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silently screaming. He glared at the sky and despised the way that sun, in behind a grey veil, disregarded his pale, almost ivory skin, reddening it, puckering it, sloughing it off like a leprous serpent and twisting it into a mocking dark brown. He shrank from the light as often as he could, as best he could.
    But there were his instructions.
    And to get what he wanted—after all these years, all this pain—to get what he wanted now, he had to endure.
    Another glance heavenward, and he decided to be grateful for the clouds, whispering a brief and undirected prayer for the added comfort of a light and steady rain. That, however, was icing on the cake. He had his instructions, and he was determined to obey them. And to wait. The time had come. He believed it now; he knew it. The time had come indeed, and there would be no more thwarting the reunion with his friends.
    Stoically resigned then, he covered as much of himself, of his very long and very thin frame, as he could, and huddled by the door on the front porch. He shaded his eyes with a palm when there were no shadows to protect him, and grimaced at the occasional brightness of that Saturday afternoon. While he waited he told himself repeatedly—in a liturgical monotone very much like a chant—that it was, and it would be worth the small pains, the pricks, the tiny slashes. His mother had been in a remarkably fine mood for some days now, and he did not want her to lose it just when he was drawing so tantalizingly near.
    "I won't be very long, dear,” she had told him that morning before driving away. "I'm only going down to Centre Street to do a little shopping. You just be a good boy and keep an eye on the house while I'm gone. All right, dear?" She had smiled her beautiful snake smile then, and added, "It's been quite a while, hasn't it, Davey?"
    He knew that. She did not have to make such a poisonous point of reminding him. But he was pleased that she had because it meant he would probably be able to get it down that night.
    Or, though he dared not think about it, sooner.
    She had kissed his forehead, patted his cheek, and he had squirmed with impatience to see her leave so she might return. She had laughed then, like a jackal, and he had pretended to grin.
    And if she knew he was hating her, she never said a word.
    So he waited on the porch that faced Chancellor Avenue and allowed himself to daydream a little, plan a little, until he finally relaxed and let the day die around him. He did not mind the damp wooden flooring that was so long unpainted the neighbors were whispering (and a few of them outright complaining), nor the splinters that now and then found their way through his black trousers into his calves and thighs. The small jabs, the momentary stings, were nothing, nothing at all... and he concentrated on looking, and listening, and once in a while smiling a death's-head grin.
    Ah, Mother, he thought, I can't wait for you to meet all my old friends.
    He stifled a short laugh with his fingers, blinked, squinted, and decided that today it was beautiful in the place they called the Station. There was autumn grass slowly browning under brightly dying leaves; the brittle cold air that seemed to make the pavement crisp under the feet of the passersby who were hurrying to the college's stadium where the high school games were played; the languid haze of burning piles of leaves; a ragged cloud of starlings that swooped silently toward the scent of popcorn and candy; the clouds.
    David half smiled and answered the waves from the cars that sped past with bicolored pompons swinging in time to riders' cheers and the off-the-beat blasts of horns and whistles. He found the nerve, the quiet and timid nerve, to nod when the principal walked by with his young pudgy wife; and he grinned when a covey of girls gigged loudly as they closed ranks against the swaggering pride of boys who followed. A few of them called to him, and he called back, and they disappeared around his