It occurred to Don that the boy didn’t look her in the eyes. He wasn’t particularly talkative, either. “Come on.” She said, standing up and pulling Peter to his feet. Which unsettled him a bit. She took him to Hannah in the squatted building.

From that night on the group became a foursome.

This is the story of

DON, PETER, HANNAH, AND KAREN

who from now on spent all their time after school and on weekends together. They’d found their family. And with it a space like a portable cave that was always with them. They had recognized each other. As outsiders, as fringe phenomena, as outcasts, and this was astonishing enough because they don’t normally recognize each other, those who stand around the edges of the schoolyard. They always look toward the masses, to the weirdos, the geeks, the nutters, the too fat or too thin, the gay or verminous, and they never recognize themselves for what they are: strange. The ones at whom other kids, normal kids, will point to years later while looking at class pictures on their phone and say: “That one—can’t remember his name, what a nutter—don’t know, he was just weird somehow.”

A miracle happened with that little group, or maybe the weather was to blame, a quirk of the surroundings had brought them together, and it was unclear whether they were bound together by something other than the surroundings, other than the fact that the majority found them odd.

Because nobody had told them what was good and what was evil, they’d adopted their own law: nobody will hurt us anymore.

This was nonsense, of course, since humans were disposed to hurt each other. They couldn’t do otherwise, humans, though this was not yet known to the foursome, who didn’t even reveal weakness in front of the group, like crying once in a while, because they didn’t know any better. Because they were still children and sometimes just had no clue how they could manage everything. Establishing a life and reconciling themselves to the idea that nobody is waiting for them. And the daily grind. My goodness, just don’t think about the daily grind. Ever longer lines at the soup kitchen, ever more bullshit at the welfare office, ever more knife fights at school, it can be overwhelming as a child.

But—

they’d found each other and were no longer alone.

The four of them were friends and were sure they’d stay together until the end of their lives. Nobody would ever separate them. They thought.

One day after a few weeks,