The Leavers(22)

“Where are you from?”

Deming cleared his throat. “The Bronx. Where are you from?”

“I’m from here,” she said, and walked away.

On the fourth day, there was gym. In Ridgeborough, kids played sports. Football, soccer, basketball, swimming, baseball, tennis, volleyball, hockey. Ridgeborough boys were supposed to charge and ram. Deming observed the youth of Planet Ridgeborough in the boys’ locker room as they changed into gym clothes, from the unformed baby limbs of short kids like Shawn Wecker, the crumbiest of crumbs, to the meaty paws and Frankenhead of Cody Campbell. He studied Cody’s plump hands, thighs like pork roasts, the waggle and sweat of Cody’s chins.

He took off his shoes, took off the athletic shorts Kay had bought. The crumbs stayed on the edges of rows, scuttling to change without being noticed, but the other boys joked and yelled out to their friends.

Shawn Wecker, his foot tangled in the fabric of his shorts, stumbled into a locker. He was a small boy with a shriveled face, so pale he’d been nicknamed Ghost. “Fag,” one of the other boys said. “Ghost is a fag.”

“Fuck you!” Shawn yelled back. “Fuck! You!” The locker room’s collective response was laughter, so much worse than anger, and Shawn slunk away. Then Deming felt the shove, a blow between his shoulder blades. He tipped forward.

It was Cody. “What are you looking at? Chinese retard.” On the side of his face was a flying saucer–shaped mole. He pushed Deming again, but this time Deming charged Cody and knocked him backwards. Cody stumbled, making a sound like oofaa. He was less graceful than even Travis Bhopa; he was big but lacked balance. This struck Deming as both comic and predictable.

There was a weight on him, a jab in his side. One elbow, then another. Deming cried out and the weight rolled off. Cody collected himself. Deming stood up. “What the hell?”

The weight was Shawn Wecker, his face snarled.

Deming walked away. “Retard,” Cody repeated. “Chinese retard.” It sounded like a bawl, fleshy and raw, an animal turned inside out.

In gym they played kickball, a sport Deming had never played before. When it was his turn to kick, he heard a snicker and a voice go, “Nice shoes.” He looked down at his new Nikes and the ball socked him in the gut. When he whirled around he saw a row of boys trying not to laugh.

After school, he walked home by himself. It wasn’t that far, only a half hour, but the view was relentlessly unchanging, house after house, tree after tree. The tight streets unrolled into mini-fields, so vast that looking at them made him dizzy, frightened at the unendingness. As he got farther from school, the spaces between houses were bigger than the biggest houses themselves. He had grown so unaccustomed to hearing cars that when one drove past, he jumped.

Passing the railroad tracks, he heard footsteps behind him and tightened his stance, anticipating Cody and his friends.

A boy’s voice said, “Hey.” Deming lunged. But it wasn’t Cody, it was a kid whom Deming had observed with curiosity, Roland Fuentes. He looked different than the other kids; he, too, wasn’t one of them. Deming had heard people say Roland’s last name with an exaggerated accent, drawing out the syllables like a mockery, though Roland never reacted. “Hey,” he said now to Deming, “I’m Roland. You’re Daniel, right?”

Roland Fuentes was in the smart math class with the girl from the cafeteria, Emily Needles. He would’ve fit in fine in the city, but in Ridgeborough his speed and determination made him suspect. He jutted his chin forward as he moved, eyeballs darting like a nervous bird. His skin was browner than the bond-paper-white of Amber Bitburger and Shawn Wecker, and his dark hair was baby fine and thinning, or perhaps it had never filled in, if a boy could be balding before junior high.

Together they crossed the tracks, kicking up gravel. No trains, to Deming’s knowledge, ever went through here.

“You in Dumpkin’s homeroom?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m in Moore’s.”

Deming knew that but wasn’t admitting it.

“Where do you live? I live over on Sycamore.”

“Near there,” Deming said. “On Oak.”

“Where are you from?”

It didn’t seem as annoying when it came from Roland. “The city. The Bronx.”

“Cool.”

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Mars!” Roland was small but his voice was the lowest out of all the boys’, a scratchy, gravely baritone. “No. I’m from here. Ridge Burrow.”

Roland said he and his mom lived on the corner of Sycamore and his dad was dead. “But I don’t remember him. He died when I was three and a half. In a car accident.”

“My dad died, too,” Deming said. He suddenly wanted to be friends with Roland, to be friends with anyone. “In China.”

“Did your mom die, too? Your real mom.”

The word came out before he could stop it. “Yeah.”

At dinner Peter asked if Deming had a good day at school and Deming said yes, he made a friend. Kay asked if he liked his teachers and he said they were okay, a little boring. She laughed and said, “Lump-Kin.”

“What a name,” said Peter. “The kids must go to town on that one.”

After dinner, Peter and Kay taught Deming gin rummy, and they sat together at the kitchen table and played cards until it got dark outside.