“Listen to me, kids,” the woman with the gun says to the quiet kindergartners. “No one will be hurt if you listen to me and do what I say. We are waiting for a few of your parents to come here—they have something to give us.”

When the kindergarten man raises his hand, the teacher sounds exasperated with him. “Do you have to, really?” the teacher asks him.

“I really have to,” he answers her, in a preternaturally high voice. “And I can’t go alone,” the little kindergarten man reminds her. Every boy in the class has raised his hand, volunteering to be the kid who accompanies the kindergarten man to the boys’ room.

“Tommy, please go with him,” the teacher tells a wide-eyed boy, whose belief in extraterrestrials and supernatural beings makes him a smart choice—a perfect witness to the kindergarten man’s miraculous transformation.

“You come back in five minutes, both of you,” the woman with the gun tells Tommy and the new boy on crutches.

“He sometimes takes longer,” Tommy tells the woman, who points to the gunman in the doorway.

“Five minutes is all you get, crip, or he’ll come get you,” the woman with the gun tells the kindergarten man.

A little girl has raised her hand. “What is it, Henrietta?” the teacher asks her.

“Crip is not a very nice word,” Henrietta says. The kindergarten man appears to stiffen on his crutches, but he keeps going—past the man with the gun, through the doorway, out of the classroom. Tommy, on the lookout for supernormal occurrences, follows closely behind.

“Listen, kids,” says the woman with the gun, “wherever you are—even in kindergarten—there’s always a goody-goody giving you shit about the language that you use.”

“Five minutes, crip,” says the gunman, without bothering to look at the two on their way to the boys’ room.

“The shit word isn’t very nice, either,” says Henrietta indignantly.

“That’s enough, Henrietta,” the teacher tells the little girl, who is staring at the woman with the gun, who stares back at her.

In the boys’ room, a supernatural being emerges before Tommy’s enrapt eyes. Tommy has unzipped his fly but stands sideways to the urinal, his attention seized by the no-longer-disabled kindergarten man, who holds his crutches overhead, executing single-leg lunges and squats—back and forth along the row of child-high urinals. “He can walk—it’s a miracle!” the kindergarten man keeps repeating softly. Tommy has to notice how the new boy’s voice has changed; he has a lower voice, like a man’s.

“Are you a grown-up now?” Tommy asks him.

“He can walk—it’s a miracle!” the kindergarten man softly says again. “Let me hear you say that, Tommy. ‘He can walk—it’s a miracle!’ Can you say that quietly—almost like you’re whispering?”

“He can walk—it’s a miracle!” Tommy whispers.

“Just a little louder, Tommy,” the kindergarten man tells him; he lunges and squats his way inside one of the toilet stalls, closing the door.