I thought the principal was going to make me do like fifty push-ups or run laps or something where I could show my physical strength and endurance, but the principal just sighed and wrote something on a piece of paper and then he said, This is an adjustment period, Perley. You’ll soon understand how things work around here. Remember our motto here is excellence.

He sent me back to my classroom but by that time Specials were over for the day and anyway no one cared about the skills I had and I could hardly even remember what they were because there was no place to try them out because we were always inside except for half an hour at recess. And later, when we opened our lunch boxes I realized that sardines were the funniest thing a person could eat. They were the funniest thing a person could eat and I was eating them and everyone was laughing.

I knew what my women would say, they’d say, Fuck Bexley, don’t say fuck, and Mama K would point out all the reasons Bexley could never be a Wolfrider and was totally not noble. But they hadn’t seen him mix. It was like Bexley built the school himself he was that easy inside it. He was like Winnowill, who was evil but was also beautiful and in charge. I wanted to know if Bexley’s way could be my way. So I threw my hilarious lunch in the garbage and I stood against the chain-link fence and I watched. Bexley and the other kids did everything like they’d always known how to do it, like they’d known how to do it even when they didn’t exist yet, even when they were just an energetic force in the universe which is what Mama L said I was before I was born. Even then, they were an energetic force that knew all about tablets and Specials and kickball and shoes that flickered and animals wearing sunglasses, and they had bubble gum instead of yarrow and they knew what was funny and what wasn’t funny and they knew why.