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At five, Davey graduated from torturing animals to beating up on smaller
children. Alan took him down to the school on the day after Labor Day,
to sign him up for kindergarten. He was wearing his stiff new blue jeans
and sneakers, his knapsack stuffed with fresh binders and
pencils. Finding out about these things had been Alan's first experience
with the wide world, a kindergartner sizing up his surroundings at speed
so that he could try to fit in. David was a cute kid and had the benefit
of Alan's experience. He had a foxy little face and shaggy blond hair,
all clever smiles and awkward winks, and for all that he was still a
monster.
They came and got Alan twenty minutes after classes started, when his
new home-room teacher was still briefing them on the rules and
regulations for junior high students. He was painfully aware of all the
eyes on his back as he followed the office lady out of the portable and
into the old school building where the kindergarten and the
administration was housed.
"We need to reach your parents," the office lady said, once they were
alone in the empty hallways of the old building.
"You can't," Alan said. "They don't have a phone."
"Then we can drive out to see them," the office lady said. She smelled
of artificial floral scent and Ivory soap, like the female hygiene aisle
at the drugstore.
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