IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Rashid to become familiar with the routines of life at the Chelsea school but he sometimes thought that he would never become entirely comfortable with them. Up at 7:00, breakfast en masse at 7:30, morning chapel at 8:15. That lasted forty-five minutes, although it more often felt like ninety. First Mr. Fox would talk, usually about how great Chelsea was. Even when that wasn’t his exact subject, it was the subtext. He stood at the podium, his iron gray hair cropped closely to his head, wearing khakis, a rumpled jacket, and, usually, a tie with a pattern on it that looked dignified from a distance but when you got closer turned out to be Kermit the Frog or Tweety and Sylvester or something like that. He talked about being a man among men, or what some guy a hundred years ago did, or he asked them to think about some head-crushing subject like the meaning of love or truth or honesty. He used his hands a lot and spoke in sentences so short and quick that his speeches resembled machine-gun fire in their rapidity and monotony. He was so different from the only other speakers Rashid knew well: the preachers from when he was still going to church, with their rolling cadences and the way they ran—literally ran, sweat flying off them—back and forth in front of the congregation, trying to get them on their feet, to get them singing, to get them to feel the spirit. Rashid never got the ghost the way some of the old ladies did, crying and falling out, but he used to love the singing and the music and the joy. But that was before.

Sometimes Rashid had to fight off sleep during chapel, but he never had the nerve to be as openly bored as Gerald. More often than not, he could see that Gerald had sneaked a Spawn or Batman comic book into his notebook or a textbook and was reading it quietly as Mr. Fox rattled on.

“Ain’t you worried about getting busted?” Rashid said to him once.

Gerald looked surprised. “Not really. So I’ll get the big talking-to if I do. It’s not something they’ll throw me out over.”

Gerald had told Rashid repeatedly to lighten up, but to little result. The schoolwork at Chelsea was so much more dense and intricate than anything he’d ever done before. He felt that eyes were on him every second, here, back home, everywhere. Everything was weighing on him.