It’s a good thing I was prepared. It’s a good thing I was ready for anything. It’s a good thing I remained steadfast and resolute. Because even after the bus stopped and I went into my classroom things didn’t turn out the way I had imagined them. I was highly skilled, my training was top-notch, and I thought that would make the other kids like me, but I didn’t get a chance to show them how prepared I was or how much I had practiced.

When do I get a chance to make my report? I asked the teacher, who was a grown woman like a box of tissue at the IGA, that beautiful. I almost touched her, but I remembered Mama K had said, Don’t touch anything, Perley, just don’t. So I held my hands to my sides, and the teacher said, Your report? And I said, When do we show our skills? And she said, Right now is the time to show your skill on the tablet. Which is one thing I knew about because the elves had tablets, too, they were made out of stone. The teacher said, Class, it’s time for Specials and from now on we are going to do our Specials on our tablets. It’s an initiative, it’s an initiative that each Appalachian child gets a tablet. Carved from the very stone, I said. No, you faggot bastard, said Bexley, but really quiet so the teacher didn’t hear. She passed around books that weren’t books and each and everyone else got started but I just waited for the tablet. Perley, you’ve got to turn on the tablet so that you can do your Specials, she said. Oh yes, I said, and that’s how I knew that the book was a tablet not an elf tablet a school tablet it was made of plastic. It was like what my women had but bigger, a phone with a screen that they had to walk up to the top of the ridge to get reception, and they wouldn’t let me touch it because they said it would rot my ear.