Good morning, sit down. Sit down!

The hallway smelled of floor wax. Ms. Dhillon was there before anyone, reading her class list on the wall outside the Grade 2 room, when Mrs. Santos found her.

“First day?” said Mrs. Santos.

“First day.”

“You drove past the sign on your way in?”

“Which sign?”

“The one that says we’re Canada’s Most Notorious City.”

“I grew up here,” Ms. Dhillon said. “I stopped seeing it.”

“Twenty years I’ve worked in this school, and the worst crime I have ever seen is a boy who bit a recorder in half. But the sign makes the tourists happy, so.” Mrs. Santos read the list over her shoulder, the way she read every newcomer family, like weather coming in. Her finger stopped near the middle. “Ah. Gill.”

“Kabir Gill.”

“You know the family?”

“I know the kind of family.”

“The ironed clothes,” said Mrs. Santos.

“The ironed clothes. The front room kept clean for guests who never come.”

“Your people?”

“One generation back.” Ms. Dhillon rolled the list into a tube and unrolled it again. “I spent a lot of years becoming someone who isn’t that family.”

“He’ll find you anyway. They always find you.” The bell went. “Breathe.”

“I do breathing. In for four, hold for four, out for four.”

“Save some,” said Mrs. Santos, and was gone.

The Grade 2 room had a ceiling fan that turned only to the left, as though it had decided long ago and would not be moved. The children came in soft and bright, in hoodies and shoes with lights in them, and sat. Ms. Dhillon took up the clipboard.

“Aarav.”

“Here, Ms. Dhillon.” Aarav sat very straight. His pencil box had two floors.

“Tyler.”

“Here.” Tyler was writing in a small black notebook.

“What are you writing?”

“Who’s here. And who’s talking when they shouldn’t.”

“That’s my job, Tyler.”

“Someone should check your work,” Tyler said, kindly.

“Madison. Cole. Payton.”

“Here. Here. Here.”

It went beautifully until the second row.

“Kabir.” Nothing. “Kabir Gill?”

“He’ll come,” said Aarav. “He always comes. He’s just not fast.”

Kabir came at nine minutes past. He did not hurry. He was the neatest child in the building, pressed and combed and wiped clean in a room dressed for a long weekend, and he wore it without noticing, the way you wear your own face.

“You’re late,” Ms. Dhillon said. Kindly. First day.

“Yes,” Kabir agreed, and sat.

She waited for the sorry. She was Canadian; she had a great deal of faith in the sorry. It did not come.

“When you’re late, you tell me why. So I can mark it.”

“Mark what?”

“Whether you’re here.” She lifted the clipboard, to show him the list that decided such things.

“But I’m here.”

“That’s why I’m marking you here.”

“You can see me.”

“I can see you.”

“Then you already know.” He said it gently, the way you explain a thing to someone you’re fond of. “Why does the list also have to know?”

“Because the school keeps a record.”

“Of what?”

“Of who came.”

“But everyone who came is here. You can look.” He turned in his chair and looked at the room, to show her how easy it was to look. “Aarav’s here. Tyler’s here, writing. The only person the list is any good for is the person who didn’t come. And he’s not here to read it. So the list is talking to nobody.”

At the back, Tyler wrote this down.

“It’s a rule,” said Ms. Dhillon. It was the sentence she had promised herself, in college, that she would never use on a child. She had used it by nine minutes past nine.

“Whose rule?”

“The school’s.”

“Has the school seen me? Or only the list?”

“It has your name.”

“A name isn’t a person. You could write my name on the moon. I still wouldn’t be on the moon.”

At the back, Tyler wrote down the moon.

Outside, a jet came over, low and loud, one of the ones from the airbase.

“That’s just the planes,” Aarav whispered. “After a while you stop hearing them.”

“I won’t,” said Kabir.

Ms. Dhillon put the clipboard down.

“Kabir. Good morning.”

“Good morning, Ms. Dhillon.”

“Sit down.”

He was already sitting. She heard herself, and could not stop herself.

“Sit down.”

She marked him here. The check was not neat, the first crooked mark on the clean new list, and it meant a boy was here whether the list agreed or not.

It was nine minutes past nine on the first morning of the year, and Ms. Dhillon had already lost an argument she had never agreed to have, to a boy in an ironed shirt. She looked at the clock. She looked at the twenty-two faces waiting for her to be in charge of something. And she decided to start over, cleanly, with an activity so simple, so safe, so pleasant, that not even the boy in the second row could find a way to argue with it.

She was about to learn there was no such thing.