dive raze they moved to a coastal city in connecticut the year he turned fourteen. it was where his stepfather grew up. most of the kids at his new school were a different colour than he was. they told him he talked funny. he told them they talked funny too. he was assigned a locker and given a student handbook. one of the things the handbook said was not to bring a gun to school. he didn't own a gun. he didn't know where to get one. the only weapon he had was his mind. he killed people all the time. he was so good at it, they didn't even know they were dead. they kept walking around like nothing was different. the kids did whatever they wanted. one girl pulled out her lunchbox and started eating in the middle of class. "put that away," the teacher said. "no," the girl said. she made her hand a mallet and started pounding on her desk. all the other kids did the same thing. they hammered segments of flesh-covered skeleton against old wood and shouted: "no! no! no! no!" the noise drove the teacher out into the hall. he didn't come back. one girl had ducks. every morning he saw her walking them with ropes around their necks. when he wasn't thinking about killing his stepfather and hiding his body in the meat freezer, he thought about the ducks. what did they think about? what did they see when they closed their eyes? everything that breathed had to dream of something. his favourite place at school was the indoor swimming pool. there was a boy he liked to watch. all he ever did was dive in the deep end. he'd move around down there for a while. then he'd swim back to the surface and do it again. he kept touching his face. he asked the boy why he did that. the boy smiled. he said he had an artificial eye. he dropped it in the water and let it sink to the bottom of the pool so he'd have an excuse to go looking for it. he was pearl hunting, only the pearl was a small ball of painted glass, and it kept people from screaming at him when they looked at his face. he wanted to ask the boy if he still had both eyes in his dreams. but you don't ask someone you don't even know a thing like that. so he stood in the shallow end and watched the stranger with the glass eye search for something he'd gone out of his way to lose, making a game out of what was missing. 220217 what's it to you? who go blather from