And I saw that even though it seemed like all the other kids were one way and I was the other way, actually there were some other kids that were also the other way. For example, there was this one kid, a chubby kid, he was in the second grade, but the other second-graders avoided him, and this kid had round glasses and brown skin and curly hair that floated around his head, like only a few of the other kids at school did, like what the Mean Aunt said about Mike at the gas station, He is an oppressed minority, and Mama K said, Why don’t you say that to his face? and Mama L said, Love sees no color, and the Mean Aunt and Mama K laughed meanly at her. But what I really noticed about this kid is that he wore red rubber rain boots even though it was definitely not raining and this kid collected acorns.

I watched him skirt the perimeter of the playground. He walked beneath the oak trees at the edge of the wood chips and he picked up a few acorns at a time and he put them in a pouch he made by tying the front of his T-shirt in a knot. No one else looked at him they just barreled past him screaming and throwing the kickball onto the roof of the school. No one else looked at him but I looked at him and then I followed him.

He took his acorns around the corner of the school building, behind the blue dumpster where there was an oak tree whose roots were tearing up the pavement. He checked to see if anyone was watching, so I hid behind the dumpster and he knelt down by the tree and then I saw that he had dug out under one of the roots and untied his T-shirt so that the acorns fell into the cave he had made there and he must have had hundreds stored away. I wanted to help him so bad so I sent to him with my mind like an elf or like a wolf but he didn’t hear me so I stepped out from behind the dumpster and I said, We could do that together I am pretty good at collecting acorns I actually do it pretty much all the time with my Mean Aunt, but he said, Back off I have all the help I need, which was weird because he didn’t have any help he was doing it all by himself. Which I told him and I said the Mean Aunt is toxic at acorns and I am toxic at acorns. Actually I’m part wolf. He said, Back off faggot bastard.