Nine Attempts

   Win didn’t notice the student until he had shut his door against the nearly painful noise of excited fourteen-year-olds in the hall.  He was an African teen nearly as distinct from African-Americans as Henrik Belsen, last year’s Danish exchange student, had been from the other members of the Black Culture Appreciation club he’d decided to join. 

   “Oh, hi!” Win blurted out, midway into removing his tie.  “Do you have a question?”

   The young man rose from the sun-drenched chair he’d chosen and moved slowly toward Win at the front of the room. 

   “Yes,” he said in a voice totally devoid of adolescence, “I have a question.”

   Win wondered what traumas the powerfully built youth approaching him had suffered.  Ones sufficient to bring him to this country and to erase all vestiges of childhood, he decided.  Three raised scars ran parallel across his broad brow.  Was he perhaps over eighteen already?  That sometimes happened with refugees who’d had little schooling back home.  The scars were clearly not accidents, but no other such marks could be seen on the smooth skin protruding from the orange and white print shirt he wore. 

   “What is it?” Win wiped a hand across his forehead, but it came away dry and he sat down with a thump on his desk.

   “Have we not shone our faces upon you?” said the young man, his sandaled feet sliding slowly past one another over the floor tiles. 

   “What?” Win’s voice rose several notes in just the one word and he had to squint to keep his eyes on the figure drawing closer.

   “Enlightenment beyond need,” he reached out to stroke Win’s temple with one black and brilliant finger, “does not serve you or us.”

   His other hand rose in a slow arc toward Win’s head.  Furnace blasts of breath stung Win’s eyes shut, but he still tracked the movement of that hand by the heat streaming from it.  The youth’s voice grew louder as if coming up from behind a mountain. “It is not for you to eclipse us.”

   Win cried out at the first touch of the young man’s fiery finger and pushed blindly at his feverish, muscular arm.  It gave way only a little, but enough for Win to slide like a rag doll under it and onto the floor.  Without hesitation he scurried along the length of his desk, then left, and opened the door to the storage room with one weak twist of the knob.

   In the cool, windowless, and narrow space, the door now shut and locked behind him, he could open his eyes some.  His whole body shook and his muscles misfired from the heat he’d absorbed.  His head swam and his tongue stuck to the bottom of his mouth.  Stumbling along a row of cabinets to the other end of the room, he found a large triangular metal handle attached to a showerhead and drew it down.