. Davey guessed that Evan had just gotten out of first grade.
“What do you do?” asked Evan.
“What do you mean?” asked Davey.
“Do you go to school?”
“Not now,” said Davey. “It’s summer.”
“I go to school in summer,” said Evan, sneering a little. “Most kids do.”
“I don’t,” said Davey. “I have camp in the mornings.”
“Oh yeah,” said Evan. “Me too. These kids all go to school,” he drew a circle in the air around the cluster of younger kids next them.
“What about those guys over there?” Davey asked, pointing with his chin to the older bunch.
“You shouldn’t mess with those guys. They’ll make you do bad stuff,” said Evan.
“Okay,” said Davey.
The door to the classroom squeaked open and a small asian man stood in the doorway. “Let’s go,” he shouted. “Back inside.”
Davey rose slowly and followed the other kids towards the doors. He found himself near the back of the pack of younger kids; lined up with the older, slower group.
Mr. Nguyen pointed at Davey as he walked through the door. “You’re new,” he said to Davey, pointing him to the side.
Back in the classroom, the kids were divided roughly by age and set up with different activities. The youngest were assigned finger paints, and the oldest left with the desk woman to go to a different room.
“We put you here.” Mr. Nguyen pointed to a group of five which included the blond boy. “Together we do drawing or writing,” he continued. Davey’s group-mates seemed to know the agenda. They dragged desks and chairs to the center of the room to form a rough circle. Each student received a couple sheets of unlined paper and a charcoal pencil.
Mr. Nguyen gave brief instructions. He set up a table bearing a bowl of artificial fruit; to this he pointed. “Draw or write,” he said. “One hour.”
Davey’s eyes scanned his group. They included two other boys and three girls, all of whom bent over and went to work on the assignment. He looked at his pencil and wondered what sort of script he might achieve with such a tool. As far as he knew, he had no interest or aptitude in art, but that seemed like the less onerous option. He began to sketch the round arc of the front of the bowl.
Even to his untrained eye, he could see that his drawing was a naive interpretation of the simple shapes. Mr. Nguyen circled the group once more and then stalked off without offering any advice. Davey glanced around at his fellow inmates and hunched over his work, imitating their concentration.
He glanced up again at the apple, tried to memorize its contours, and focused back on his paper. Something in the back of his head clicked as he looked back down at his paper and Davey’s head snapped back up. His eyes focused on the empty seat across the circle. The older boy with the long blond hair, the one who had thrown the ball earlier, was no longer in his chair.
Davey glanced to his right just as a hand clamped down on his left wrist. He fought his arm as it moved back, across the edge of the desk and jerked back up behind his back. The blond boy’s face appeared just over Davey’s right shoulder; his hair brushing Davey’s neck and cheek. Blondie lifted Davey’s arm another inch, until he could have scratched his own shoulder blades. Davey felt his elbow and shoulder light up in pain, but he kept his quiet—not rewarding his attacker with a yell.
“Hey queer-boy,” the blond boy whispered in Davey’s ear. “I heard your mom’s a whore. Is that true?”
Davey’s eyes danced around the room, looking for help. Within his group kids glanced up at the altercation, but they quickly returned to their own work. Davey’s eyes touched on young Evan, across the room, covered up to his wrists in finger paints. If Evan saw the attack, he made no outward sign.
“Leave him alone, Curtis,” said a girl across the circle.
“Shut up, bitch,” said Curtis. She shot him a disgusted look, but she heeded his order. “Now, faggot. Is your mom a whore or not?” he asked again.
Davey didn’t answer. Not because of some brave act of defiance, but because he wasn’t quite sure what was happening to him. The world had slowed again, like when he was catching the pop foul at catcher’s camp. His vision sharpened, focusing only on the world within ten feet, but he could see everything.