Though Twon, Rodrigo, and Pierce weren’t in their normal classes, the Special Ed room is unusually quiet. Until Nehemiah makes his entrance. He stops at the threshold and jumps to see if he can touch the upper trim. His slap echoes loudly, drawing all attention to him, so he slowly struts into the room. Mrs. Horner is on him like a hawk, waiting for him to slip up. That boy loves to clown. He meanders by the mirror, brushing the slight waves in his hair. No matter how much time he spends in front of the mirror, he somehow never catches the thin crusty film that always frames his mouth.

A couch and television area separate the desks from the six computers that line the back wall. They face the only windows in the room. After collecting my to-do list from Mrs. Horner, I speed through the day’s math assignment. The material’s so easy it’s almost insulting, not that I’m complaining. My fingers dance along the keyboard like a spider hyped up on Mountain Dew. Through the blinds, we have a view of the parking lot and the playground. Staring out the window and slipping the computer’s headphones on, I lose myself in my thoughts. Finally I can breathe again and concentrate clearly.

I can’t believe someone brought a gun to the park. Well, I guess I can. It’s close enough to the school that if they needed it, they only had to jog a little bit from the playground to get it. No matter where you go, there’s always someone bigger, stronger, meaner than you and they have no problem reminding you who’s the rabbit and who’s the hyena. Sometimes you just get sick of being the rabbit all the time. Some folks cope by puffing up like they’re a hyena or at least threatening enough to make the hyena move on. After all, most hyenas have water in their veins and are just looking for the easiest prey.

Nehemiah strides toward the computer area. He slows and we clap hands, interlock our index fingers, and spin our hands to lock thumbs. We form gun barrels with our fingers, shoot them to each side and snap our fingers. That’s our special handshake. Just for us.

“You need some lotion.” No one else dares mention it because he’s so quick to anger. Just about anything sets him off, zero to Hulk in 3.4 seconds. Everyone tiptoes around him, scared. Everyone except me.

“Settle down, friends.” Mrs. Horner can save that “friends” nonsense. The word always sounds phony in her mouth, like she’s one of those politicians who says things that makes sense to some people but not others. But we all know what they’re really about.

Nehemiah draws up a seat quietly next to me and flicks on the computer. Like I said, everyone has a gift. Here’s the thing about Nehemiah: he’s a wizard with a computer. The hacking of the library computers so I could play online poker? That was him. Because she doesn’t see him, I don’t think Mrs. Horner has a clue about how good he is. She’s convinced he’s cheating somehow on his assignments. Don’t get me wrong, he is, but he’s breaking the code of the education software through some back door he discovered in the program (I don’t know what he’s going on about most times with this computer code stuff). The thing is that it all sounds much harder than if he just did the math work itself, so he should probably get the A anyway.