Though the evening was warm, Zachary was cold from hunger. His host family gave him nothing, and it was hard to go around the farms looking for windfalls without bringing sight on himself. Better to be hungry and hidden. He watched where the rabbits and the deer went. He saw with the eyes of a prey animal, looking for gaps to slip through. He was better at it than the village children were. He had kept himself to himself until, in the schoolyard, Simone had let a scrap of paper fall beside him. He had put a foot over it until it was safe to pick up. He’d unrolled it, read it and eaten it in one smooth motion. I like you, the note had said. She didn’t know what they could do.
From his pocket he pulled stalks of green wheat and rolled onto his front to eat the soft parts at the base of the stems. The mist was thickening with the sunset. He rolled a rotten stump, caught wood lice as they fled, and ate them. They balled themselves up at the end—the fools, the half-men, the easily scattered tribes from the books near the start of the Bible— you could crunch them like silvery pills. He ate an octave of them, humming. They tasted of summer rain.
He had wanted to write a note back to Simone but he had been ashamed. He didn’t know whether he likked, likede or lyked her, to, too or two. Instead he had slowed by her desk, just for a moment, when he came into class the next day. He had dared a glance at her, and she had responded with a smile so warm that he had almost forgotten himself and grinned back.
The light reddened. A lacewing touched down on his arm and he pinched its head and ate it. When he looked up, Simone was pushing her way through the long grass toward the center of the field. In her white shirt and black pinafore she strode between the thistles, making no effort at all to hide. His heart jumped. He hesitated, then rose above the foxgloves just high enough to catch her eye and beckon her over.
When she was safely in the cover of the field border he brushed a place clean for her on the dry moss.
“Show me behind your ears,” she said straight away.
He angled his head for her and she folded each ear forward to look behind it. “It’s not done by the sun, then. Or else you’d be paler here.”
“It’s the same all over.”
“Did you start off normal and go that color?”
“No. I was like this since I was born.”
She gave a sympathetic nod. “Then it’s your parents’ fault.”
“I don’t think—”
“Shh. Does it hurt?”
“Does what hurt?”
“Your skin.”
“No, it doesn’t hurt.”
“It doesn’t feel burned at all?”
“No.”
“I don’t mean like agony, like arrrrrgh! I mean like when you get too close to the fire and your hairs curl up and it’s sore.”
“It’s not sore.”
“And it’s your father who’s a cannibal?”
“He’s a musician.”
“Then it’s your mother?’
“She’s dead, but she was a singer.’
Simone folded her arms. “It has to be either the mother or the father.”
“Who what?”
“Who eats people. Otherwise the baby comes out white.”
He couldn’t think what to say. “We came from America.”
Simone looked skeptical. “And are all the others ignorant like you?”
“All the other what?”
“All the other coloreds.”
He shook his head. “I’ve always just been stupid.”
“I didn’t say stupid, I said ignorant.”
“Same thing.”
“Stupid is you can’t learn, ignorant is you haven’t learned yet.”
“Well, I’m stupid. You’ve seen when it’s my turn to read in class.”
“Why don’t you just sound out the letters?”
“They won’t stop for me. I don’t know how you make the letters still.”
“They just are still, stupid.”
“Not for me.”
She took his hand. “You’re shaking.”
“I am not.”
“Why are you shaking?”
“I’m scared. Aren’t you?”
She brought his hand back and looked at him so tenderly that his heart caught. “Why did they send you here on your own?”
He looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Why don’t you go back to London?”
“When I write to my father he says I have to be patient.”
“So, you need to write a better letter.”
“Writing moves worse than reading. Like the words hate the pen.”
“I’ll write it down for you. Would you like me to do that?”
Zachary let his eyes drift out over the Back Acre. The sun had sunk below the rim of the valley now, and the shadow line was racing up its the eastern slope. He watched the blazing oaks cut down by the edge of darkness. He knew every animal on the hillside and how it moved: he learned fast, by careful sight. He knew the farmers’ bounds and the villagers’ feuds, constantly shifting. He stayed ahead of them, failing only when thought had to be halted and put into words, and the words immobilized on the page. He was incapable of understanding how things always moving were stilled: he was stupid.
Simone was tugging at his hand. “What would you say, if I could write it down for your father?”
“I’d say you were right. That I’m sad.”
She blinked. “Just that?”
He gave a worried look, anxious he’d said the wrong thing. She pulled his hand closer. “I like you. The others can say what they want.”
He dared a quick smile. She said, “Should I kiss you?”
He pulled his hand away. “No.”
“But why?”
“You don’t know what they’d do, the others.”