First Day
The meaty eighth-grader sloshes in, chomping on a fresh mouthful of gum, his laces lagging in rivulets behind him. "This art?" he half asks-half announces from the threshold. Restless, the class looks up from midway though sticky attempts at monoprints. He follows their gaze as they turn like a herd toward the teacher.
"And you are?" the teacher asks, barely looking up from the papers on his desk.
The boy keeps one hand on the door knob. With the other he fishes through his pocket for the transfer slip from guidance which he has folded too many times. Beneath his blunt fingers, he can feel its dull, triangular shape. But the boy does not present the paper. He does not offer his name. The air conditioner idles and he sweats beneath his oversized jersey.
"Is that gum in your mouth?" the teacher inquires, looking up now—pushing his chair back so it squeaks against the yellowing linoleum floors. He wades, with growing urgency, through the sea of students toward the new boy.
In his old school they let him chew gum because they knew it helped him to concentrate. Before the teacher can reach him, the eighth-grader spits the gum onto map of his palm. As the whole room watches, he presses the pink glob onto the gray cinder block wall beneath the pencil sharpener, where it will remain collecting pencil shavings and dust for eternities—long after he has dropped out or graduated; after they have all found work or fell in love or changed the world or succumb to it.
"Your name, young man!" the teacher stammers, red faced, right in front of him now. The boy blows out a long stream of air, shifts his weight, then he makes his decision. He will leave the classroom. Better now, he thinks, to walk down the hall, past the office and out the front doors. But as he turns, someone winds the press in the corner and a perfectly imperfect print whirs out, catching his eye.
And right beyond the presses' winding arm, at the table near the window, he sees her; dark eyes beneath a pile of dark hair and pink pastel cheeks. She wears a short turquoise skirt and knee socks that laze a bit where the elastic has worn. She holds up a brayer, toward him, like a waving hand. In the narrow parting of her lips, he can see turquoise rubber bands on her braces.
"Cordell Williams," the boy answers stepping forward into the classroom; so that the teacher retreats in a small way he feels more than sees. He hands the teacher the fatly folded paper from his pocket, then strides into the classroom in the boats of his new shoes.