This kid was a mess.

He looked like he had finished (or possibly didn't finish) a court-ordered rehab program. He must have just gotten out of a bathtub, thrown on some clothes, and walked over here. A walking disaster. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair still wet and dripping down the back of the seat, his beat-up vest, his face unshaved.

He couldn't see it in a mirror, the scar that is. The scar on the back of his neck. Could it have been a knife fight, a stabbing, an accident? I glance over at his notebook. His writing is worse than mine. I can only make out the capitalized letters; the words run together; his 't's aren't crossed; whole lines are scribbled out. The bic pen he was using is in rough shape, too. Perhaps that pen, white on the outside -- filled with black ink on the inside -- that pen, a slave to a master it can't comprehend -- scrawling out words nobody can read -- that pen, chewed and mutilated and tormented is what holds him together.

So he puts the cap of that pen back into his mouth. He turns it around and mashes his teeth on it. He throws it to the back of his mouth, the big, leaf-eating teeth. He pulls it out and rests it on his notebook. The spit drips onto the page, blurring the already incoherent writing.