Lakhasly

There used to be an empty chair at the back of my classroom. It wasn’t special—it was just empty because no one was sitting in it. But then one day, just three weeks after school started, the most exciting thing that could ever happen to anyone happened to me and my three best friends. And it all began with that chair.
Usually, the best thing about starting a brand-new semester is that you get extra allowance to buy new school supplies with. Every year, on the last Sunday of the summer break, my mum takes me on an Extra-Special Adventure to hunt down my notebooks for the new school year. Sometimes I get so excited that my feet feel jumpy inside and I don’t know which store I want to go into first. There aren’t many nice school supply stores where I live—they only ever have boring dinosaur sets for boys or princess sets for girls. So Mum takes me on the bus and then the train into the city, where there are whole streets of stores—even huge department stores that look like tall blocks of apartments from the outside.
Last year, I found a space-themed notebook with pictures of an astronaut floating past the moon. It was on sale, too, so I bought a pencil case, a compass and protractor set, erasers, and a long ruler—and still had nearly a pound left over! The ruler is one of my favorite things, because the

astronaut floats across it in water mixed with silver stars. I played with it so much that the astronaut got stuck to one side. But it wasn’t my fault. Mr. Thompson, our teacher last year, had such a boring voice that my hands needed something to do. That’s why it’s important to have fun stuff with you in class—because you never know when you’ll need to stop your brain from falling asleep or doing something that might get you into detention.
This year, I bought a Tintin and Snowy set. I love Tintin. Even though he’s only a character in a comic book and isn’t real, I want to be just like him when I grow up. I think being a reporter and getting to solve mysteries and go on adventures must be the best job in the world. My mum and dad used to buy me a brand-new Tintin comic book for my birthdays, and Mum saves all the comics her library is about to throw away because they’re too old or ripped and gives them to me, so I have a whole collection of them now. I’ve read them all at least fifty times. But I’ll have to think of another pet besides Tintin’s dog, Snowy, to travel with because I’m allergic to dogs. I don’t think cats or hamsters or even trained mice could be half as useful as Snowy. And even though I’ve thought about it for at least a year now, I still haven’t come up with anything.
Because the Tintin school supplies were a lot more expensive than the astronaut ones and weren’t on sale, I could only buy a pencil case, a small ruler, and two erasers. I had to think about it for a very long time, but in the end, I decided spending all my allowance at one time was worth it. Not just because everything had Tintin on it, but because if you press a button on the pencil case, Snowy barks and Captain Haddock’s voice cries out, “Blistering barnacles!” I’ve already been yelled at for pressing it in the middle of math class this year, but if you can’t press a barking dog button in math, then I don’t see the point of it.
I don’t like math. Simple math is fine, but this year we’re learning about long division and square numbers and all sorts of things that my brain doesn’t like doing. Sometimes I ask for help, but it’s embarrassing putting your hand up too many times to ask the same question. I’m lucky because Tom and Josie and Michael always help me with the things I get stuck with. They’re my best friends and we do everything together.
Tom’s got short spiky hair and a side-smile and a big Adam’s apple that looks like a Ping-Pong ball got stuck in his throat. He’s the smallest in our

group but he’s also the funniest. He only joined our class last year after his parents moved here from America, but we became friends instantly. He has three older brothers who all tease and bully him. Not seriously—only as a joke. But I think they steal his food, too, which is why he’s so skinny and always super hungry. I once saw him eat a whole pizza with extra toppings and a double cheeseburger for lunch and still not feel full! So I hide my snacks and chocolate bars from him when I can.
Josie has large, brown eyes and at least a million freckles across her face. She’s tall and gangly and is always chewing on her hair. She’s the fastest girl in our year and can kick a soccer ball past any goalie from the other side of the field. She’s the coolest person I know, and I’ve known her since we were three. Our mums say we became instant friends the first day we started preschool, so they decided to become friends too. I don’t really remember much about myself at that age, but Josie is in all my school memories. We even got our first detention together last year—all because of a hamster named Herbert.
Josie had heard one of the upper-school bullies say that he was going to flush our class hamster, Herbert, down the toilet at the end of the day. Josie told me, and we decided to go on a Hamster Rescue Mission. We hid Herbert in my backpack before school ended and took him straight to my house. But of course, Mum found out and made me take him back the very next day. I tried to explain to boring Mr. Thompson what had happened, but he wouldn’t listen and gave me detention. And even though she didn’t have to, Josie stood up and said she had helped to steal Herbert too—just so we could do detention together. You know a friend’s a Best Friend when they’re willing to sit in detention with you.
Michael has the neatest, puffiest Afro out of all the boys in our year. Most people think he’s weird. But not us. His glasses are always broken, and his shoelaces are never done right, so he’s always tripping up or bumping into things when he walks. But we’re all so used to it now that we never notice. He’s mostly quiet but when he does say something, grown-ups usually look impressed and say that it’s “ingenious” or “insightful” or use other strange words beginning with “in.” I don’t know what they mean, but I guess they mean he’s smart. Grown-ups always like coming up with long words for simple things.

Michael gets made fun of a lot because he can’t run fast or kick a ball in a straight line, but he doesn’t care. I wouldn’t care either if I was as rich as him. His dad is a professor and his mum is a lawyer, and because they’re always busy, they buy him all the latest gadgets and books and the coolest new games. When we went to his house last year for his birthday party, we saw his room for the first time. It looked like the inside of a toy store. I think it must be easier not to care about what people think when you’ve got that many toys in your life.
Josie and Michael are always competing with each other to see who can get the most gold stars and As in class. Michael is the best at history and Josie is the best at math. But I’m better at reading and spelling than both of them—especially Josie. She hates reading and never, ever reads anything outside class. She says she doesn’t have an imagination, so there’s no point to reading books. I find that strange, because how can anyone not have an imagination? I think she must have had one when she was younger but that it was knocked out of her when she fell off her bike last summer. Mum says people without imaginations are dead inside. I don’t think Josie is dead anywhere—she talks too much.
Having three best friends can make school seem like the best place to be, even on the most boring day. Although this year, school has become a whole lot more fun—and that’s because of our new teacher, Mrs. Khan.
Mrs. Khan has extra-bouncy hair and always smells of strawberry jam —which is much better than smelling like old socks like Mr. Thompson does. She’s new to the school and extra smart—much smarter than Mr. Thompson ever was. And she gives us prizes on Fridays when we’ve all been good. No other teacher in our year does that.
Mrs. Khan lets us do all sorts of interesting things that we have never done before. In the first week of school, she helped us make musical instruments out of things we found in the school’s recycling bin, and in the second week, she brought in a brand-new comic book to read to us that wasn’t even in the school library yet.
Then in the third week, something happened that was so surprising and made everyone so curious, that even Mrs. Khan couldn’t make us focus on our lessons properly. And it all began with the empty chair.

It was on the third Tuesday after school had started, and Mrs. Khan was taking attendance. She was just about to call my name when there was a loud knock at the door. Usually when there’s a knock on the door, it’s just someone from another class bringing a note, so no one really pays any attention, but this time it was Mrs. Sanders, the Principal. Mrs. Sanders always wears her hair in the exact same way and peers over her glasses whenever she talks to anyone. Everyone is scared of her, because when she gives detention, she doesn’t just make you sit in a room; she makes you memorize long words from the dictionary and doesn’t let you leave until you’ve learned them all by heart—the meaning and the spelling. I’ve even heard of lower graders being stuck in detention for hours because they had to learn words that were as long as this page!
So when we saw that it was Mrs. Sanders at the door, we all fell silent. She looked very serious as she walked up to Mrs. Khan, and we all wondered who was in trouble. After she had whispered and nodded for a few seconds, she suddenly turned around and, peering over her glasses at us, pointed to the empty chair at the back of the class.
All of us turned around to have a look at the empty chair. This was the chair:

As I said, it was a pretty ordinary chair, and it was empty because a girl named Dena left our class at the end of last year to move to Wales. No one really missed her except for her best friend, Clarissa. Dena had been a bit of a show-off and was always talking about how many presents her parents got her every week and how many pairs of shoes she had and all sorts of other things that no one else cared about. She liked to sit at the back of the class because then she and Clarissa could pretend to pay attention when really they were drawing pictures of their favorite pop stars and giggling about someone they didn’t like. Someone else could have taken the seat, but no one really wanted to sit next to Clarissa. That’s why the chair had stayed empty.
After whispering for a few more seconds with Mrs. Khan, Mrs. Sanders left the classroom. We expected Mrs. Khan to say something, but she seemed to be waiting, so we waited too. It was all very serious and exciting. But before we could start guessing about what was going on, Mrs. Sanders came back, and this time she wasn’t alone.
Standing behind her was a boy. A boy none of us had ever seen before. He had short dark hair and large eyes that hardly blinked and smooth pale

skin.
“Everyone,” said Mrs. Khan as the boy went and stood next to her. “This is Ahmet, and he’ll be joining our class starting today. He’s just moved to London and is new to the school, so I hope you’ll all do your very best to make him feel welcome.”
We all watched in silence as Mrs. Sanders led him to the empty chair. I felt sorry for him because I knew he wouldn’t like sitting next to Clarissa very much. She still missed Dena, and everyone knew she hated boys—she says they’re stupid and smell.
I think it must be one of the worst things in the world to be new to a place and have to sit with people you don’t know. Especially people who stare and scowl at you like Clarissa was doing. I made a secret promise to myself right then and there that I would be friends with the new boy. I happened to have some lemon candies in my bag that morning. I would try to give him one at recess. And I would ask Josie and Tom and Michael if they would be his friends too.
After all, having four new friends would be much better than having none. Especially for a boy who looked as scared and as sad as the one now sitting at the back of our class.

For the rest of the day I kept sneaking glances over my shoulder at the new boy and noticed that everyone else was doing the same.
Most of the time he kept his head down low but every so often I’d catch him staring right back at us. He had the strangest-colored eyes I’d ever seen —like a bright ocean but on a half-sunny, half-cloudy day. They were gray and silvery blue with specks of golden brown. They reminded me of a program I saw about lions once. The camera had zoomed in on a lion’s face so much that its eyes had taken up the whole screen. The new boy’s eyes were like those lion’s eyes. They made you want to never stop staring.
When Tom joined our class last year, I had stared at him a lot too. I didn’t mean to, but I kept imagining that he came from an American spy family—like the ones you see in the movies. He told me later that he had thought there was something wrong with me. The new boy probably thought there was something wrong with me, too, but it’s hard to stop staring at new people—especially when they have eyes like a lion’s.
We had geography in first period that morning, so we couldn’t get up to say hello to the new boy. Then at recess I looked around the playground for him but couldn’t see him anywhere. In second period we had PE but the new boy didn’t join in; he sat in the corner staring at his backpack, which

was red with a black stripe on it and looked very dirty. I thought he must have forgotten his PE uniform because his bag looked empty and saggy. I tried waving at him, but he never looked up—not even once.
Whenever we do PE, I like to pretend that I’m training to join Tintin on an adventure and have to be the super-fastest human being on the planet. The only problem is my legs aren’t as long as I want them to be yet, so even when I jump as hard I can, I always get stuck in the middle of the vault. Every birthday, I make a wish that I’ll grow at least four inches taller, and I drink as much milk as I can so that my bones will stretch. But even though I’m nine and three-quarters now, I’ve only grown one and a half inches since my last birthday. Or at least that’s what my mum says. I tried my best to jump over the vault in one go in front of the new boy, but I got stuck again. Luckily he didn’t see me because he was staring at his backpack the whole time.
After PE, we had lunch break, and Josie, Tom, Michael, and I decided we would try to find the new boy so that he wouldn’t be on his own. We waited right next to the playground doors. But the new boy never came out. Tom even went to check the boys’ bathroom because that’s where he had tried to hide on his first day when he didn’t know anyone, but there was no one there.
“Maybe he’s having lunch with the lower grades by mistake?” said Josie. But when we got into the cafeteria, we didn’t see him anywhere.
In the afternoon we had history, and we were split into groups, but the new boy was allowed to sit on his own and not join in. Mrs. Khan spent more time with him than she did with any of our groups, and she was pointing at things in a new textbook she had gotten him.
“Maybe he’s deaf?” someone whispered.
“Maybe he can’t speak English?” muttered someone else.
“There’s definitely something wrong with him!” whispered everyone.
That afternoon I don’t think any of us learned about what it was like to be a gladiator living in Roman times, because we were all too busy whispering about the new boy. He must have known what we were doing because his face was red the whole time. Then, at last break, he disappeared again.

“He must be inside,” said Michael, after we had finished searching the whole playground for the third time in a row. By now, my lemon candies were getting sticky in my pocket and beginning to look like bright yellow fuzzballs.
At the end of the day, everyone was still talking about the new boy and wondering who he was. I think it was because a whole day had passed, and no one knew anything about him except for his name. Not even Clarissa— and she had been sitting right next to him! People kept running up to her to ask if the new boy had said anything to her, but she just shook her head and said he was using a lower grade’s textbook, so his reading and writing mustn’t be very good.
As we made our way to our usual bus stop to catch the city bus back home, we saw everyone crowding around Jennie just outside the front gates. Jennie is famous in school for always knowing something about everything, so we ran over to hear what she was saying.
Jennie is in the class next door and has the longest hair in school. She likes to spy on people and then tell stories about them to other people. Sometimes the stories are true, but most of the time they’re only half true because she makes things up. Last year she told a story about Josie cheating in a soccer match by pretending to fall down so she could get a penalty kick. But I was there and so was Tom, and we both saw her fall down after being kicked in the leg by an older boy named Robert. She had a big fat bruise on her leg the shape of Australia for weeks afterward! But no matter how many times we showed everyone the bruise and told them what really happened, no one believed us. Not even the people who were there.
Sometimes I think people like to believe a lie even when they know it’s a lie because it’s more exciting than the truth. And they especially like to believe it if it’s printed in a newspaper. I know that now. I also know why Mum says politicians are liars and always shouts at them whenever they come on TV. Maybe Jennie will be a politician when she grows up.
When we got closer, we heard Jennie telling everyone that the new boy had spent all his breaks and recess with Mrs. Sanders because he had done something bad in his old school and was too dangerous to be let out onto the playground with us. But I didn’t believe her; I could tell Michael didn’t believe her either, because he asked her how she knew so much about it.

Jennie got angry and crossed her heart and hoped to die that she had heard Mr. Owen talking to Mrs. Timms outside the teachers’ staff room and that both of them had said how sorry they felt for Mrs. Khan and how glad they were that the new boy wasn’t in their class because it wasn’t going to be easy to deal with him. But before we could ask her any more questions, Jennie’s dad began to beep at her from his car, so she ran off.
We all watched her go and then looked back through the school gates to see if the new boy had come out. But we couldn’t see him anywhere.
“He’s probably left already,” said Josie.
Tom and Michael nodded. “Let’s just wait two more minutes,” I said, hoping that he would still be inside. And I was glad I did, because a few seconds later, the new boy came out onto the playground. He was holding Mrs. Khan’s hand and staring at the ground. A woman who was waiting by the outdoor benches suddenly shouted, “Cooo-eeee!” and ran over to them. She was wearing a long brown coat, a woolly hat, and a bright red scarf. She stood and talked to Mrs. Khan for a long time and nodded an awful lot, but we couldn’t hear anything because we were standing too far away.
“I wonder if that’s his mum,” said Josie. I didn’t think so because the new boy didn’t hug her at all and seemed shy around her too.
“Come on,” said Michael. He was pointing to his watch, which was beeping like a submarine. Michael has a special watch that tells him when the next bus is coming. It’s supposed to help him get to places on time, but I’ve only ever seen it make him bump into things more quickly.
“No! Wait!” I said. And before I could think about it too much, I ran over to where the new boy was standing.
“Hello!” I said, tapping him on the shoulder.
Mrs. Khan and the woman in the red scarf looked down at me as I reached into my pocket and got out the lemon candy. “Here!” I said, holding it out. I was a little bit embarrassed because by now it was covered in fluff. But it was still good enough to eat. That’s the good thing about lemon candies. No matter how bad they look, they still always taste delicious.
I think I must have spoken too loudly because the new boy took a step away from me as though he was frightened.

“It’s all right, Ahmet, you can take it,” said the woman, motioning to him with her hands as if she were speaking in sign language.
But the new boy grabbed her hand and hid his face behind her arm. I didn’t know what to do because I’ve never really scared anyone so much before that they wanted to hide from me. The woman spoke to him gently again, and after a few seconds he took the candy and looked straight at me with his lion eyes before hiding away again.
“Thank you,” said the woman. She looked at me and gave me a smile. I liked her deep brown eyes, because they seemed kind, and her bright pink cheeks. But what I liked best of all was how her long blond hair swirled around in the wind from underneath her hat. “Ahmet will enjoy that on the ride home.”
I nodded and then ran back to where Josie and Tom and Michael were waiting for me. I felt extra happy because Mrs. Khan had smiled at me with her whole face and had given me a wink too—just like my dad used to do whenever he thought I had done something good or when he was teasing my mum. When I’m a grown-up, I’m going to wink at people just like he used to do and make them feel special too. And as we made our way home, I decided that the next day, whenever I saw the new boy staring at me, I was going to give him just as many winks as I could.

The next day, and the next day and the next day after that, I smiled at the new boy and gave him a friendly wink, just as often as I could. My goal was to give him at least forty winks a day because that’s what Mum says everyone needs, but after a while my eyebrows started to feel funny. I could tell the new boy was finding it interesting because he stopped looking at everyone else and kept looking at me. But then Michael saw me trying to wink with both my eyes, one after the other, and said I looked like I needed a doctor. He probably said that because I can’t wink with my left eye as well as I can with my right eye. So I decided to stop winking quite as much.
That week Mrs. Khan was teaching us all about photosynthesis and gave each of us a small pot with a seed in it to look after. Everyone was excited because she said there would be a prize for whoever grows the best plant. Even the new boy got one and I think it made him happy because he kept looking at it. I tried to whisper lots of cheerful words like “rainbow” and “popcorn” and “marshmallows” to mine, because I read somewhere that if you tell plants about happy things, it makes them grow quicker. I’d never won a prize before. Not even at the fair. I thought if I tried really hard and kept talking to my plant, I might win this time. And if I couldn’t win, then I wanted the new boy to, because he really seemed to like that plant.

But I was worried about Brendan the Bully Brooker. He’s the Class Bully. His cheeks are always pink because he spends most of his time chasing anyone smaller than him around the playground. He’s not very bright and hates anyone that is. If anyone gets a good grade in class or a prize, he’ll try to beat them up after school. I saw him looking at Ahmet’s plant and narrowing his eyes, just like he always does when he’s thinking of something mean to do. I didn’t like it one bit.
His most common trick is to trip you up with his foot. He also likes to tip up your lunch tray as he walks by so that your food dribbles down your chest like runny eggs. He’s done that to me a few times. Sometimes he gets caught. But most of the time he doesn’t. And even when he does get caught, he doesn’t get detention.
Most of the teachers seem to like him, though. Maybe it’s because when he smiles, he looks like one of those boys who sing in a church choir on television. Mr. Thompson used to call him “a rascal”—which must be a good word because he always gave Brendan the Bully a wink and a pat on the back whenever he said it, and then let him run off again. That made everyone else in class—except for Liam and Chris, Brendan the Bully’s only two friends—hate him even more. Even the bullies in the upper grades find him annoying. It’s funny how bullies don’t like other bullies. Maybe it stops them from feeling special. But in school everyone knows who the bullies are, and who they like to bully, and no two bullies can go after the same person. It’s a strange system. But those are the rules and everyone sticks to them. Even the teachers.
But Mrs. Khan is different.
She doesn’t seem to like Brendan the Bully as much as the other teachers. She’s always watching him, and ever since we were put in her class, he’s been careful not to do anything around her. I’m still going to keep an eye on him, though.
Soon after the new boy joined our class, lots of rumors about him began to be passed around the playground like an invisible game of hot potato.
Most people believed Jennie and said that the new boy must be dangerous and that’s why he was never allowed out. But then other people started saying he had a super-contagious disease, and that was the real

reason why we weren’t allowed to talk to him. The disease rumor scared Clarissa so much that she tried to sit as far away from him as she could without leaving her chair. One time she leaned over so far that she crashed right onto the floor! She didn’t lean away so much after that, but she always put her arms up or used a notebook as a divider.
I didn’t think the new boy looked the least bit dangerous or like he had an infectious disease, so the rumor I thought sounded the most true was the one that said he was from a super-rich family and that his parents had sent him to our school undercover so that he wouldn’t be kidnapped. Michael said kidnappers wouldn’t come to our school to look for him because it wasn’t in a fancy area, and Tom agreed. He said that when he had moved from America, his older brothers had told him they must be poor now because they were going to live in the Poor End of London and not in the Rich End. I didn’t really understand what he meant, because London doesn’t have ends. On maps it just looks a spilled blob of jam.
I wanted to ask the new boy if the rumor about the kidnappers was true, and if he needed us to become his bodyguards. But he was still doing all his lessons on his own, and during every break and lunchtime he would disappear, so no one except for Clarissa could talk to him. And she didn’t want to! I tried to catch his eye so I could smile at him and whisper “Hello,” but Mrs. Khan caught me and told me to pay attention to my work.
Next I tried to send him a note made into a paper plane—because I’m good at those—but it flew wonkily and hit Nigel on the head instead. He’s a tattletale and told on me right away. I hate tattletales because they seem to like getting people into trouble more than anything else in the world, and they always smile when they’re doing it. Mrs. Khan came and took the note and read it just to herself. She shook her head at me, but I think she must have found the drawing I made funny because her mouth gave a tiny smile that only I could see. Even though I didn’t get lectured, I knew it would be too risky to send any more messages by airmail. Especially with tattletales around.
The next day at recess, Josie, Tom, Michael, and I decided to follow the new boy and find out where he was going. But Mrs. Khan caught us following him in the hall and told us not to do it again. She didn’t seem angry, but she did say that the new boy needed to be in “Seclusion” for a

little while longer and that it was for his own good, so we promised not to follow him anymore.
“What does ‘Seclusion’ mean?” asked Josie when we went back out onto the playground.
None of us knew exactly, not even Michael, although he said it sounded as if the new boy needed to have private treatment like a really sick person in a hospital, so maybe he did have an infectious disease after all.
But it wasn’t long until we found out what “Seclusion” really meant, and why the new boy needed so much of it.

My dad used to say that if you really, really want something, you have to keep trying for it. And since he always used to say that he had everything he could ever want, I guessed he must have known all about trying for things.
I knew that I wanted to be friends with Ahmet. I didn’t really know why; I just did. I gave up trying to speak to him during the day—because of all the Seclusion he needed—but I figured after school was okay, because Mrs. Khan had smiled at me and winked that first time. So every day for two whole weeks, I waited by the school gates at dismissal.
As soon as the new boy and Mrs. Khan came out to meet the woman in the red scarf, I would run over and give the new boy a lemon candy—and sometimes a whole chocolate bar. But no matter how many candies I gave him or how much Mrs. Khan encouraged him to talk to me, the new boy never said a word, and he never, ever smiled back. Not even when I gave him a whole packet of chocolate frogs, which are my favorite. He just quietly took the candy and, staring at the ground, went and stood behind the woman in the red scarf as if he needed to hide from me.
“Maybe he doesn’t like candy,” said Michael on the Friday of the second week.

“Don’t be silly,” said Josie, chewing on her hair. “Everyone likes candy!”
“Maybe he’s allergic?” said Tom.
I’d never heard of anyone being allergic to chocolate and candies before, but then again, I was allergic to dogs when no one else was. So maybe he was right.
After that, I decided to give the new boy my lunch fruit instead. He was still going to his Seclusion every lunchtime, so on the Monday of the third week of trying to be his friend, I took the biggest orange I could find from the cafeteria and waited by the gates. I was extra excited because I had drawn a smiley face on the skin, and Tom had given me a sticker of a dinosaur to stick on it—so those were two things that made the orange extra special. Tom loves collecting stickers—he has books and books of them at home, and whenever he gets a new one he likes, he always brings it in to show us. I’ve never seen him give a sticker away to someone he doesn’t know very well, so I hoped the new boy would like it and know how special it was.
But as we were waiting for the new boy to come out, we heard something about him that we didn’t understand at all. In fact, it was even more confusing than learning about the Seclusion he was being given.
There were lots of grown-ups standing behind us at the gates—there always are at the end of the day. Sometimes they talk about the news or what they’re making for dinner. But mostly they talk about the weather. I don’t know why, because there’s nothing more boring than talking about something everyone else can see for themselves, but I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do when you become a grown-up.
Usually we don’t listen because we have more interesting things to talk about, like what we’re going to watch as soon as we get home and who our favorite Olympic athlete or soccer player is. But this afternoon, just after someone had said how sunny it was and wasn’t it lovely and how they hoped it would be sunny again tomorrow, someone else said, “Have you heard about the new refugee kid that’s joined the school? He’s been put in Mrs. Khan’s class. They can’t find an assistant that speaks his language. Poor little blighter!”

Josie and Michael and Tom all looked over at me and I looked back at them and then we stood very still together. I knew we were all thinking the exact same thing because our faces frowned at the exact same time: we were wondering what a Refugee Kid was doing in our class.
Then the lady who had talked about the sun said, “It’ll cause trouble— you mark my words. They’re only coming over to take our jobs!”
Carefully, so that no one else would see us, we all looked over our shoulders and saw that it was Mr. Brown and Mrs. Grimsby who were talking.
Mr. Brown shrugged and then said, “If he’s from that awful war on the news, I feel sorry for the kid. Can’t blame ’em for wanting to get out of that death trap.”
“Hmph!” said Mrs. Grimsby. “Trouble, the whole lot of ’em! Wouldn’t trust one as far as I could throw ’em. Just you wait and see—it’s our kids who will suffer, just because these ones are coming over to do whatever they like....” I could tell that Mr. Brown didn’t like what she was saying, because he frowned and shook his head and then took a step to the side.
I like Mr. Brown. He’s Charlie’s dad. Charlie is one of the boys in upper school. Everyone knows who he is because he always steals at least three puddings from the pudding tray every lunchtime, so there’s never enough to go around. He’s also famous for setting off the fire alarm to get out of a science test. He’s always getting into trouble. But I don’t think Mr. Brown knows about that because whenever he cries out, “Charlie, my ol’ boy! What have you been up to today?” and Charlie says, “Nothing,” Mr. Brown beams at him. Charlie tells everyone that his dad is a boxer, but I don’t think that can be true. He has a long beard, and if I was a boxer fighting him, I’d just pull his beard all the time and win.
I looked to the right over at Mrs. Grimsby, her face all sour and pink and angry, and decided I didn’t like her very much. She’s the grandmother of a girl named Nelly who’s in the year below us. Nelly’s one of the most popular girls in school, mainly because she’s won every burping competition the school’s ever had. She can even burp-sing famous songs and is always challenging everyone to try to beat her.

I was looking up at Mrs. Grimsby and thinking about all the things she had said when Josie suddenly poked me on the arm. “Look!”
When I looked back through the railings, Mrs. Khan and the new boy were on the playground and already talking to the woman with the red scarf. So I ran just as fast as I could and gave the new boy the special orange.
As usual, he didn’t say thank you and he didn’t smile, but I saw his eyes widen when he saw the drawing of the smiley face and the sticker on the orange. And for the first time ever, he looked up at me with his lion eyes and didn’t look away. I knew right away that he wasn’t frightened of me anymore.
I stared back and gave a small smile. I wanted him to know that it didn’t matter if he was a Refugee Kid, whatever that meant. I still wanted to be his friend. I think he must have understood, because he gave me a nod that no one else could see. I wished he had smiled back, because you can only ever know that a person’s really your friend when they like you enough to smile back at you. But it was okay because the nod felt like a promise, and I knew that I wouldn’t have to wait too long before the smile followed.