Everyone Brave Is Forgiven(33)

“What time does this say?” his class teacher would ask, pointing at the clock face on the blackboard. And Zachary would stare at the hands, trying to remember which way they spun, while tears began. And outside there would be a bull getting walked down the lane with its bell ringing, and Zachary would hear the brass edge of its chime softening as it dissolved in the summer air and made its tumbling ascent. The edge of the sound continually tucked under itself as it rose, a slow brass thunderhead, and he noticed it and noticed it and noticed it, and then suddenly everyone was staring at him, and the question was still: “Zachary, what time does this clock say?,” and he had no idea—no idea at all—and the whole class was jeering him and he hung his head.

He had been alone since September, until a week ago when Simone had brushed past him. He had braced himself for the scratch or the slap, but instead she had turned and given him a quick half-smile right there in the classroom, where anyone might notice.

The next day she had touched his hand at morning break.

“Zachary? Don’t be sad.”

He was surprised three ways. One, to realize he was sad. Two, that someone had noticed it before he did. And three, that someone had talked to him. He had stood there, perfectly still, watching her walk away.

He thought about her now: her dirty brown hair and chipped teeth. Her skin, lighter than the other children’s. The villagers freckled and bronzed in the summer but she stayed white. The girls in the class left her out of jump rope and hide-and-seek. He let his thoughts go away with it for a while: imagining being so white that people teased him.

She was from far away, like him. He worried he should know. For others, probably, as simple as looking at the hands of a clock and saying “five to nine” would be to look at Simone Block and say “She is from France” or “She is from Holland.” He didn’t even know what he was supposed to know.

She was late. He worried she wouldn’t arrive. Also, he worried she would. He hid at the edge of the field, where foxgloves and wood anemones gave cover. The country children’s eyes were always ranging, spectacular with sight. In the schoolyard he had seen a boy stoop during football, pick up a stone and throw it into a hedge where Zachary had seen only shadows. A thickening of the silence, a closing in of children: a stunned and bloodied rabbit dragged out by the tail to have its neck cracked. Before the creature’s legs had finished twitching, the game had restarted from a throw-in.

Though the evening was warm, Zachary was cold from hunger. His host family gave him nothing, and it was hard to go around the farms looking for windfalls without bringing sight on himself. Better to be hungry and hidden. He watched where the rabbits and the deer went. He saw with the eyes of a prey animal, looking for gaps to slip through. He was better at it than the village children were. He had kept himself to himself until, in the schoolyard, Simone had let a scrap of paper fall beside him. He had put a foot over it until it was safe to pick up. He’d unrolled it, read it and eaten it in one smooth motion. I like you, the note had said. She didn’t know what they could do.

From his pocket he pulled stalks of green wheat and rolled onto his front to eat the soft parts at the base of the stems. The mist was thickening with the sunset. He rolled a rotten stump, caught wood lice as they fled, and ate them. They balled themselves up at the end—the fools, the half-men, the easily scattered tribes from the books near the start of the Bible— you could crunch them like silvery pills. He ate an octave of them, humming. They tasted of summer rain.

He had wanted to write a note back to Simone but he had been ashamed. He didn’t know whether he likked, likede or lyked her, to, too or two. Instead he had slowed by her desk, just for a moment, when he came into class the next day. He had dared a glance at her, and she had responded with a smile so warm that he had almost forgotten himself and grinned back.

The light reddened. A lacewing touched down on his arm and he pinched its head and ate it. When he looked up, Simone was pushing her way through the long grass toward the center of the field. In her white shirt and black pinafore she strode between the thistles, making no effort at all to hide. His heart jumped. He hesitated, then rose above the foxgloves just high enough to catch her eye and beckon her over.

When she was safely in the cover of the field border he brushed a place clean for her on the dry moss.

“Show me behind your ears,” she said straight away.

He angled his head for her and she folded each ear forward to look behind it. “It’s not done by the sun, then. Or else you’d be paler here.”

“It’s the same all over.”

“Did you start off normal and go that color?”

“No. I was like this since I was born.”

She gave a sympathetic nod. “Then it’s your parents’ fault.”

“I don’t think—”

“Shh. Does it hurt?”

“Does what hurt?”

“Your skin.”

“No, it doesn’t hurt.”

“It doesn’t feel burned at all?”

“No.”

“I don’t mean like agony, like arrrrrgh! I mean like when you get too close to the fire and your hairs curl up and it’s sore.”

“It’s not sore.”

“And it’s your father who’s a cannibal?”

“He’s a musician.”