I wondered if Solomon had heard. If not, I sure as hell wasn’t about to be the one to tell a Jewish boy who already thought the world was against him that there were swastika tags going up.

Greenport School had been closed and empty for three years. It was isolated enough, across from the abandoned match factory and up against the woods that ran along the railroad tracks, that you could hang out there and hardly anyone would ever mess with you. Cops never came around. Guys who were really up to no good had better places to go do that. Mostly the people who hung out here were teenagers nostalgic for the innocent kids they had been when they were elementary school students inside that building.

Those kids and, I hoped, Solomon.

I parked my car and made my way around the long single-story building. Past the playground, where the swings had all broken or been stolen so their chains hung loose in the wind. I took pictures of them, but I knew they wouldn’t come out right. I wasn’t skilled enough to capture their sadness.

And every time I looked through the lens, I saw some new impossible, awful thing. Skeletons sitting on the monkey bars; bees as big as vultures wobbling through the air.

My spine would not stop shivering.

When I went around the corner, I saw him, exactly where I’d thought he’d be. Asleep on the rusty old purple dinosaur seesaw he’d loved so much when he was in first grade.

What a happy kid Solomon had been. Back before his mind began to betray him.

He was smiling now, at something in a dream. Flakes of paint were stuck to his face. At his feet was a battered old library book: Illegal Identities: A History of Homophobic Police Practices Around the World. I thought about taking his picture, but it seemed wrong. Like I’d be taking advantage of him. Cass’s words echoed in my head. Being an artist sometimes means breaking the rules of civilized human behavior. But before I could debate it internally any further, Solomon opened his eyes and reached out to touch my face.

“Ash,” he said. “I was just going to go see you and Niv.”

“And here I am,” I said, settling down on the soggy gravel, deciding not to ask who or what Niv was. “Your tyrannosaur is looking rough,” I said, pointing to the places where the metal was worn thin, bent, broken.

“Her name is Maraud. She’s been through a lot. And she’s an allosaurus. T. rexes have two fingers; she has three. See?”

“Right,” I said, because I was pretty sure he’d explained this to me more than once before. “So where are you living these days?”

He shrugged. “Who lives?”