Beginning

They found it, separately. Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in small groups, but not together at once. They had shied away from each other, accepted without argument that certain hallways remain locked to them. What did they want to see each other for, anyway? They didn’t. They didn’t, and they wouldn’t.
 
And yet something had brought them all here. 
 
They lurked, uncertain, in the shadowy corners of the hall that surrounded an interior courtyard. No one spoke. No one moved.
 
At last a teenage boy appeared. 
 
He let himself into the inner courtyard. He spread a white sheet out onto the concrete ground. On it, with meticulous care, he set red plastic drinking straws—one after another, never stopping, never hesitating. He paid no attention to the faces peering at him through the windows.

Soon the straws began to form an intricate pattern. Those hiding in the brick building did not want to look at it. When they did, they pretended not to understand. Was it a formula? they asked. The kind you needed to be a math genius to understand, perhaps? They were not math geniuses, so they would never understand it. 

Satisfied, they slid away from the windows. All except for the one little girl who someone had forgotten was there. 
 
A group of pirate boys living in the courtyard’s largest tree also watched from high in the branches. They knew what the red straws on the white sheet meant. They knew it was a key. A key to a map that would lead everyone in the building to the one place no one wanted to go. 
 
No one, that is, but them.