Talker's Graduation

scream?”
    The girl shook her head. “No. That would have made him
    more mad.”
    Tate nodded. “Yeah. You don‟t want to make them more mad.
    You were probably very brave.”
    The girl nodded and kept stroking the rough skin of Tate‟s
    fingers. “I‟ll never get a Prince Charming,” she said, her voice
    unbearably sad.
    “Because you have scars?”
    She looked up, ink-dark eyes big in her peaked face, her
    white-blonde hair floating like a cloud. “Yeah.”
    “Naw—I got a Prince Charming, and I have scars.”
    She giggled. “You can‟t have a Prince Charming!” she gasped,
    scandalized. “Boys aren‟t supposed to have Prince Charmings!”
    Tate nodded and started another picture. This one was a
    kitten, because those were easy too. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “but
    people aren‟t supposed to give us scars. I figure if people can hurt
    me when they‟re not supposed to, I can have a Prince Charming
    even though I‟m not supposed to, what do you think?”
    The girl shrugged, apparently bored. “I like the kitty. Can I
    have it?”
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    “Yeah. As long as you find your own Prince Charming, you
    can have the kitty.”
    The girl thought about it. “Okay. Would you help me look?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I want to dance with him, like Cinderella.”
    “Yeah? Do you have a song you want to dance to?”
    The little girl shook her head. “No, I just want to dance.”
    Talker thought about it and pulled out his iPod. “Here,” he
    said, putting the earbuds in the impossibly little ears. “This is the
    best Prince Charming song I know.” And he set the music to
    “Kingdom Come” by Coldplay.
    She‟d listened intently while she colored, her head rocking
    gently to the music. When she was done, she gave him back the
    iPod politely.
    “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Now I know there will be a
    prince, because you gave me a song.”
    And that had been Shelley.
    The first thing she had drawn was a picture of Tate—the long
    hair on one side and the shaved scalp on the other were easy to
    recognize. Tate had brought it home and shown it to Brian, and
    Brian had bought a magnetic frame and put it on the refrigerator,
    and Tate had loved him all over again, because he would know
    how much it meant.
    So for two years he‟d known Shelley. Brian had given the kids
    a display in his last two art shows, and Tate had loved him more for
    it, if that was even possible. They had another display this time as
    well, and Shelley had made a piece that looked like one of Talker‟s
    half-gloves, because they fascinated her, and she spent time
    designing something that would go over the lump of scar tissue on
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    her thin upper arm, so she could wear a dress that would make
    Prince Charming happy.
    Talker told her that a real Prince Charming wouldn‟t care
    about the scars.
    Shelley told him that she‟d try to hide them anyway.

    TATE tried not to let it hurt too bad. JoEllen was right—he’d known
    the system, had lived the system, and knew that sometimes the
    best people were not always in charge of a child’s welfare. Shelley
    was with her parents now, and when she was with them, they
    pulled her away from the foster care system entirely, like they could
    somehow remove the fact that they’d screwed up and make it
    disappear. He told himself he should be happy for her, because
    most of the kids there dreamed that Mom and Dad would come
    back and make it all up to them, but his eyes were blurry as he put
    on his wetsuit and surf shoes and grabbed his board, and he barely
    noticed the shock of the ocean as he ran in.
    He swam out past the fury of the breakers and into the calm
    and sat for a while, pinching his eyes closed and trying to get it the
    hell together. His feet were starting to chill through the suit and the
    shoes, and the motion of the board was starting to lull him
    practically to sleep again when he saw Brian through his misery,
    and his eyes cleared.
    When he wasn’t working on clay, Brian still held his shoulder
    like it might hurt a little. In the evenings, Tate would hear the tell-
    tale clatter of the pills in the ibuprofen bottle and know that it had to
    be aching pretty bad, but Brian never complained. He’d filled out
    since Talker had first seen him, a beautiful, square-jawed, blue-
    eyed piece of dreamboy, sitting alone on a track meet bus. His
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    chest was broader, and his