More leaves blew around the corner of the wall, and Sig crackled through them with a deliberate crunching. Back there was the old house they were going to tear down. He’d like to go and take a look at it, anything was better than hanging around with a bunch of guys who wouldn’t give you even a look, let alone the time of day. But the bus was coming.

The day, which had begun sourly, didn’t get any better; sometimes they don’t. At four Ras slouched again in the bus seat for the trip back home. Troublemaker, huh? He’d heard old Keefer talking. Anyway he hadn’t told them anything but Ras. Not his fault Ben Crane spoke up that way. Ben—he was what Shaka called an “Uncle Tom,” smoothing up whitey. Maybe Shaka could get Ras out of this dumb school into the Afro-studies one. No one to go around with. He scowled at the seat ahead.

Kim sat still, his book bag across his knees. Why didn’t that boy want to tell the teacher his name? And what kind of a name was “Ras”? He just didn’t understand anything in this new school. It was too big and they hurried you all the time. His head ached. He didn’t belong here. Dared he say so to Father, maybe get to go back where he had been before?

Artie scuffed his feet on the bus floor. Used his eyes and ears all right today, he had. That Greg Ross was the big man in the class—played football, a cinch for the student council when they had the election the homeroom teacher gabbed about. Get into Greg’s crowd and you had it made. Too bad he was too small and light for football. But he’d figure out some way to make Greg know he was around. No other way to really make it but be in that gang—outside you were nothing.

Sig, sitting next to Artie, wondered what he was thinking about. Just those three guys in his neighborhood. Artie sure wasn’t very friendly—it didn’t matter much about the other two. School was too big. You got lost. Artie had been in social studies and in math. But both times he pushed in to sit near that Greg Ross, like he was trying to make Ross notice him. And that Ras—not telling his real name. Get mixed up with a kook like that and, man, you might be in real trouble.

That other one—where’d he get a name like Stevens? He was Chinese or something. Never opened his mouth in the two classes where Sig had seen him. Acted like he was afraid of his own shadow. Sure going to be some drag, riding with this bunch all year.