Ahmed stopped there in the doorway so he could concentrate on the postcard, and two girls—not Rosie and her friend—came up behind him, unable to leave the PO until he moved. He just drifted a few steps farther forward, and finally the girls split and moved around him, turning annoyed glances on him as he continued to study the postcard.

He began to turn it over to look at the photo. Ben had the feeling that Ahmed couldn’t move in such an unguarded way without something happening to him.

Ben had forgotten to keep looking for Rosie, and then he saw a person in a gray hooded sweatshirt move quickly out of the Art Building’s side exit toward Ahmed. A shot of guilt passed through Ben; the dense body was indelibly Ennis’s. Ben decided to hope it wasn’t Ennis. The figure wasn’t running; he took long low strides with his arms held by his sides. He reached into the kangaroo pouch of the sweatshirt and came out with something short and black—for an instant Ben thought he was going to stab Ahmed. The figure closed the remaining distance in the time it took Ahmed to flip the card back over again.

Ennis stepped up behind Ahmed, reached his free arm around his neck, and pulled back snug. The PO crowd turned and Ahmed’s mail slid across the ground. Ahmed tried to pull the arm down, but it didn’t move and he gurgled shortly. Ennis brought the black thing in front of Ahmed’s face and switched on the wireless hair clipper. Ben heard the faint buzz as Ennis brought it gently against Ahmed’s forehead. He slid the clipper up. Hair fell over Ahmed’s face and shoulders, and Ben saw it drift down onto the mail.

Ennis released Ahmed, letting a sheaf of hair fall from where it had collected across his forearm. Ahmed went to his hands and knees. He had saliva down his chin. Ennis took the same long smooth strides down the path toward the Schoolhouse, and then he passed into the woods out of sight.

Several seconds passed, and then Ahmed reached out to sweep a letter toward himself, and this seemed to break everyone out of their collective trance. The girls closest to him went to help him up. Still the bored, annoyed sound of chain saws. As Ben walked to Ahmed, remorse resounding through him for what he had said in the Chute, he nevertheless clenched his jaw with the same shiver as when he had put his flip-flop over a hobbled bumblebee in the dorm bathroom, feeling the resistance of its exoskeleton and then its sudden collapse. Hutch was behind him, but Ben knew exactly the look of triumph that would be in his face. As he came to Ahmed’s side, he saw that the front of the postcard showed two furry-hatted guards at Buckingham Palace.

*  *  *