Crimes and Misdemeanors

"Let's keep doing well," he says.

The boy shakes Baranyk's hand and heads out.

"Hard to know the truth there," Baranyk says. "He might just be an occasional knucklehead doing knuckleheaded things. I just want to get him out of school by June; that's my goal. Sometimes you just want to get them through your school and get them out."

It's soon 11 o'clock, already time for the first in a series of lunches in the cafeteria. There's usually a fight a week in the Oakton cafeteria. Today, it's pretty quiet, and as he walks around, Baranyk shifts his attention to a kid in an oversize black T-shirt seated alone at the corner of a long table.

"Hey, what's up?" Baranyk says to the boy, grinning.

The kid stares up at the adult, frozen for an instant. "Hey," he mumbles, lifting a finger in acknowledgment.

"Good seeing you." Baranyk summons his cheeriest tone. "Things good?"

"Yeah," the boy says, looking around.

The boy has had a couple of disciplinary problems in classrooms, nothing major, but Baranyk keeps an eye on him, hoping to forge a connection and seeing something in the boy he can't help but like, some stoicism, perhaps. He takes a short step closer to the kid. "Hungry?" he asks, lowering his voice.

The boy shakes his head.

"You had something to eat?" Baranyk asks him.

The boy looks up, looks down, talks into his hands. "I'm fine."