Two boys, and a line on a map.

Here is the texture.

He was called a name for four years.

I am not going to write it down.

It was not a slur about anything protected — it was a nonsense syllable, derived from something he said in the second week of ninth grade, and it followed him for four years, and by eleventh grade there were children using it who did not know what it referred to and had never spoken to him.

His things went missing.