Before school began...

The little boy finished his lunch and left the kitchen table. He went into the living room and pulled a chair over to the window. He climbed onto the chair and stood on his knees, his elbows resting on the windowsill. He put his face close to the window. He thought about how funny it is, that a window pane has a particular smell of its own.

Outside, on the lawn next to the sandbox, there were some boys standing in a circle. They were older than him, or at least seemed to be. They were busy kicking a football between each other. I guess if you had been studying the movements of the ball long enough, you could have discovered some kind of pattern. But for the little boy, it appeared to be kicked randomly from one boy to another. He felt a damp warmth behind his eyes and tried to imagine being a member of that circle of boys. How does one become part of such a group? He looked enviously at the boys but thought about his mother’s words that he must be wary of the world out there. A world that is dangerous and filled with people who are evil. He had better stay with her.

The coming fall, school started and disaster struck…