“How old are you?” one of them said. She wore big glasses that swallowed her cheeks. When she smiled, I saw her tongue through the gap her front teeth had left behind when they fell out.

“What’s your name?” the other girl asked. Her baseball-sleeve T-shirt had a name on it in glittery rainbow colors: Katie.

“Sally,” I said, after the Peanuts character. I didn’t want to get in trouble for saying my name to someone other than my mother or W, but I hated Sam.

My eyes were drawn to the other kids—swinging, hopscotching, sliding, roughhousing. The sound of their voices made me want to whoop and call. A scene as mundane as kids playing on a playground—dozens of kids—frightened and thrilled me.

Katie watched me watching a gaggle of boys kneeling around an object I couldn’t see. “We don’t play with those boys.”

“My name isn’t Sally.”

Katie sneered. “But you said.”

“Jessica!” said the girl with the glasses. “Is your name Jessica?”

“How come you won’t say your real name?” Katie said.

The boys had started tossing stones onto a metal slide. I wanted to throw things, too.

“My name is Sam.”

“Are you a boy?

I rotated my arms like a windmill. “No.”

“We don’t play with boys.”

“Me neither.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

A teacher noticed our conversation and came over. She was small, not much taller than the girls, a dwarf. I had never seen a grown-up that small before.

“Sweetie, where do you live?”

I pointed up the street.

“Do you know your phone number? We’ll call your mom.”

She took me to the office. The hallway leading there was quiet, no sounds but our footsteps and the squeaky wheels of a janitor’s cart. The cinder block walls were lined with bulletin boards decorated with construction paper flowers, art projects, and drawings of famous grown-ups.

I sat in a padded chair with metal arms that chilled my forearms.

“Who’s this?” the secretary said.

The teacher squeezed my fingers. “You’re in good hands with Mrs. James.”

“Does she speak English?” Mrs. James said.

“Of course she does.”

After the teacher left, I sat for a long time. Mrs. James brought me a crayon and scrap paper and a magazine to lay the paper on so I could draw. She opened her purse and fished around with her arm immersed up to the elbow, till she found me a rustling, half-crushed packet of saltines.

“What’s your name, young lady?”

“I’m not supposed to tell strangers.”

“Well, that’s a good rule. Where do you live?”

“I don’t know.”

“OK. Don’t go anywhere while I speak with the principal.”