Mason zipped his backpack.
“Okay.”
Tyler frowned.
“That’s it?”
Mason looked at him.
“What do you want me to do, make you feel better?”
Tyler opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Then, to his credit, he nodded.
“No.”
Mason slung the backpack over his shoulder.
“Then okay is enough.”
Tyler left without another word.
I thought that was the end of it.
It was not.
Thursday morning Mason did not come to school.
His desk sat empty all through homeroom.
The transport chair was still in the corner, waiting like a bad idea.
By second period I called home during my planning block.
His grandfather answered on the third ring.
“He okay?”
There was a pause.
“He’s fine.”
That kind of fine is never fine.
“What happened?”
“They said the aide schedule changed for today. Couldn’t guarantee transport between classes on time. Asked if maybe he could do remote lessons for a day or two until they sorted things out.”
I sat down hard in my desk chair.
“They asked him to stay home?”
“Nobody used those words,” his grandfather said. “But yes.”
I pressed my fingers against my forehead.
He kept talking.
“I wasn’t sending him back there to spend the whole day parked outside rooms waiting for grown folks to remember him.”
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