I once had a teacher who said the Dick Tracy comic was “insidious” because all the villains were disfigured. You know, Flat Top and Prune Face and all them. She said it was wrong to think people who look different are bad. She talked about movies that played on our fears of things that are different and made them worse. She was careful not to look at me and no one else in the class did either, but I felt like they were all thinking about me. I would have if I were them. I felt like Miss Mahoney was trying to tell me and everybody that I was okay. It just made me embarrassed. I felt my cheeks flush but of course no one …

Paul wondered if this was a trap, the kind that killed Jim. He was smart and generally stayed out of trouble.  He ate sensibly – only fresh scraps.  He once ate some delicious green pellets off a plastic tray that made him so sick he thought he’d die and almost wanted to.  He surely would have except he came upon the tray after eating a hard chunk of Colby Jack.  (Who throws cheese away??)  So he was already full when he came upon the green stuff and only had a taste.  Somehow he knew it was the pellets that made him sick.  They were good but there was a funny taste to them.  From then on, he only ate food that the big ones ate. …