The cafeteria was bursting with noise, the students squished together around long tables. Every class had it’s own assigned to it, the tables built to seat twenty-eight fitting classes of thirty-six or more.  They made it work. The children ate with their elbows touching and trays mere inches apart. They joked and laughed and teased, talked about games and family and TV, and generally caused a ruckus. To combat all the noise the teachers had gotten a special alarm. It was shaped like a street light and as the noise went up the light would go from green to yellow to red and if it hit red it would let out a honk loud enough to silence the student body. It had already gone off twice, the students excitement only dying down for a few minutes after hearing it.
	And Luis sat at the end of his class’s table, at the door nearest to the exit. The coati hadn’t said a word for the entire lunch period. He was pretending to read a book, balanced on knees that pointed away from the rest of the class. That didn’t stop him from being deeply aware of the gap between him and the student behind him, or the absolute refusal of anyway to sit across from him, however. But he always hoped it would. The book was a history of Rome as written for elementary school libraries. Fancy watercolor people dressed in bed sheets that they let drag in the dirt behind them were guiding a handful of tourists around the city. Dates were given some hundreds of years apart for the construction of these brand new looking buildings, and even though the sun shone bright behind them not a single shadow was cast. It was very much the kind of place Luis thought he might be able to thrive, if only he could become watercolor himself. 
	He was also confident it was thoughts like that which had the rest of the student body giving him space. Nobody wanted to hear about how great it would be to live in Painted Rome.
	He’d had friends last year. Not many, but more than he could count on one hand. Then this year came and of the three classes dedicated to fifth graders not one of his friends had been assigned to the one he was in. They all already had their cliques, either preserved from last year or amalgamated from the shreds of other groups. And when he reached out, none had reached back. But he was still trying. That’s what he was still thinking about, staring down at the smiling canine in his book.
	Mrs. Dietrich had returned from wherever teachers ate, materializing in the thunderous noise of the room like a plane descending out of the clouds. The anteater clapped her claws together, drawing the eyes of her class to her. She waved her hands up into the air, sending the little billows of her denim dress waving in the air. Gesturing for the children to rise from their seats, she yells, “Alright, you know the drill by now.”
	And the children listen, gathering their things to leave the table for the next group of fifth graders. It would take a couple minutes for them to form an orderly line, but soon enough they were following their teacher through the halls of the school to their lockers. Luis hangs back, taking the last spot in line to watch ahead of him. The students haven’t stopped their conversations. They huddled together awkwardly, with little spaces between the groups so they could all hear each other, refusing to break up until they get to their lockers. 
	By the time Luis gets to his own locker, the target of his plans was already opening his a scant ten feet away. Folded in half, ends held together with a smiley-face sticker for warmth, the note that Luis had left for the ermine fluttered to the ground. In big bubble letters ranging the spectrum of crayons available to them, the name AARON was written over one side. And he reaches down to pick it off the floor. 
	Aaron was perfect, Luis had decided. His fur was fluffier than any other boy’s in class, bounding out in all directions like he was the sun itself. It caught the inside of his glasses, pressed flat around the edges to enhance sharp beadiness of his eyes, making him turn his excitedly when someone would raise their hand in class. That was often how the coati would catch the ermine looking at him, twitching his nose in a cute way that had never failed to make Luis smile. It was so little and pink. He had checked out every available book on Roman and Greek gods in the library, and they’d only been back in school for three weeks. Luis wanted to ask him about them and to see which were the ones that had pulled him in and which of their myths were stupid. The coati had thought the tale of Arachne was dumb from the time that he’d borrowed the book after Aaron had returned it, but the ermine would know for sure. 
	A cluster of people move over to Aaron in response to the note dropping out of his locker. They gathered around him, whispering and wooing around him. Heat boils up into the coati’s ears and he sets his book up on the little shelf in his locker. Mrs. Dietrich has to calm the class down by saying, “Okay, enough ruckus. This is coming out of your recess time.”
	The students file into their line, much as they had just a few minutes earlier. That always bothered Luis. He knew their purpose, but to ask people about it always brought out the most obvious answers. Ones that felt entirely too obvious. It was an impulse that was too easily taken advantage of for people to not take advantage of it. Someone had, somewhere, he was sure.
	Outside, Luis couldn’t keep his eyes on anything for very long. The basketball court sparkled like there was a scrape on top of the world, light shining through. He could hear the yelps from the kids seeing how long they could hold onto the monkey bars without letting go from the heat. Cars would pass just to blind all those who would dare look in the direction of the road, their chrome as bright as the sun. And even still, he tried to watch the ermine read his note from a distance. His friends had gathered around him, sitting on the steps of the jungle gym. He couldn’t gauge their reactions from this distance, the million and one bodies around him each marking the world with their noise and motions.
 	He knew what it looked like, had spent hours agonizing over it. It went into detail about the grandeur of Aaron, how cool Luis found him and how he wanted to talk with him. A picture of the ermine hovered near the bottom, drawn as anime as the coati could manage, and a poem beside it. There was only one thing to do.
	The coati heads over. His ringed tail curls over his leg to offer some shelter from any admonishment they may cast his way. He keeps his hands behind his back to toy with one another. The group of boys don’t turn to look his way but hover together to look at the note he’d written. And aloud, Aaron reads his poem:

“Body brown, tummy tan
stands this heroic man
Apollo’s warmth and grace
covers his friendly face
I would stand beside him
through danger and din
Please let me be by your side
So I no longer have to hide”

	“Do you think she’s cute?” asks the tiger next to him, leaning in close enough that he nearly pushes the stoat off the step they both sat on. “Or is it like Flabby Abbey?”
	“It’s not Abbey, she doesn’t even go to this school anymore,” the shark on the next step down says. He sits perpendicular to the other two and watches Luis’s approach. It unnerved the young coati how his beady eyes tracked his approach, only to start to rise when he got in too close. 
	“I know. I’m just saying she might be fat like Abbey was,” the tiger responds. He rises with his friend without looking at Luis. Aaron stands next to them, ready to leave with the pair once he realized who was approaching.
	“Is who cute?” asks the coati. 
	“Some girl wrote Aaron a love note!” say the tiger as he tries to snag the note from the ermine’s hands. A quick shove from Aaron is all it takes to make the tiger back off, but he still turns to receive some sort of response from Luis.
	“I wrote that,”	The words hang in the air, a noose dangling from them that Luis only now realized was around his neck. Panic wells in him as he tries to think of what to say to fix that.
	“GAY!” shouts the tiger before bursting into laughter. It was the funniest thing in the world to the feline and the shark starts laughing soon after. 
	 The word launches itself out to nail Luis right in the chest. The unimaginable offense he’d just been dealt sees him stammering out, “It’s not a love note! I just want to be his friend!” He looks desperately at the ermine that stares back at him. A look of confusion passes over his face. It’s replaced soon after by his usually friendly grin as he looks through the note one last time.
	“His boyfriend!” The tiger continues to mock him and it’s enough that Luis hunts for a place to run. There had to be somewhere that he could cool off. Maybe he could hide under the pine trees growing near the fence. 
	“NO!” is all the argument the young coati could muster. There wasn’t anything in the note to make them believe he wanted to date the ermine. They just made that up.
	“Quit it. He’s not gay,” says the stoat behind the laughing boys. The pair are slow to stop and the laughter lingers on just a few seconds longer. That didn’t matter. Aaron had stood up for Luis. He’d told the other kids to stop for his sake. A burning ball of feeling erupts and cools in his chest in a second, some hard nugget of indescribably joy hardens around his heart to armor it. He says, “Hey, you know what? Come with us.”
	The ermine takes the lead, a skip in his step. The path is simple and direct enough that even Luis could tell where they were headed. It wasn’t too surprising, headed just around the corner of the school. No teachers could see them there, clustered together around the doors like they were. It was still the same sunny playground. A deer girl was digging a ditch in the playground gravel twenty feet away. The only reason more students didn’t gather here was that there wasn’t anything here beside sidewalk. 	The tiger, who Luis was only now recalling was named Micheal, kept looking around. He was still laughing to himself, but it wasn’t at all clear why. The shark remained stoic, but he too had a smile on his face. It made the coati deeply uncomfortable. The only thing Luis had any trust in right now was that Aaron wouldn’t let him down. He’d staked everything on it.
	And as if on cue, the young stoat turns around, smiling brightly. He seemed genuinely excited to be looking around here. His whiskers twitched with life and his glasses caught the light as he looked around. The words that come out are music to the coati’s ears, “You want to be my friend?” 
	Luis nods vigorously. The words coming out of the ermine’s mouth nearly ripped his insides from his body and he has to remind himself to breathe.
	“Choke yourself,” Aaron says.
	There’s a beat before the entirely wrong person interjects.
	“What?” says Micheal. He and the shark stare at their friend in confusion, and Luis can do little more than join in as he processes what, exactly, his savior had said. Had he misheard him? It would be really embarrassing if he had. But the intrigued gaze of Aaron’s friends look down at the shorter boy tell the shorter boy he hadn’t.
	“If he wants to be my friend he has to prove it,” Aaron says it with an ease one might use to explain how to boil water. “In his note, he did say he’d do anything.” And that was true. 
	The shark heads over to the corner of the building. He grips the corner and peeks his head around. The quick return confirms that no one important was looking their way. The tiger simply looks between Aaron and Luis. It’s unreadable, but he backs away and waits to see what will happen. Aaron watches with that same friendly expression, unmoved by his own request. 
	The coati’s hands reach for his own throat. Finding a good place for his fingers was harder than Luis thought it would be. The fur would catch under his fingers in a weird way if he slid them along his neck, but he spent so little time fussing around there that he wasn’t quite sure how to choke himself. In the end, the pressure of the trio watching him force him to just grab his throat and hope for the best. There’s one last glance around at them, some hope for reprieve or pity before he begins.
	He squeezes hard enough that he winces even at the start. The thumbs bite into his neck, their tiny claws push harshly enough that they threaten to break the skin. The sudden loss of air means little to him, expected as it was by the action he was undertaking. Still, the way his hardened throat squishes into whatever is behind it is unexpected. He’s a sheltered child and the lack of air was the only part he’d thought to prepare himself for. Nevertheless, he continues to try to deny himself breath.
	The pumping of veins against his hands grows in intensity, as if trying to push the offending hands away. Pain lights up around his fingers, the burning pull of his fur being ripped out under his own rough, untested grasp. Still he holds on, letting out only a quiet gasp at the damage. His grip is more than tight enough that his throat fails to move completely, trying to rise and fall but failing to say anything at all. His eyes never waiver in watching Aaron’s smile grow wider, either. 
	The flutter in Luis’s heart is what keeps him going. An ephemeral wave of lightheadedness as Aaron’s nose and whiskers twitch around. Those eyes never pull away from Luis’s throat, growing still in their excitement instead of hunting around for something worth seeing. The growing pounding of blood in Luis’s ears is matched by an increase in the intensity of Aaron’s breath. And even when his vision starts to blacken and his hands start to weaken, he wills himself to continue on. 
	“You can stop now,” says the tiger, stepping forward. He raises his hands in a manner almost placative to the stoat.
	Luis pushes in deeper, ignoring a growing tiredness in his legs. Aaron stands still, there for him and him alone. The fluffy brown fur starts waving in a gentle breeze that never quite reaches the coati. His glasses shimmer with an almost sacred light, magnifying the intense interest of the creature behind them. Hr feels tiny before him, caught in a look that could bore it’s way through the world. 
	“What are you doing?!” comes a voice behind where the shark was standing. Mrs. Dietrich was yelling from some far off place, a reality irrelevant to the current moment. The ermine’s intense gaze breaking takes Luis’s heart out with it, dragging them all back down to Earth. The coati’s hands slam back down to his sides as he turns his head. 
	And the action hurts. An attempt to speak sees his voice come out hoarse and incomplete, throat failing to move how he needs it to. The sound comes out almost haunted, strained in struggle to articulate the words he wants to say to the old anteater. His little hands reach out, but a wretched cough disrupts anything that might have come of it. What comes out matches the coppery taste in his mouth now, pavement a murky brown where his spittle had landed. Still, he makes a slow step toward the teacher, the world still spinning as oxygen comes back to him in small amounts. 
	“We were just playing!” says the ermine, voice suddenly worried. He grabs Luis by the shoulder, trying to lift the coati and help him towards the teacher. In a voice that makes Luis want to cry, he says, “He said he was possessed and we need to exorcist him!”
	And Luis smiles happily in spite of the pain. Aaron was so smart. Now they wouldn’t get in trouble. He coughs again, a little blood from his damaged larynx dribbling down onto his chin.