Once in third grade they held Duey Pepper's head inside a terrarium for seven minutes while Mr Winters went out for a cigarette. The yellow snake hissed and slithered and looped itself around Duey's neck as everyone sat silent and watched. When Mr Winters came back Linda Martins put up her hand and answered a question about the geography of the United States. Duey didn't put up his hand. Duey never put up his hand. Duey never talked except to Oliver, though no one ever heard them. Oliver was Duey's only friend. By fourth grade they started on Oliver, too. I saw it. Pushing and slapping him in a circle, asking him, "What's Duey sound like, I bet he says he loves you, does he talk like a faggot?"

Duey didn't have parents. He had grandparents. They were from somewhere else and didn't speak English. In the spring they planted rows of tomatoes and gave Duey sandwiches with horseradish that smelled across the cafeteria. Once in fifth grade the other kids held Duey down on a long plastic table and pressed the horseradish into his face. He didn't say a word. He just took it. His eyes got real red but he didn't rub them, and he didn't cry. One of the teachers saw. In the teachers' lounge she said "boys will be boys," and drank coffee. Duey's grandparents didn't complain to the school board. They didn't speak English. And Duey didn't have parents.

Before that fall, no one ever took Duey Pepper's picture. It wasn't like it is now, with all the news people around, pointing their black lenses and eating city lunches. Sometimes at recess the bolder ones climb fences and set off flashes while the kids play footy on the cement. Goal after goal and all they probably hope for is that it happens again. Those pale bloodless young bodies. Duey doesn't play footy. Sometimes they put his picture in the paper all the same, with no story or caption. Just a boy's picture. A boy by himself, standing. A boy just like any other boy except for the stitches across...