Ian spotted the boy immediately, even while busy spinning the merry-go-round too fast and making the fourth graders scream. Ian would always notice anyone new who stepped into his territory. For the playground was his. It had been all year, since he had started sixth grade and there were no older boys to rule it. He’d had months to relish this domination. Any new boy posed a challenge. And this new boy, well…
Ian was not the tallest boy in the year, nor the fastest. He did not kick balls the farthest, or jump the highest when shooting baskets, or do the most chin-ups on the monkey bars. He did not speak much in class, never had gold stars pasted to his artwork, did not win certificates at the end of the year for best mathematician or best handwriting or best citizenship. Definitely not best citizenship. He was not the most popular with the girls—Casper claimed that honor.
Ian was the shrewdest. The most calculating. The quickest to respond to a new situation and turn it to his advantage. When a fight was brewing, Ian would take bets on the outcome and make sure the participants didn’t chicken out. He was good at predicting who would win. Sometimes he’d bet on how long the fight would last and which teacher would break it up. He often took the stakes in candy, which he sold afterward—he did not have a sweet tooth. Sometimes he demanded others’ lunch money, but other times he protected younger students from having theirs stolen, and took a cut himself. He liked to mix things up, keep kids guessing. Recently he had convinced his parents to let him open a bank account. They did not ask him how he had amassed so much money. His brothers had been the same at his age.
When his class went running around the block during PE, Ian offered to go back and collect the slower children; it gave him a chance to study what was going on out in the world during the day—who was delivering mail, who was washing their car, who was leaving their door open while they pruned their roses. Ian was always looking for the angle that would benefit him.
He did not always get it right.
A few days before, for instance, a storm had arrived out of nowhere. Ian had raised his hand while Miss Lode was trying to explain what an isosceles triangle was. She had chalk dust all over her orange pantsuit and wore a perplexed expression, as if geometry were just out of her reach too. She’d stopped, taken aback, for Ian rarely raised his hand. “Yes, Ian?”
“Miss Lode, it’s starting to rain and the flag is still up. May I go take it down?”
Miss Lode glanced out the window at the amassed dark clouds and the American flag that flew all day in front of the school. “The girls in Mr. Brabant’s class are responsible for it. You know that.”
“They’re never fast enough, though. And Mr. Brabant isn’t here today to remind them. If I run now, it won’t get wet.”
Miss Lode hesitated, then nodded at the door. “All right, then—be quick. And take someone with you to fold it.”
There were lots of rules about the American flag: it should never be flown at night or in the rain, it should never touch the ground, it should be treated with reverence. Ian had watched enviously from the window as Dee and Blanca went to the flagpole at the beginning and end of each day, ostentatious in their privilege. Usually they worked carefully, but he had also seen them fold the flag sloppily and let a corner touch the ground. He had heard them sing songs—sometimes patriotic, but often songs from the radio. They liked to take their time, talk, dawdle, laugh.
He chose Mimi to come with him, to everyone’s surprise—Miss Lode, Rod and most of the other boys, and all of the girls, who giggled behind their hands. Mimi herself looked not only amazed, but thrilled, and fearful. Until fifth grade, boys and girls had sometimes played together and declared themselves friends. But for the last two years of school, they’d separated and stayed with their own gender—unless they spent furtive moments together out of sight of the teachers, behind the gym or in the corner among the trees that provided the little shade on a sunny day. Last week Ian had draped his arm around Mimi, back behind the gym, letting his hand dangle down over her high budding breasts, but he’d been interrupted from doing more by Rod offering to drop his jeans and underwear and show what he had to the girls. Mimi had squealed along with the others and moved out from under Ian’s arm—reluctantly, he sensed.
As she followed him outside to the flagpole, it was spitting with rain, though the worst of it was still up in the clouds. Ian was careful not to pay her too much attention, instead focusing on unwinding the rope from the bracket screwed onto the pole at waist height. Then he lowered the flag. “Catch the end,” he commanded.
Mimi obeyed, grabbing the two corners as they came down. Ian unclipped the other two corners from the rope, then they held the flag taut between them like a sheet. Ian looked at her for a second longer than he needed to, and she stood very still, her eyes wide. They were a crystal blue swimming with dark flecks, which made them sparkle in a way that disconcerted him. She had the classic freckled skin of a redhead—Irish, probably—and a wide mouth with lips that didn’t cover the braces glinting across her teeth. Her features were too irregular—her eyes too far apart, her mouth too big, her forehead broad—for her to be thought of as pretty. Nonetheless, there was something compelling about Mimi. This was their seventh year together at the same school. Ian had knocked her over once in third grade, because he could, but he had not paid much attention to her until recently. He had chosen Mimi for his focus because she was like him—a step apart from everyone else on the playground. Despite having an older and younger sister who both appeared normal, and popular Dee as her best friend, Mimi often seemed to be alone in her head, even when she was turning jump ropes or playing hopscotch. She had the reputation of being a bit out of it, of fainting at the wrong times, of saying little but watching everything. Maybe that was what appealed: he didn’t want her to talk much.
He jiggled his right hand to indicate they should fold the long edge a third over; then they folded the other side on top so that the flag was a third of its width. Ian looked at Mimi too long again and she blushed. “You fold,” he said. “You know how?”