He wanted the Room back. He wanted to get out of this slow-moving nightmare. Not even a particularly cheerful Mrs. Caroline could rip him from his sadness, especially with that image from his nightmare: his art teacher angrily lunging at him. He worked on a new pastel for a while, but the image he was trying to capture—a photo of Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park—felt wrong. Warped. The colors were off, and in the last couple minutes, he scratched over all of it with black. You could only see the outlines of what used to be there.

Mrs. Caroline said she loved it, that it was a very emotional piece. He wasn’t exactly sure that it was worth any praise, but he thanked her.

He moved through the hallways after his last class was over, his mind a mess. He couldn’t stop the rush of thoughts, either. He had done a good thing the day before, so why was it so hard for him to just be happy?

Creeeeaaaaaak.

Héctor looked up suddenly, and there, just to the left, was the door. His heart flared in anticipation as he raced toward it, unsure why the Room had shown up now.

He tore it open.

And looked upon a janitor’s closet.

Not even his janitor’s closet. He looked up into the corner—no King Ferdinand.

What?

“Yo, Hector!”

His stomach dropped.

“That’s where you belong, isn’t it?”

The others—Carlos and Frank—laughed at that as Mike strolled up to Héctor, a black garbage bag in his hand. The bag looked full. Héctor gave an educated guess: I bet it’s full of garbage.

“Not today, Mike,” said Héctor, his shoulders sagging. “Please.”

“Aw, Mike, you’re making him sad,” Frank teased. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Mike narrowed his eyes at Héctor, and for the briefest moment, Héctor believed that this boy wouldn’t go ahead with whatever he had planned.

But then his lips curled up at the edges. “Well, it’s a good thing we found you here, Hector,” he said. “You know your people are good at cleaning things up!”

Two things happened then. The first was obvious: Mike lifted the bag up and dumped a pile of smelly, moist garbage all over Héctor, laughing all the while.

But then Carlos socked Mike on the arm immediately afterward.

“Bruh, what was that for?!” Mike shouted.

Héctor couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He also couldn’t ignore the sensation of the remains of today’s pasta and meatballs dripping down his back.

“Why’d you go and say that?” said Carlos, his eyebrows smashed together in anger. “What did you mean by ‘your people’?”