The boys glanced at each other, shocking her with the substance of that communication: They had sensed that she wasn’t quite here in the world, her presence a kind of quiet annihilation. In that glance she felt both violated and absolutely excluded—not just from their lives but from human life.

Lewis repeated that he needed to go and Raj followed him out.

She went to the back door and saw them by the barn, whispering, Raj’s arm slung loose over Lewis’s shoulder. She couldn’t imagine what they might be saying; couldn’t remember being—perhaps had never been—that intimate or that young. If she ever brought home a friend, her mother would be rude and would later deride the girl, imitating and formulating her. It was their world. The only other indigenous creature was her father, ponderous, thick-skinned, who fed upon the thorns. There the boys whispered in their forgotten bodies, her imagination gnawing upon them like a teething child.

Raj returned to her, smiling. How brave he was: She was one of those figures in doorways, with a comely form but no face, everyone’s face, who beckons and is doom. And yet he entered.

“Why didn’t he stay?”

Raj shrugged. “I’ll make scrambled eggs. Are you hungry?”

She shook her head. Still, after more than two years, it astonished her how much he could eat: six eggs and half a loaf of bread. She sat at the table as he cooked.

“Where did you all go today?”

“Alvin came and wanted to show us something,” he said, adding, “I feel bad.”

“Why?”

“After Annie went home, Lew and I ran away from Alvin. I felt guilty because…I don’t know, I suppose because I was the one everyone ran away from in England.”

“Why’d you do it, then?”

“He’s weird,” he said. “Took us to see a dead bird. Then he says these…things. Today, after Annie had gone, he started asking me about my dad. Told him I didn’t know much, but he just kept going on and on, asking if my mom was his slave, things like that.”

“That’s awful,” Ruth said. “His mom’s an odd fish too.” She pulled up. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“I won’t.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. Nora came by looking for you, said something about you doing a project together.”

He looked puzzled. “That’s not due for a couple of weeks.”

“She was all dressed up. Seemed very disappointed.” Ruth smiled at him.

He shrugged.

“So…?” she said.

“So what?”

“She sweet on you?”

“I’s a nigger, massa.”

“Don’t say that word.”

He busied himself, buttering his mountain of toast.

“Do you like her?” she asked.

“She’s all right.”

“What do you think of Annie?”

He took a moment to scrape his eggs onto a plate. “I like Annie.”

“You have to be careful. She seems really nice, but—”