Somewhere I Belong by Glenna Jenkins

on the table is potatoes, and if you want somethin’ else, you got to point and pretend it’s there.”
    â€œYou’re kidding, right? That’s what the Lost Boys did in that Peter Pan story.” I laughed. “You just made that up.”
    â€œNope,” Pat Jr. said. “Mom says we should feel sorry for ’em ’cause they hardly get nothin’ to eat. But their dad’s away workin’ with our dad, so she wonders what happens to all the money.”
    â€œIt’s pretty hard to feel sorry for Patrick Daley when he gives you a good poundin’,” Thomas said.
    â€œHe’s never pounded you, Thomas. What’re you talkin’ about?” Pat Jr. said.
    â€œI’m just sayin’,” Thomas said. “He pounds lots of guys.”
    The Daleys’ drive curved to the top of a snow-covered slope. A house, a barn, and a shed sat around a small yard strewn with rusted farm equipment. The house had a single front window below a peaked roof. Patches of peeled paint exposed bare wood on all the buildings. The shed’s roof sagged under a heavy load of snow. Frozen wheat stalks in the adjacent field looked to be a neglected late harvest. A single trail of footprints led from a door at the side of the house and down the drive.
    We followed the Daleys at a distance. Soon we saw the crossroads of Northbridge and Peters roads. A white picket fence surrounded a yard on three sides. Separate gates opened onto each road. Behind the fence stood a white, single-storey, peak-roofed building with a row of windows on two sides. It reminded me of the old carriage houses that sit behind some of the larger homes in Everett. This was where rich people kept their horses and carriages in the olden days and where they now keep their motorcars. I noticed a sign nailed to the side of the building, but the letters were so faded I couldn’t read it. Beyond it, at the edge of the woods, stood a small white building that looked to be a four-hole outhouse. The only thing that told us this was a school was the little kids playing on a single set of swings in a corner of the yard. If we hadn’t been with Thomas and Pat Jr., we would have walked straight past it.
    The Daleys disappeared through a single door at the front of the building. We followed Pat Jr. and Thomas across the yard and entered behind them. Pat Jr. and Thomas hung their jackets on hooks along the back wall, slung their lunch tins up onto the wooden shelf above them, and proceeded to their seats. Larry, Helen, and I waited at the back of the room. Patrick Daley slouched in a desk in the back row, directly in front of us. His mass of black hair stuck out in all directions, and his clothes smelled musty and stale. At the front of the room, Mr. Dunphy was standing on a platform, writing on the blackboard. Across the blackboard, MacLean’s penmanship was written in large letters. There was a line down the middle, with four sentences carefully printed on one side and six sentences written in neat, cursive writing on the other.
    A large pot-bellied stove roared at full blast in the centre of the room, its pipe rising past the rafters and through the roof. Sixteen double wooden desks arranged in four neat rows faced a low platform at the front. Kids slid into their seats and dug into their desks. No one was saying a word. An oak teacher’s desk sat in the middle of the platform, facing the classroom. To the right of it and several feet away, a single vacant student desk faced the blackboard. Mr. Dunphy finished the last sentence, dropped his chalk onto the ledge, then turned and faced the room.
    â€œWe’re a little late today, aren’t we, boys?” He pushed his glasses to the end of his bulbous nose and watched as Thomas and Pat Jr. slid into their seats. The clock behind him read five minutes to nine. Then he noticed us. “Well, now, the Kavanaugh imports from the Boston States.” The room went