He slumps in the back and he’s already decided school is one more place that isn’t for him.
I have read his file.
I know the weight he’s carrying, because I once carried a version of it myself.
Last week he turned in an essay that was so good I read it three times, and when I handed it back with an A circled at the top, he looked at it like it might be a trick.
“Nobody’s ever,” he started, and then he couldn’t finish, and he didn’t have to.
I knew.
I thought about a man under an awning who couldn’t finish his sentences either, the night somebody finally saw him.
I don’t know what Darnell is going to become.
But I know he got counted this year, by someone who meant it.
And I know how far that can travel, because I am still traveling on ten dollars I gave away in the rain in 1998.
