The boy they called Tuna did not know what the smell was that followed Principal Worthing into the parlor.  Had Tuna been older and wiser, like Principal Worthing, like his father, even like his deceased mother, he would know what that smell was: the stale scent of sex.  However, Tuna was only ten.  And a slow ten at that.  A poor, dumb, quiet ten.
    “Boy, look at me when I talk to you,” said Principal Worthing.  He was carrying a pair of Busch Lites wedged between the bloated fingers of his left hand and a towel over his shoulder.  Tuna slowly looked up from his model, his tongue still protruding from thin lips in concentration.  “Your father and I will be another half hour,” said Worthing.  There was a pause in which Tuna did not respond.  “I recommend you answer me next time, sonny.”  Principal Worthing cracked open one of the beers and lumbered towards the back of the small house, blotting at the sweat that was sucked from his pores by the late August humidity.  He flicked on an old radio as he passed it, turning up the volume and tuning until there was no static.
    Tongue still wedged between his teeth, Tuna continued working on his model, a 1:50 scale die-cast train. This locomotive he was working on was a gift from his uncle after his mother’s death.  Tuna hadn’t opened its box all summer, but now, on the last day before school, he had run out of all other models.  Tuna really liked working on country manors, with pastel shaded siding and roofs that peeled back to reveal perfect little worlds of tedious paint and proportion.  But the train would do.
    Shortly, Tuna dabbed the last delicate stroke of paint onto the model.  He slid off his stool and made his way to his room, where his models stood in meticulous alignment –    hundreds of houses, trees, cars.  As he passed the door to his father's den, Tuna heard a sound over the static folk song on the radio.  A persistent creaking, a dull thudding.  The sticky sound of sweaty skin suctioned to his father's leather couch.  Holding his train, Tuna stood there for a moment, curious to what Principal Worthing and his father could be doing.
    Every week that summer, a man named Principal Worthing had come over to discuss with Tuna's father the possibility of Tuna returning to Burnsides Elementary in the fast approaching school year.  His mother had homeschooled him when he lived in Minnesota, but his father had no time to tutor the boy.  The extra mouth to feed had already increased the hours he worked in the plant.  When Tuna moved to live with his father the past spring to the stagnant town of Sumac, Arkansas, he had been allowed to attend school for the last month.  However, budget cuts and Tuna's performance in end of the year exams had prompted Principal Worthing's visits.
The sounds subsided and Tuna considered opening the door to show his father his train.  He paused as he heard the deep gruffness of Principal Worthing's voice.
“The boy can attend.”
“Thank you,” his father responded.  “It is appreciated.”
“Don't thank me just yet.  There's no room in our fourth grade class and our fifth grade teacher is a first year.  I doubt she'll be able to handle a boy as slow as yours and I wouldn't expect her to.  So he'll be with Mrs. Skelley’s sixth graders.”
    “He can't keep up with his peers, let alone sixth graders.  This is ridiculous.”
“Best I can do,” said Principal Worthing.  “Our deal was I would get him into the school.”
“He might as well not be in school if that’s – ”
Principal Worthing interrupted.  “Careful.  Take it or leave it.  I suggest you take it.  We wouldn't want all those sweaty gifts from this summer to be for naught, would we?”
“You're disgusting.”
“And you're a faggot.”
The door opened and Principal Worthing emerged, his large frame blocking the lazy sunlight that dusted the room.  “Your boy has been at the door.  You're lucky he's an idiot or I'd be worried he understood the nature of our agreement.  I trust I'll see him in school on Monday?”  Principal Worthing turned to look at Tuna's father, who was sitting on a worn leather couch rubbing the back of his neck.  “You hear me?  You people have trouble answering questions.  I trust I'll see him tomorrow.”
Worthing tucked his shirt in.  He walked to the fridge, grabbed the last remaining beers and left, letting the screen door groan and thwack behind him.  His father was silent for a moment and then shuffled over to the sink to wash his hands.
“Your schooling is really important,” said Tuna's father, turning to face his son.
Tuna stood in the doorway, still holding his train.  He nodded his head and looked at his father.
“I'm really trying to do the right thing.  I know I left you and your mom, but I thought it was right.  Things were hard.”  Tuna's father grabbed a carton of Lucky Strikes from a chipped jar.  He motioned for Tuna to come join him at the counter.  “I was different then.  I'm still different, but now I'm here for you.  I'm gonna make it up for you.”  He hoisted Tuna up to sit on the counter.  He peeled a banana and handed it to Tuna.  “You and me, kiddo.”  Tuna was silent, train in one hand and banana in the other.  “And that world of yours you are making.  You like this train?”
“A little bit,” said Tuna.
“Not as much as the dollhouses though?” asked his father.
    “Uh huh.  But they are not for dolls.  The houses are empty.”
“Right.”  His father pulled himself up onto the counter next to Tuna.  “Listen, son.  You have to do well in school.  Raise your hand, make some friends.  Okay?”  Tuna nodded.  “Can you do that for me?  And for mom?”
“I think so.  I want to,” said Tuna.
“You miss her.”
    Tuna nodded.
“So do I.  I didn’t think I could miss her anymore than the day I left.  But now that she’s gone…”  Tuna's father looked at the window and the mustard yellow light seeping through the spaces in the blinds.   He took a drag.  “Do you think she was happy?”
Tuna was quiet for a moment.  He looked at his father and followed his gaze to the window.  “She always smiled at me.”
“Did she ever cry?”
“Yes, but she smiled at me then too.”
The two sat there for a moment, Tuna with his train and his father with his cigarettes and regrets.  Before things got too silent, Tuna's father hopped off the counter and put out his cigarette.  “Lets prop open some windows and see if we can get some fresh air in here.”  Some might debate if fresh air even existed in Sumac, Arkansas.
The gust of dusty air from the open window did little but kick up the smell in the room that was temporarily masked by cigarette smoke – the one of sweat, the musky scent of sex.  That smell had been in Tuna's home every week that summer.  He had come to know this stench as Sunday smell.  The same way Wednesday smell was meatloaf.  The same way Christmas smell was peppermint.  The same way everyone at Burnsides Elementary School came to know Tuna not as a classmate, but as a smell.

Although Tuna had only been at school for a few weeks the year prior, he had an impressive, if not undesirable, rise to social visibility.  It started with an early summer sale on tunafish at the QuikMart.  Tuna's father did not have enough money to buy meal tickets for the school cafeteria.  So instead, he had purchased a large box of this affordable and versatile tunafish.
The problem was, Tuna, a poor, dumb, quiet boy who had just moved into town had nowhere near enough social status to carry as repugnant smelling a food as tunafish.  He was quickly hated for it, shunned to as far away a corner of the cafeteria as possible.
Those girls pegged as cheerleaders could bring in fat free artichoke dip and celery every day, despite its odor.  Soon-to-be-jocks were fine with their ranch and croutons and the obnoxious burps that followed.  The odors of these foods were nearly as foul as that of tuna, but these adolescent shits had the odorous personalities and thus the necessary social push to carry such foods.
Tuna did not. And thus he became Tunaboy, Tuna for short.  The name resurfaced when he returned to school, the day after Principal Worthing's last visit.  Summer was not time enough to forget such a clever nickname.  Tuna's return to school was harassed by insults from all directions.  Every student at Burnsides outranked Tuna.  Even the first graders could safely make fun of him.  Their attacks were actually the most vicious, as they displaced all the frustration of their being bullied by everyone older onto their only available source; Tuna and his reeking lunch.
From the moment Tuna walked into the lunch room, the initial reconnaissance was not good.  Silently, quickly, Tuna moved to an empty seat as far away as possible from faces he recognized.  He ducked behind his brown bag fortifications, but they would not hold.  His attackers still found him.  They were relentless and predictable.
“Tuna.”
Tuna reached into his bag.
“Hey Tunaboy.”
 Tuna pulled out a browned banana.
“Your mom's snatch smells like fish.”
Tuna always had trouble opening bananas.
“Idiot. Tuna has no mom,” retorted another boy.
    Tuna gave up on the banana and reached into his bag.  His original insulter reprocessed his first insult.
“Your dad's asshole smells like fish.”
Tuna pulled out his namesake sandwich.
“Aren't you gonna do anything, Tunaboy?”
Tuna peeled off the plastic wrap and took a bite.
“Of course he's not.  He’s a chicken.”
Another small bite.
“Guh huh.  Chicken –– of the sea!”
Tuna swallowed and wiped his mouth.  The assailants guffawed and complimented each other on their cruel creativity.

    Immediately after lunch, all the sixth grade boys (and Tuna) were herded into a classroom with Mrs. Skelley.  The girls went down the hall with Miss Grimler.  It was time for sexual education, a new class on the curriculum for sixth graders.  Although Mrs. Skelley would not come to Tuna's aid in the cafeteria, she did him a favor when she sat him in the back of the small classroom.  This way, Tuna was allowed to blend in.  His fishbrain could pay attention. Tuna just had a problem when paid attention to.
    “I know I'm the last person you boys want to be hearing this from,” Mrs. Skelley started.  “I'm old, I'm your teacher, I'm mean, and I'm a woman.  But the school board says I have to teach you about sex.  And if they say it, by Lord we are gonna to do it.  Sex, sex, sex.”  She rolled her eyes and shook her head.  “Get your giggles out, little boys.  There will be no laughter while we are having discussion.”
    The boys who were so brazen earlier in their insults and antics were now all silent, nervously shifting and readjusting in their seats.  Mrs. Skelley smirked at the suddenly tame boys in her class.  “Someone tell me what sex is."  Nearly every boy twelve years and older knows most of the graphic details, but none of these ones raised their hands.
    “Surely you haven't all gone shy on me, have you?” chided Mrs. Skelley.  “This is your big chance to find out some information!   Get the details!”  She turned to look at a boy in the front row.  “Chuck, what is sex?”
    Chuck quickly sat up, shifting his shorts and looking around for help.  “Well, whenever two people love each other very much…”  The rest of the boys in the class laughed.
    “Very funny.  We’ve all heard that.  True, love is a very important part.  But what is sex really about?  How does it work?  Don't make me get out diagrams.”
    Another boy, with inflated courage, raised his hand.  “Yes, Jacob?” asked Mrs. Skelley.
    “It involves the… uh…”  Jacob looked around the room for reinforcement.  “It involves the wiener.”
    “Rule number one.  Always refer to the genitalia by its proper name.  Penis and vagina, boys.  Those are the two body parts involved,” said Mrs. Skelley.  She wrote the two words on the board and continued over the squeak of chalk.  “Now, these body parts are all around us, but that doesn't mean we're supposed to talk about them.  Sex is very, very private, and before we talk about anything else you boys better remember that.  It happens behind closed doors and so it should only be talked about behind closed doors.”
    “The door is open,” said Chuck, pointing.  The class laughed.
    “I'm aware, wisecracker.  It will get too hot in here if I close it.”  Mrs. Skelley walked from behind her desk to stand in front of it.  She picked up her meter stick.  “Since sex is supposed to be private, this is why we have this class.  To educate you.  So you’re not guessing about it and gossiping in public or trying to learn everything from the movies.  The movies lie, boys.  There's no moody lighting or pleasured screaming or sweaty steam.  Sex is only exciting when there is love and romance.  Without it, and even sometimes with it, it is boring.”
    A mildly dorky boy everyone called Tomtom raised his hand.  Mrs. Skelley nodded at him.  “My older sister, she's in college, always brings boys home when she comes home for break and they never seem bored.  There's always creaking and yelling coming from her room.”  The class laughed at the expense of Tomtom's sister.
“Please keep specifics out of this boys.  Tomtom, your sister's been watching too many movies.  What she is doing is wrong.  It's not private and she's forgetting something else important.”  Underneath the words 'penis' and 'vagina,' Mrs. Skelley wrote the word marriage.  “Sex is best when it’s between two married people.”  She underlined the word.
    Tuna didn't feel the same nervous awkward air as his classmates.  Slowly he raised his small hand.
    Mrs. Skelley looked in the direction of the small boy.  She stared at him, waiting for him to speak.  There was a silence and the class murmured.  “Yes?” asked Mrs. Skelley.
    “Is Principal Worthing married?”  The other boys in the class smiled at each other and Mrs. Skelley's smirk disappeared.
    “That is inappropriate.  What does Principal Worthing have to do with… sex?”  
    “I think I've heard him have it.” Mrs. Skelley was the one squirming now.  Perhaps it was the thought of Principal Worthing's large body heaving, sweating, smelling.  The boys in the class erupted in laughter.  Not even Mrs. Skelley's cruelest look could stem their chortles. Lucky for Mrs. Skelley, the cracking of a meter stick against the chalkboard could.
    “Boy, this is totally unacceptable.  I'd have you sent to the principal's office but I don't want to embarrass the man.” Mrs. Skelley was uncomfortable.  “I promise you have not heard Principal Worthing have sex.  You know nothing about his wife or marriage.  You must stop these lies.”
    Tuna quietly responded, his thin arm still raised above his head.  “It wasn't with his wife.”
Mrs. Skelley lunged to the back of the classroom in two incredibly athletic thrusts.  She cracked the meter stick in two over Tuna's desk, barely missing the fingers of the hand that was not raised in the air.  “Are you stupid, Tun--?”  She caught herself before she finished, but the other boys in the class smiled to see her almost use their nickname.  She calmed her movements and straightened her dress, but her eyes remained lit.  “You should be ashamed.”  
    Mrs. Skelley glared over Tuna's desk.  “I didn't say it was with Mrs. Worthing,” said Tuna.  There was a split second pause before Mrs. Skelley's next rampage; a moment for her to catch her breath before breaking another meter stick.  Poor, dumb, quiet Tuna filled that silence.  “It was with my father,” said Tuna.  Mrs. Skelley's tantrum was overpowered by the explosion of incredulous laughter.  The sheer delight at the expense of Tuna's embarrassment rattled in the room.  Trying to overpower the laughter, Mrs. Skelley's rant turned from reprimanding to accusations to defense.  And underneath all the commotion, there sat Tuna, his hand still raised above his head.
    “That boy said sex happened between two people.  My dad and Principal Worthing are people.  And he said it involved a wiener.  Maybe my dad has a wiener.  And sometimes I can hear it just like when it’s with that sister.”  By coming to the right conclusion through these rudimentary strands of logic, a confused Tuna undid all the backbreaking work his father had to do to reserve his seat at Burnsides Elementary School.

    Tuna had to walk home.  He was thrown out of the school before bus pickup time and was told to not return.  It was a long walk to the small home he shared with his father; about five miles.  The bus passed Tuna about an hour into his walk.  About a half hour later, he stopped under the shade of a large oak tree to hide from the biting sun and dust.  He was only there a moment when the wannabe jock boys rolled up on bicycles.
    “Clever stunt there,” said one of them, a dark haired boy with a stained t-shirt, no helmet, and jeans cuffed on one leg.  Most of the boys were Tuna's new classmates, but also a few older boys.  Word was spreading of Tuna's classroom discussion.  The dark haired boy gestured towards a boy Tuna recognized from his class.  “My brother said it was almost cool, the way you took down Skelley.”  The boy kicked a dirt clod at Tuna.  “But I know better.  I know you’re just a poor, dumb, quiet shit.”
    Two of the boys grabbed Tuna and dragged him to his feet.  He was knocked back off them by a shove from the boy who first spoke.  Tuna rolled over and lay face down in the dirt.  The dark haired boy grabbed an overhanging branch and ripped it down.  From the corner of his eye, Tuna watched dead leaves float down and settle on and around him.  
“You seem to be missing some of the key details of sex.  Can't really blame you.  That Skelley doesn't know how to teach.”  The boy jammed the end of the stick into Tuna's rear.  “You see, you seem to forget, Tunaboy, that sex is for boys and girls.”  He thrust the stick again.  “Not like this.  Not boys and boys.  This is for fags and queers.”  Tuna started to get to his knees, but the branch knocked him flat.  “You need one dick and one pussy.”  The stick rammed again.  “And I've already got the dick,” said the boy, tapping the stick on the ground. “You wouldn't happen to have a pussy in there, would you?”  The dark haired boy kicked Tuna till he rolled over and prodded his crotch.
    Tuna was dragged to his feet.  Before Tuna's khaki shorts were pulled down, only two people had ever known about Tuna's condition.  The doctor had long ago forgotten and his mother took the secret to the grave without ever telling anybody, even her son.  His father had ditched by the time Tuna was born and had no idea.
Tuna khaki's were ripped to his ankles and white briefs were torn from his body.
    “Woah.”  Several of the boys craned their necks closer and some looked away.
    The brother of the dark haired boy pointed.  “What is that?  Is that a dick or a puss?”
    Another responded.  “It's gross.  That's what it is.”
    “You Tunaboy or Tunagirl?”
    “More like Tunathing!”  Some of the boys laughed, but most were too confused or disgusted.
    Tuna could be considered in the confused category.  He had no idea that what was between his legs was not normal.  Some of the parts were there.  Enough that the doctor who delivered Tuna didn't feel the need for surgery.  The problem was that there were parts from both the genitals that Mrs. Skelley had written on the board.

The bus did not stop by Tuna's little house the next day.  The school didn’t call and Tuna didn’t tell so Tuna’s father knew nothing of the incidents at school and left early in the morning for the plant.  For most of the morning, Tuna worked on finishing the last touches to his model town. Mindful that his thin elbows avoided toppling buildings, he carefully placed the last tracks of the train.  He stared at his world in wonder.  It was only when he saw a tree he must have knocked over that he remembered it was not a real town.  Colors aren’t that bright in the real world.  People aren’t that small.
Tuna went to take a pee.    For the first time in his ten years, he pondered what sat tucked in his white briefs.  Never before was Tuna confused about who he was.  He knew that his father was poor now, and his mother before that, he was constantly made aware that he was dumb, and he knew there were many times when he was too quiet.  He had accepted all that.  But not this.  Not these jigsaw puzzle privates.  
Quickly, he packed his bag with everything he needed and pulled out a ten-dollar bill from underneath his mattress.  He had taken it from his mother's drawer the night after she died.  It was in that drawer he found the old letters his dad had written his mother about why he had to leave.  Letters about God and the past and love and highways and about Tuna's father's only boyfriend.  Tuna didn't know anything about any of those things, but he knew his father did love his mother and that was enough.
His memories and backpack in tow, Tuna set out for the school.  The five miles were made longer by the soreness and bruises from his encounter the previous day, but he traveled them without thought and without incident.  By the time he had made it to Burnsides Elementary School, the sixth graders were already in lunch.  He walked right underneath the folded arms of Mrs. Skelley who was deep in pointless conversation with Miss Grimler.
No tuna for Tunaboy today.  Today is different.  Tuna has the money and he will buy a lunch.  A normal, moderately odorous lunch.  
“Does anyone have change for a ten?” he asks.  The girls in front of him ignore his request and the boys in front of them sneer.  Tuna reaches into his backpack and pulls out a brown paper bag.  His hand still inside it, he points it at the ceiling.  One shot rings out.  There's a silence as plaster flakes slowly descend from the ceiling.  Another shot rings out and the girls in front of him quickly back away.
Everyone slowly lowers their bodies to a crouch.  The plaster flakes settle on the head of a dark haired boy in a stained t-shirt and jeans.  Tuna still feels the soreness from the day before and he fires once.  The dark haired boy drops his tray, grunts, and slides to the ground.  The sight of his blood sickens him.  Had he already eaten his lunch on the tray beside him he would have lost it.  Instead, his lunch is garnished by his pooling blood, his tater tots floating as boats would.
“Leave.  Everyone, please,” says Tuna.  The room empties quickly, aside from Mrs. Skelley, the lunch lady at the check out, and the dark haired boy.  Tuna reaches into the back pocket of the dark haired boy on the floor and pulls out his wallet.  There's a five and a few singles.  Perfect.  Mrs. Skelley is slowly approaching Tuna, but she can do nothing. Tuna needs no help.  He isn't too poor to pay for his school lunch.  He isn't too dumb to make change.  He isn't too quiet to thank the lunch lady.  Tuna's mother always preached manners, manners, manners.

    The blood was mopped away and eventual layers of grime from sticky food spills and shoddy wax jobs masked its stain.  The plaster ceiling tile with the bullet hole was replaced by a new one, which eventually warped and browned to match the rest.  
But that smell – the one underneath the reek of lunch slop and cleaning agents – could not be cleansed from the cafeteria.  Always there was a trace of scent, barely more than a sniff, of the smell that would always be associated with death at Burnsides Elementary by those who witnessed the simple act of making change.  That smell.  That obnoxious stink of tuna.