But there was still the matter of her excuse. If she kept skipping, on the third day at the latest they would call her house to ask about her. That’s how it always is: teachers chase the students down to make them go to class, even though at heart they’d rather the kids miss school, because it meant less work and calmer classrooms for them. Take Héctor, a repeating student who skipped school all the time, and who, when he did go, only caused trouble. Héctor didn’t have the slightest interest in learning any of what was taught in those classrooms; he wanted to be a construction worker, but he had to wait until he was of legal age to leave school. He spent his time in class climbing on top of desks, throwing spitballs, and smacking his classmates on the back of the head, just out of boredom. Once, he went weeks without showing up, until an inspector came around and inquired about him and about the school’s measures against his absenteeism. Absenteeism, kids, is punished, he told the other students there, the ones who never skipped, and his tone was very serious, menacing. Her case isn’t comparable to Héctor’s because she is not under suspicion. From the outset she has a credibility that he would never have, since she has always been an obedient, disciplined, and even submissive girl, not at all rowdy—she would be terribly embarrassed, for example, to climb up onto a desk. But, even so, she had to give some explanation for her absence.

First she thought about calling in with a made-up excuse, then she considered faking a letter. She looked online and found some forms to request a school transfer. There were several kinds: she chose the SUT model (Sudden Urgent Transfer). If you thought about it, it really wasn’t so strange: a sudden change in her parents’ jobs or any other unforeseen event could force them to move, those things happen all the time, especially at the start of the year, right? She filled out the form, chose a random school in a nearby city as her transfer, included a fake phone number, and faxed it to her school from the copy shop near her house. So far, the trick was working. If anyone had called either of the schools to confirm the transfer or ask a question, Soon didn’t know about it. Her parents were acting normal, she acted normal, life went on as normal: clearly, no one needed school.

It’s because they hit you there, right? There? Where? At school, right? No, no, it’s not that, says Soon, horrified. No? Your teachers don’t hit you? When he was in school, it was normal to get the rod: smacks on the palm of your hand, tugs on the ear, and, for the most disobedient, a good swat. Even the most compassionate teachers did it: less often, but they did it. He remembers one who made a little elastic whip and attached a bag with a handful of garbanzos to the end. He was the one who took them to the gym, and if they fell off the pommel horse or didn’t last long enough on the rings, he used his instrument to torment them while he called them faggots, homos, and queers. And it’s true that he was a little effeminate, Old Man admits, with his flat feet and flutey voice, but oh, how it hurt! He laughs as he remembers, and the laugh consoles Soon, though she starts to fear that next to Old Man’s memories, her own complaints sound insignificant.