His first day back at school, Sam was moved to the front of the classroom. His new desk, a large wooden side table that used to hold a fish tank, was twice as big as anyone else’s. It was decided that he needed special facilities, and so the computer that usually sat at the back of the room, the machine everyone took turns playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? on at recess, was moved beside him. Its fat green face buzzed ceaselessly in the corner of his vision, cursor blinking, expectant, waiting for him to type something worthy to be seen. Sam tried to keep away from its keyboard as much as he could, because every time his fingers neared the keys his teacher would gravitate towards him, eyebrows raised expectantly.
At least sitting up the front meant that people weren’t constantly staring at his neck. The bandages were mostly gone, but he still wore a patch around the incision, and a velcro strap held his vent in place. In particular, his friend Paul, who used to sit next to him at the back of the room, and with whom Sam played Battleship in the blank pages of their workbooks, seemed unable to stop staring. At recess Paul kept asking him if it hurt when he ate. During lunch, Susan Pally asked him if he had to drink through the hole now, while her gaggle of friends looked on, curious. In the bathroom, where Sam waited in a stall for the bell for class to ring, he heard a couple of fourth-graders talking about the kid who had come back to school after having his throat hacked open with a butcher’s knife.
The next day Sam wore a loose skivvy under his school uniform, letting his neck heat up with every exhale into its material.
As the weeks wore on, the novelty of his situation faded. Although his classmates remained reluctant to be partnered with him for group activities, they scrutinised him less, and seemed more perplexed by the new vice-principal, who had only one arm. Paul went back to drawing little stick-figure action scenes with him in their notebooks at the library, and they would still play handball and share soggy meat pies with too much sauce at lunch. Still, Sam still felt lonelier than he could ever remember being, surrounded by a room full of noise with only the clatter of his keyboard to pronounce himself over the din.