Gold Dust by Chris Lynch

enthusiastic if you had to eat mulligatawny four times per week. I am missing my mother’s cooking.” He waited. But he wasn’t finished. “I am missing my mother.”
    I was in no doubt about what was the right thing to do then.
    I looked away.
    We were allowed to buzz for a few minutes after we had a speaker, so Sister could chat with them, ask all the questions we hadn’t, and basically butter them up enough to come back for another free visit next year. While this was going on, we suddenly got the call. Sister was motioning for Napoleon to come up, and when he did, to my surprise, he tugged a chunk of my shirt sleeve to haul me along.
    “Hello, sir,” I said. “Nice talk.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Moncreif,” Dr. Ellis said, shaking my hand.
    I stood there like a dummy.
    “Napoleon has talked quite a bit about you. Says you are a fine baseball player.”
    Wa-hoo. Familiar territory. “Well, yes sir, I do love baseball. I play all the time. I want to get Napoleon playing too, as much as I can. Do you like baseball?”
    He smiled at me, checked his watch. Sister Jacqueline rolled her eyes and bugged them at me at the same time, which is quite a sight. She was giving me the old ix-nay on the oring-bay aseball-bay face. Like I really bore all our speakers into never returning.
    “Yes, as a matter of fact I have followed it somewhat. But I plan to watch a lot more of it this season since I am working so close to Fenway Park and all. Do you know I can see the Citgo sign from my office window?”
    I gasped. I actually did. “Napoleon never told me that. You never told me that.”
    Napoleon sighed. “I was saving it.” He sounded a little sarcastic.
    “Anyway,” Dr. Ellis said, though it sounded more like ahh-na-wey. “I must be going. But I thought it was time I met you. And we will continue our discussion at the dinner. I am looking forward to it.”
    I was completely lost. But I had never heard of a student at St. C’s contradicting an adult on school property, in front of a nun, and living to tell the tale. Not even a normal adult, never mind a big-time international speaker with a “Doctor” at the front of his name.
    “I’m looking forward to it too.”
    I looked at Napoleon out of the corner of my eye. He looked away with his entire face.
    We were walking home together.
    “You don’t have to go,” he said quietly. He sounded embarrassed.
    “Why wouldn’t I want to go?” I had never been to a restaurant in my life. Not a proper one anyway, that took reservations and credit cards and stuff. Never really wanted to go to one either.
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the whole thing is... foolish.”
    “Nah,” I said. “No it isn’t. We’ll go. It’ll be fine. Where are we going to go?”
    “Someplace called Anthony’s Pier Four.”
    “Whoa,” I said. “Pier. That means water. That means fish. Is this going to be a fish place? Am I going to have to eat fish?”
    “What is wrong with fish? Fish is wonderful food.”
    “Fish is what people eat when they can’t find any real food. It’s like disaster food.”
    As he often, mysteriously does, Napoleon seemed to take this personally. “I am sure they will have some meat for you.”
    “Cool,” I said.
    We walked in silence for a bit.
    “So, you picked me,” I said, in a sort of wonder.
    “My father wanted to get acquainted with my circle. You are my circle.”
    My first impulse was, I wanted to make a joke about that. I had to. I looked at Napoleon.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    The whole day he had seemed off. Unsure of himself. Not as rigid or as hard as I had come to expect. I figured his father had done that by showing up. If my father had shown up, my day would have been thrown off too.
    “Can I ask you a question, Napoleon?” I said. When he didn’t say anything, I asked it anyway. “How come your accent’s not as strong as your dad’s?”
    Napoleon looked me face-on, right into my eyes, and he looked hard and grim, and suddenly