Fr. Solano led the MARZ crew into the school corridor. Zephyr lagged a couple of steps behind, and at the doorway of the special ed classroom he turned and scanned the unoccupied room. It struck him, as did the entire school, as very dark. The chalkboards were dark green; the bricks were dark red; the wood paneling was stained dark brown. Zephyr mused that his own memories of elementary school were equally dark, but in a very different way. He wondered if this odd style of interior decorating were a Catholic thing. If so, that would explain Connor's assertion that many Catholic school students graduated with bad feelings about their schools. Imagine spending five or six years in this oppressively-colored environment! Zephyr supposed that if he'd been forced to attend such a school, he'd have escaped to the field behind the school even more frequently.

He hurried to catch up with Marsh, Shauna, Oscar, Connor, and the priest. All but one of the classrooms they toured had been evacuated for recess. Fr. Solano offered them no more than a peek into that last room through the narrow window in the door, and Zephyr passed up the opportunity. Instead, he pulled Marsh aside.

"Your team can take care of the initial evaluations, right? I'm going to take Connor and start on that first room, if that's cool with you."

Marsh nodded. "And then we'll meet you back there," he added.

Connor stood off to the side, furiously writing in his notebook. Zephyr interrupted him and they returned together to the special ed classroom. "Okay," he told Connor, "All we have to do is make a list of... no, make that two lists. One of things that absolutely have to be done, and one list of things we could do if Mr. Solano agrees to them."

"Father Solano," Connor corrected him.

"Right. Whatever. And then we can take some preliminary measurements."

So Zephyr rambled on while Connor took notes. The room was cluttered and poorly arranged - Zephyr's first suggestion was to move the computer table against the wall and create storage shelves for the piles of books and games. Certain areas needed to be widened, like the path to the emergency door and the spot in front of the students' cubbyholes. The cubbyholes themselves needed to be rebuilt; the priest had already mentioned them so he had Connor list that as necessary. Ultimately he decided that this part of the project would be relatively easy, which was good in the face of the school's limited budget.

When they were done, Connor glanced nervously at the clock. "I have to get ready for my class tonight," he told Zephyr nervously. "Do you think we'll be done soon? If I don't get that assignment done, I'll be--"

"Go," Zephyr replied.

"Go?" Connor blinked at him. "Right now?"

"Yeah. I'll do the rest myself. And I'll get a ride back with one of them guys."

Connor hesitated. "You sure?"

"Yes I'm sure!" Zephyr snapped at him. "Get out of here! Scram! Geez! Just leave the bag."

"Okay. See you tomorrow." Connor bounced out into the corridor, leaving Zephyr in the eerie quiet of the darkly decorated room. He dragged the duffel bag full of tools over to the front of the room by the cubbyholes and sat in the teacher's chair. A group of children passed outside the room, giggling in hushed voices, but recess for the students who used this room didn't end for another 20 minutes. Zephyr observed the big block letters of the alphabet poster along the top of the chalkboard and the colorful cartoon posters imploring children to engage in various forms of hygiene. There was also a poster advocating racial tolerance and several self-esteem boosting sayings stuck to the wall by the door. In the back of the room under the windows were tables cluttered with blocks, books, and game pieces. Zephyr smiled as he imagined a row of children daydreaming of sunshine while they slogged through educational games. He knew all about that... he remembered that pattern-matching game, and that addition-subtraction game with little tiles that slid around, and how those games always competed with the scene outside the window for his attention. And then the teacher would come around to check on him - that tall, skinny woman who seemed too tired for someone so young - and he'd explain away his lack of progress by complaining that he had a difficult time handling the pieces.

Well, it hadn't exactly been a lie, although he'd been very good at finding ways around that problem.

His eyes wandered over to the right, and was startled to see a child in grubby clothes standing in the doorway watching him. It was the same little boy who had shadowed him and Marsh during their first tour of the facilities, the one who had unnerved him so badly with those wide, hollow eyes and that persistent silence. He was doing it again, hovering just outside of friendliness, daring Zephyr to approach him with that unflinching, deep-eyed stare. Maybe he was projecting himself onto this boy, but Zephyr saw himself in that behavior even more strongly than before. It was that fear of strangers - of people in general - competing with the need for human contact. It was that stupid hope for some sign of approval which refused to be squashed by the knowledge that he was only going to get hurt again. Zephyr remembered that part clearly: the fear of knowing he was setting himself up for more hurt and being unable to stop himself. That's what this kid looked like he was doing.

Zephyr averted his eyes and reached down into the duffel bag. He chose a tool he needed to use anyway - and one that had held particular fascination for him as a child - and held it up so the boy could see it. "Know what this is?" he asked casually. "It's a level. It measures how level things are. I works like this."

He placed it on its side along the top of the teacher's desk. "There's a little glass tube right here," he continued in his soft, even tone, "filled with oil, and there's one little bubble inside. The point is to match the bubble up with the center of the tube. If the bubble's in the center, then your surface is level. There it is - the top of this desk is level because the bubble's in the center."

Zephyr heard the boy approach him around the desk, although he kept his eyes on the level. Within a minute, the child was directly in front of him, watching tensely but quietly as if he were stalking a rabbit.

Zephyr kept talking. "There's a tiny little black stripe right there. If you get the bubble inside the black stripe, see, then you know it's exactly in the center. The stripe's really tiny, though, so you have to have really, really good eyesight to see it."

"I see it," the boy said in a voice as quiet as a whisper. "I've got really good eyesight. Better'n... anybody's."

Zephyr raised his head slowly and offered the child a gentle smile. "Really? Wow. You're lucky. It's probably better than mine."

"Yeah," the boy agreed. "You've got glasses. I don't."

Zephyr resisted the urge to laugh out loud. "Can't argue with that," he said. "Hey, let's measure something else with the level." He picked it up and placed it along the top of the bank of cubbyholes. "Ooh, check this out. See? The bubble is way over to the left. Do you know what that means?"

The boy took his time answering. "It's not flat?"

"That's right."

"Hey... uh, can we try something else?" the boy asked.

"Sure!" Zephyr looked around. He didn't feel like getting out of the chair, so he chose the wall behind him. "We can measure vertical things too, things that go up and down. But now we have to look at the other tube, down here."

"The bubble's in the middle," the boy observed. "It's flat."

"Yup." Zephyr returned the level to the bag at his feet and smiled at the kid. "My name's Zephyr," he said. "What's your name?"

"Kevin," the kid replied. "Hey Zephyr, what's black and white and red all over?"

Zephyr failed to give the obvious answer. "I don't know. What?"

"A nun in a blender!" Kevin giggled timidly.

Zephyr's first reaction was to make a face. What could compel such a small child to give that old joke this kind of brutal twist? Did he have a grudge against nuns? What had the nuns been doing to the kid? Maybe Connor's ridiculous horror stories of cruel, abusive nuns had an element of truth.

Or maybe Kevin just had a little bit of anger and a fascination with the idea of shocking people. Zephyr himself had been even less gentle and innocent at that age. Suddenly he found the whole thing rather funny on several different levels. He laughed for almost a full minute, which seemed to please Kevin enormously.

"Okay, I have one. What's black and white and lies around on the beach?"

"Um.... I dunno."

"A nun having fun in the sun."

Kevin giggled.

Zephyr found himself on a roll. "Ooh! You know how you have a herd of horses and a pack of wolves, and, what else, a flock of birds?"

Kevin nodded.

"Well, if you have a bunch of nuns, what are they called? A many of nuns? Or maybe a sum of nuns!"

Kevin laughed. "How can there be some if there's none?"

"Exactly what I was wondering!" Zephyr chuckled. This kid was bright, attentive, and practically dying for attention. If it weren't for his straight, black hair and brown eyes, he'd have been a carbon copy of Zephyr as a small boy. There was that thing about the eyesight, too, and it was difficult to tell so far whether he had any similar coordination problems. So far all Zephyr knew about Kevin's movement was that he did it exceptionally quietly. Zephyr wondered why the kid had been placed in special ed. His surest guess, based on his own experience, would be a difficult home life. Poor Kevin had probably been pigeonholed as having behavioral problems, just like he had been.

Shauna approached the classroom and stopped in the doorway. Kevin gave her that same cautious stare he'd given Zephyr earlier.

"That's my friend, Shauna," Zephyr explained. "She's here to tell me to hurry up and take the measurements because your friends are going to come in from recess pretty soon."

"Oh." Kevin took a couple of steps backwards.

"Why don't you go to recess too?"

"I, uh..." Kevin eased further away. "Bye, Zephyr." He spun around and disappeared through the side door. That was okay, Zephyr thought. He could pretty much guess the reasons.

When the boy was gone, Shauna walked around the desk and leaned against one corner, looking down at him. "You know, you can get in a lot of trouble for doing that," she pointed out.

Zephyr grabbed the tape measure and glared at her. "I work with children every day. It's my job."

"It's your job to work with clients. That kid isn't your client. The school is. If his parents, for instance, find out that he's been talking to some strange man all alone in here..."

"Look, quit worrying about it. It's over; he's gone. It's not going to hurt anybody if I'm nice to a lonely child for two whole minutes. You know, if I'd... oh, never mind. It isn't worth explaining."

Shauna put her hand on Zephyr's shoulder, forcing him to look at her. "Zeph, I do understand. I also don't want you to put yourself in a compromising position. Shit happens. And if people catch you and start pointing fingers... well, let's just say you'd be a real easy target."

Zephyr felt a knot forming in his stomach. He pulled away from Shauna and stretched the tape measure along the length of the bank of cubbyholes. He knew she was right, but he also knew he was right. As a child, he'd had a well-developed fear of strangers. But he also knew that if anyone showed him kindness, he'd have been all over them like an approval-starved puppy dog. He'd have made a prime candidate for the old "lure child into car with candy" trick, or any number of alternative acts. There was just no way for a child in that position to tell the difference between a predator and a friend. Zephyr knew his intentions were exclusively friendly, but who else would believe that?

But then there was Kevin. Zephyr knew he could do a world of good for the kid. Not only did he know exactly what Kevin needed, but he was able to offer it. It wasn't fair that he had to walk away from this opportunity to help Kevin, just like countless people had walked away from him, just because of the paranoid misconceptions of the people who were supposed to be filling this kid's needs in the first place.

"Anyway," Shauna said, "We need to be finishing up here. How much longer do you need?"

Zephyr pointed to the duffel bag. "Everything on the list in Connor's notebook there needs to be measured."

They worked quickly dividing the task between the two of them, and were done by the time Marsh and Oscar swung by to get them. Oscar grabbed the duffel bag and they went out into the hallway to check out the stairs on the landing. Apparently Marsh had talked Fr. Solano into replacing the entire span with a ramp. They made another appointment with the priest, and as they headed out to the parking lot, Zephyr caught a glimpse of Kevin in the shadows by the stairwell. Kevin grinned and waved; Zephyr grinned back.

Even if they never exchanged words again, Zephyr knew that in Kevin's mind they would always be friends. Interesting, he mused, how children perceived such things so differently from adults.


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