One day I woke up to find a strange boy standing in my room. A boy who was a stranger to me, I should say, because I didn’t think he looked strange at all. Just ... unexpected.
“Who are you?” I asked, sitting up in my bed and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
“Dylan,” the black boy replied.
My room wasn’t overly large and he stood near the bed opposite mine, empty but for some folded linen and his blue backpack. Everyone at St. Luke’s had to share and my old roommate had left a couple weeks before to live with some relatives in Canada or someplace. I’d gotten sort of used to being alone and that’s why I called it my room, but it was really our room now.
“Did I wake you up? Sorry.”
“No,” I shook my head. “I gotta get up anyway. How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” he answered, tilting his hea
