Mr. West shuffled through his papers.

I was trying to read the pages he had assigned in Romeo and Juliet, but it was complicated. I squinted down at the book; I didn’t understand a word of what I was reading. It was so quiet in the room that I don’t think I would have noticed it if I hadn’t looked up at the right moment.

Mr. West had stopped what he was doing and was staring right back at Daryl.

He had this grin on his face. The kind that made you wonder whether he was going to slap you on the back and laugh with you, or slap you so hard your teeth were going to come flying out of your mouth. I couldn’t see Daryl’s expression, but his focus didn’t seem to falter. Mr. West walked over to Daryl like it was just the two of them and I wasn’t in the room anymore and for a second I wondered what it would feel like to really be invisible. He lowered himself down and whispered fiercely into Daryl’s ear. “Got nothing better to do, dirt bag? Why don’t you get started on your assignment?”

Daryl never moved his head.

One hand came out of his pocket and dove straight down into his backpack. Out came a binder. He flipped it open and slid it across the table so that it teetered at the edge, inches from slipping onto the floor.

I’m not sure how he had managed it, but Daryl had completed the entire assignment.

Mr. West was furious.

If I thought the homework assignment that day was bad, I had no idea what was to come. Each day the workload increased and each afternoon, Daryl flipped open his notebook to reveal the assignment in its entirety.

On the last day of our assigned detention, Mr. West handed Daryl a piece of chalk. He made him stand at the blackboard and write over and over, “I am a liar and a dirt bag and I don’t deserve to be here.”

Daryl did as he was told. He wrote until the board was so filled with words it looked more white than black. The dust got into the crevices of his jacket and turned it ashen and still he wrote. He never changed his expression, and when he finished he walked to the door with a snarl on his face, like an animal that had just chewed his leg free from a trap. I had never seen anyone look like that before, and for a second, even Mr. West looked shaken. But then he growled at me to get my things together.