“How would that book apply to him? To this workman? What would he think, reading that? Those rules seem very good for when you have the time to pause and consider what to do. But does it tell that worker how to live at all? Like Hector, and Benito, who were here to help me move in. I have no idea where they are now, how they are able to live. When that worker is waiting to be hired, when he gets hurt, when he waits for others to consider their choices about him? He doesn’t decide. He has to wait. No matter what happens, he waits.”

“Yeah.”

“And if I live in one of these complexes, no matter what I choose, that workman suffers. I can decide this or that, but just my existence determines his life. Or the life of another workman like him. So I think, whether I sometimes do or do not smoke with Tommy, maybe it is not the most important thing to wonder about.”

Ben was quiet. “Yeah, hm.

“But don’t—” Ben paused. “Don’t Tommy and the rest of them like, make fun of you?”

Ahmed looked at him, amazed. “Why would they make fun of me?”

*  *  *

Since before Christmas Ben had been thinking about stopping by Alice’s room during intervisitation. He knew what he would write in a note for her if he had the chance.

Hey Alice, I was here. Ben.

Funny in its oversimplicity. Yes he wanted to talk with her, ask her about everything that was happening to him and to Ahmed. But part of him also just wanted to leave a note and get away. The worst possibility was that she would come back to her room halfway through his leaving it.

A note in your room: the token that someone has been in your space without you there. He has gone to your desk and pulled a Post-it pad toward himself, taken one of your pens and noticed what kind of pen it is. Some girls put whiteboards with markers on their doors, but the entire hallway sees a note on a whiteboard.

As soon as he stepped out of his dorm he could see Paige House across the snow, behind the Dragon. Who would be in the common room to see him come in? Ben walked along the path and reached the bottom of the Paige terrace and wished he could have met someone on the way over to legitimately divert him from what he was about to do.

Ben prayed for her not to be there. He wanted to perform his courageous act and not have to endure the moment when she looked in his eyes and recognized for certain what he intended and how much she could decide about his immediate future.