Lisa Ko - The Leavers

“I’m not going to say it’ll be easy,” said Peter. “But white, black, purple, green, kids of all races have struggles with belonging. They’re fat, or their parents don’t have a lot of money.”

“That’s true,” Kay said. “I was a bookworm with glasses. I never belonged in my hometown.”

“Issues are colorblind.”

“If things work out, we’ll have to make sure we connect him with his culture. I’ll talk to Elaine about that summer camp.”

“We’ll take care of him. That’s all that matters, and he knows that.”

Deming pressed his ear against the wall, but Peter’s words faded into mush.

He slipped into bed. His mother was short and round and nothing like Kay. Don’t think about her . His mother talked with her hands and let him watch as much TV as he wanted. Don’t think about that. Kay and Peter only allowed three hours of TV per week. They preferred PBS.

THE KITCHEN SMELLED LIKE milk farts and meat. Kay heaped Deming’s plate with meatloaf, gravy, and brussels sprouts and filled his glass with cold skim milk. Milk gave Deming stomachaches but Peter said it was good for him, so he drank a glass at every meal.

He made sure to set the dinner table the way Kay taught him, forks and knives in the right order, no spoons, napkins and placemats centered, glasses in their proper corners. The other night, he saw Kay move the glass he’d placed in front of her placemat from the left corner to the right. Right, not left! Don’t screw up again.

“One more day of summer and it’s back to school for all of us,” Peter said. Classes started tomorrow at Ridgeborough Middle and Carlough College, where Peter taught economics and Kay taught political science.

Deming wedged meatloaf against the side of his cheek. If he gave in to the Wilkinsons he would be stuck here with them, his real family forever lost.

Kay turned to him. “Daniel?”

Peter’s gaze joined hers. “Are you looking forward to school tomorrow?”

“I guess so.”

“Daniel, please look at us when we’re talking to you,” Peter said.

Kay’s lips pressed and creased. “We love you, Daniel.”

He forked another chunk of meatloaf. His mother said she had wanted big things for herself, but then she had him. If he could love Peter and Kay, they could leave, too. They had been waiting for a younger child who would have been easier, whom they had wanted more.

Late at night, Deming crept downstairs to the kitchen telephone. He remembered his mother’s cell phone number, though he’d never memorized Leon’s or Vivian’s, and there was no landline in the Bronx apartment. He lifted the receiver, pressed the numbers, and heard an automated message tell him he needed to dial a one. He tried again with a one. There was a pause, another announcement. This call cannot be completed at this time . He called again, switching the order of the last two numbers, and the phone rang but went to a strange man’s voice mail. The first number was the right one; he hadn’t forgotten, but his mother wasn’t there.

Upstairs, the toys in the corner of his room formed a shadow. Deming made out the shapes of a fire truck, a police car, and put one vehicle in front of the other and pushed them across the rug. He rammed the fire truck into the police car and whispered the sound of sirens.

ON THE FIRST DAY of school, Kay made a special breakfast, blueberry pancakes with maple syrup. She dropped Deming off on her way to Carlough, and he summoned his best don’t-mess-with-me face, walked into Mrs. Lumpkin’s homeroom class and found a seat. The classroom was bigger than the ones in P.S. 33, and instead of sitting at tables in groups of four, kids in Ridgeborough sat at individual chairs attached to desks.

Mrs. Lumpkin called roll and Daniel Wilkinson was the last name called. “Here,” he said. Twenty-four pairs of eyes looked over. Mrs. Lumpkin, who was skinny despite her name, double-checked the roster.

At P.S. 33 there’d been thirty-two kids in his homeroom, but at Ridgeborough Middle, there were only fifty kids in the whole sixth grade. Deming sat through History and Science and Language Arts. Alone at a cafeteria table, he ate the turkey sandwich, celery sticks, and hard, crisp apple Kay had packed. Everyone he saw was the same color except for him, and their silence seeped into the air like a threat.

At home after school, Deming stared at the noiseless street, heard the same blank buzz, and felt a sickening loss. He punched the wall as hard as he could— You call that a punch? That’s a handshake! — until his knuckles were screaming and he was screaming, too. The house was empty; Peter and Kay were at work. When they were home, he was forced to keep a straight face, but it felt like he was being skinned alive.

On the second day of school, Deming decided he had been imported from another planet to come to Planet Ridgeborough. He was not aware of the length of his assignment, only that one day, he would be sent home. This was how he got himself through the hours. He studied Amber Bitburger, who sat in front of him in Homeroom and whose long blonde hair had white strands interspersed throughout, a yellow-brown closer to the scalp that lightened progressively toward the ends, her skin visible beneath, pink and soft, like a baby animal before the fur comes in. Her eyes were a gray-green, her face a range of hills — nose, chin, cheekbones.

They were big. Deming was big, too, he’d been one of the biggest Asian kids at P.S. 33, but they were different, had never noticed the way they looked to other people, because there were no other people present. Here, they paid too much attention to him (at first) and later, they would pay no attention to him. It was that kind of mindfuck: to be too visible and invisible at the same time, in the ways it mattered the most. Too obvious to the boys who wanted to mock him, yet girls would only notice him when he was walking around with his fly down.

He studied their noses. Some were pointy, others drooping like overripe fruit. Some nostrils flared up and out, while others were pinched and narrow. The boys and girls separated into distinct clusters at recess, with the crumbs, the leftover kids who didn’t belong to any group, scattered along the margins of the playground. Deming could see he was a crumb. Crumbs didn’t want to be noticed but were as noticeable as an open sore, tucking themselves away to avoid the places of highest concentration: the jungle gym, the corners of the blacktop where girls congregated, the basketball court and soccer field that were home to boys who were good at sports.

If the crumbs were successful at hiding from others they weren’t fooling each other. They lashed out at the nearest targets, happy to train that spotlight two feet over to the left. But Deming did not want to hide. Three Alley and the Bronx had prepped him, and Planet Ridgeborough was the ultimate test. He had been specifically placed on this mission by his superiors to test his strength and patience. When he fulfilled his mission he would be reunited with his real family. Who were his supervisors? He had that figured out, too. They communicated, telepathically, in Fuzhounese, the language he didn’t have to try to hear. This mission made him brave. So he got out on the blacktop at recess, out there in the open, daring anyone to mess with him.

On the third day, a girl stopped at Deming’s table in the cafeteria, clutching a box of apple juice with a scrawny straw, teeth marks flattening the tip. Her dark hair was pulled into a stubby ponytail. Her glasses had bright red frames.

“Where are you from?”

Deming cleared his throat. “The Bronx. Where are you from?”

“I’m from here,” she said, and walked away.

On the fourth day, there was gym. In Ridgeborough, kids played sports. Football, soccer, basketball, swimming, baseball, tennis, volleyball, hockey. Ridgeborough boys were supposed to charge and ram. Deming observed the youth of Planet Ridgeborough in the boys’ locker room as they changed into gym clothes, from the unformed baby limbs of short kids like Shawn Wecker, the crumbiest of crumbs, to the meaty paws and Frankenhead of Cody Campbell. He studied Cody’s plump hands, thighs like pork roasts, the waggle and sweat of Cody’s chins.