Deviant by Adrian McKinty Page A

and warmth we’ve all come to expect from students of CJHCS. Miss Benson, over to you. I suggest you hand him a workbook and throw him right in at the deep end.”
    â€œThank you, Principal Lebkuchen,” Miss Benson said, and gave him a little nod of the head. Mr. Lebkuchen ushered Juanita and Walt to the door.
    â€œ
Bye, love you,
” Danny’s mom mouthed as they left.
    â€œWelcome to 9B. Sit down here, please,” Miss Benson said, pointing to a desk directly in front of her, where he couldn’t really see any of his fellow students. He was given the reading script for the day and in a minute he was following along.
    They were reading
Oliver Twist
, which, apparently, was about a boy who lived in England ages ago.
    The class was pretty straightforward. Each student took a turn reading out loud, and the teacher asked pre-prepared questions about nouns, verbs, vocabulary. You could read the questions in advance, so you’d have to be particularly dense to get one wrong—especially the vocabulary ones.
    When it was Danny’s turn to read, he had no trouble. Miss Benson asked him to speak up a bit, but that was about it.
    After an hour of this, at exactly twelve o’clock, it waslunchtime. There were no bells. Kids filed silently out of class and walked on the right-hand side of the corridor to the canteen.
    Danny sat with his class at a long table, and the table server went up and brought back the same food for everyone, plus a juice box of either apple or orange juice. The only words spoken in the whole canteen were the servers asking kids in turn if they wanted apple or orange juice and the kids saying “orange” or “apple” in a weird whisper.
    No one started eating until all the kids had been served and when one of the lunch ladies rang a handbell. Then everyone noiselessly began.
    Lunch that day was chicken breast, boiled potatoes, collard greens, and a fruit salad for dessert. This is worse than the prison I was in yesterday, Danny thought, but of course, like everyone else, he said nothing.
    The teachers sat in the same hall as the kids and ate the same food and they, too, said nothing, but they at least were permitted to read a book or a newspaper.
    A little dark-haired, moonfaced kid was sitting opposite Danny. The kid was pale, scrawny, and fidgety with squat, toothbrushy eyebrows. When Danny looked up from his meal, the kid nodded to him significantly. Danny didn’t know what to make of it, so he just nodded back.
    One table over, Tony finally gave him a wave. Danny grinned and returned the wave, relieved that he hadn’t been getting snubbed earlier. Tony’s hair was combed into a straight bob. He was surprised to find that he liked it muchbetter than when it was all spiky the day before. In fact, he discovered Tony was actually very pretty.
    When everyone had finished their food, the kids filed out of the canteen into the playground, leaving the servers to clean the table.
    The playground was little bigger than a couple of basketball courts. Some of the boys began kicking a soccer ball around; some of the girls played with them or played their own game, which was like a cross between hopscotch and freeze tag. Many of the seventh-graders went over to a small jungle gym that had swings, a slide, and a climbing wall; some of the kids just sat down and read.
    Danny shivered. The sun was shining but it was still quite cold, at least for him.
    â€œMan, this sucks,” he said to himself.
    The Las Vegas Primary School for the Arts, where he’d gone for a couple of semesters (until they’d kicked him out for not doing his drawing assignments), had even had a skate park on the grounds, where he could practice his moves at lunchtime.
    There was no question of even free skating around this place.
    At least he could see the supposedly famous mountain of Pikes Peak as it loomed ominously over the playground, its whole top third covered with