Kai on the News

The number 9 bus was almost empty at ten thirty on Tuesday night. A woman asleep against the window. Two teenagers sharing one pair of earphones. The driver, a big man with a grey beard, had a small radio on the dashboard, playing the late news quietly.

Kai sat near the front, as he always did, because from there he could hear the radio.

This was his practice. Frank had told him in March, in Room 4: "Sasha learned with the radio in his truck. You don't have a truck. You have a bus. Sit near the driver." So for five months, Kai had sat near the driver, every night, on the way home from the car wash or from class, and listened to the news on the driver's radio, understanding, in March, almost nothing; in May, a few words; in July, whole sentences, sometimes.

Tonight he was thinking about the ceremony. Tomorrow at ten, Sasha would become a Canadian citizen, and Kai would be in row H, as a guest, in a white shirt he had bought on Saturday and ironed four times. He was so busy thinking about the shirt that he almost missed the beginning of the news item.

Almost.