This was not the first time Peter had wondered at Daniel's appearance. He wondered all the time whether this young man was really all right. He never seemed to have proper clothing for the cold weather, and he was almost unnaturally thin. Sometimes, Peter thought he might even be smelling alcohol on the boy's breath as early as eight o'clock in the morning. Something was probably not really right with him, but Peter had never had the gumption to discuss his concerns. It was the boy's problem, not his. Besides, even though Daniel hardly resembled an adult (aside from his height), he technically was one and was old enough to make his own decisions about how to live his life. But that didn't mean Peter couldn't worry and secretly say a prayer for him once in a while.

Peter Sutton was professor of basic art at Delta College of Fine Arts. His job was one of the least prestigious because it focused on giving a little bit of knowledge in a lot of different areas. Many of the other faculty members sort of assumed that, because Peter's courses didn't get too in depth in any subject matter, he wasn't too deep himself. However, Peter saw a reverse depth in what he taught. Anyone could study one subject intensely and come out knowing a lot about it, but what he did—brushing up against an endless variety of topics and movements and ideas—required him to be a consistent self-learner. Students were always coming in with questions he'd never thought of and concepts he had yet to hear about. He found himself spending more time studying outside of his classes than he spent teaching them. But this didn't upset him any. Peter loved to learn. Those other professors had the advantage of being able to respond to a question to which they knew no answer by saying something like, I don't have to know that. I don't teach it. Go ask so-and-so. He didn't have that luxury. He was sort of supposed to know everything.

Peter had been teaching university-level courses for nearly twenty years. He'd gotten a late start with it and was now well into his sixties, and the mere fact that he was even a teacher had been a fluke in the first place. Life hadn't been too kind to Peter Sutton in the beginning. He knew what it was like to struggle to make ends meet, had watched his own mother, a widowed black woman whose journey had been far more an uphill battle than his own, give her everything to raise him. He knew all too well the pain of a heartache and the loneliness of being without a friend in the world, once his mother died. He'd used to resent it all (life, his in particular) but he'd come to terms not with the idea that life could be beautiful, or that there was always hope, or that each day was worth living—no, those things he still didn't quite believe and probably never would; what he'd come to terms with was the idea that neither he nor anyone else was ever going to understand life, and it was a waste of time to try figuring it out. And so this was how he formulated his concept of reality. He woke up in the mornings, did what was needed during the day, and went to bed at night. He didn't specifically try to do or gain anything. He just lived. And the only reason he really didn't mind doing it was because he sort of liked his job.

Most days of teaching went well. Most students accepted his lessons in order to pass and move on, and he kept on doing what he'd always done. In the process, he kept himself busy by trying to stay updated with the material he taught.

In general, people didn't mind Professor Sutton's classes. The students, who were typically young men and women in their late teens or early twenties, found him a genial "old guy" who never seemed to experience bad moods. His classes were mellow and comfortable. Students never had to worry about being asked to answer a question they weren't prepared to answer or getting reprimanded for missing a class or arriving late. His lectures were not the most captivating, but they were easy to follow, and his tests were always right off the notes. Professor Sutton always liked their visuals and projects; he had a remarkable ability to find value in anyone and any work—a quality most of his students lacked themselves.

The spring semester had begun a few weeks ago, and a relatively new score of students crowded his classroom. Nearly everyone had to take Foundations of Art before proceeding on to higher coursework. Most students came and went and he never saw them afterward; they went on to find professors in the fields about which they were passionate and clung to them. Nobody clung to a basic art professor. No one remembered him or returned to ask for recommendations. In all his years at Delta College, Peter had been asked once to write a letter of reference, and it had been for a student who'd dropped out halfway through his freshman year to work in a copy shop. Now, Peter couldn't even recall his name. It didn't matter to him too much. He kind of appreciated the fact that he wasn't always writing letters for students he didn't know well enough to praise anyhow.

This new group of students in his eight-thirty AM class was like every other he'd seen. A mix of the quiet people, the people who dressed like the art they thought they were going to create, and the music and writing students, who usually seemed confused or annoyed about being in an art course. He could usually pick out a student's major or field of interest by looking atthem. He could spot the ones who'd probably never show up to class and the ones who'd come early every day with questions they didn't really care about hearing answers to. He could tell which ones he'd like and which would just float out of his memory as soon as class ended; he wouldn't be able to recollect their faces if their names were mentioned. It wasn't that Peter disliked students. He couldn't think of any kid he'd ever particularly disliked—there were just some who stood out to him more than others. He'd never been able to pinpoint why certain students made more of an impression on him than others did—he'd never been able to single out a particular characteristic all of his favorites shared. In fact, for some of them, he couldn't figure out any specific reason at all for liking them, and this Daniel was one of those.

Dan wasn't a talker. He wasn't one to participate in discussions or ask questions during a lecture. He entered class quietly and exited it the same way, never bothering anyone and always appearing to be thinking about other things. His mind seemed constantly preoccupied, and yet the kid probably had the highest scores in the course so far. He was actually a senior—that much Peter knew—but somehow he'd gone through the system without taking Foundations of Art. A counselor somewhere along the line had probably screwed him up but recently realized it and forced him into Peter's class, which he'd have to pass to graduate. Counselors were pretty close to worthless; they never saw problems unless they were alerted by the people caught up in them, so it was likely that Dan had gotten so far because he never notified a counselor that he'd missed a class, and no counselor had been adept enough to catch it until it had come time to check his graduation requirements. That was how counselors were—commendable for little more than being invisible at all the wrong times. Peter had had enough run-ins with counselors who hardly knew his students yet found it convenient on occasion to ruin their lives. So this was why Dan had been placed in his class, and though the young man spoke little, he had already made a striking impression on Peter Sutton.

There was some quality about Daniel that resembled the stoicism of a Victorian portrait and yet, at the same time, hinted at a fuming passion hidden beneath his distant exterior. Sometimes, Peter fancied the boy sustained himself entirely on whatever this inner fuel was—he certainly looked as if he consumed only air.

The boy appeared friendless, although perhaps that was because he was older than most of the others and unconcerned with making acquaintances. Peter noticed he didn't speak with anyone unless he was accosted, and then his responses were, though polite, brusque and to the point. His replies never evoked more words. He was uninterested in actually communicating with anyone. This in itself wasn't so startling. A lot of artistic people with whom Peter had worked over the years had been oddly alone and content to be so. They purposely isolated themselves from others, or they convinced themselves they didn't fit into the world and drew from their subsequent seclusion to create their pieces. Dan didn't appear to fit into the world around him, either. He, too, was isolated. But the difference between him and them was that he wasn't even aware that he was alone. He truly did give off the impression that he was from some other place, that he was too close to inner perfection to be here, and it was far from self-imposed—it was absolute, and there'd be nothing he could do about it. His segregation was compelled by the makeup of the universe itself. Dan had been singled out for perfection by some greater fate, and the boy was less aware of it than all the average human beings around him.

Still, for the air of flawlessness he gave off, Daniel was physically the most flawed person Peter had worked with. The boy needed warmer, newer clothes, better food, and—likely—some sort of medication for the cough that clung to him like a batch of cobwebs.

But who was Peter Sutton to bring up such things? Who was he to impose? The young man was old enough to fend for himself, whether he was faultless or not.