That year, when Cuéllar enrolled in the Champagnat Academy. Brother Leoncio, is it true a new boy’s coming? into 3A, Brother? Yes, with his fist Brother Leoncio pushed back the forelock hanging in his face, now let’s have some quiet. He appeared one morning at inspection time, holding his father’s hand, and Brother Leoncio put him at the head of the line because he was even shorter than Rojas, and in class Brother Leoncio sat him in the back with us, at that vacant desk, young man. What’s your name? Cuéllar, and yours? Choto, and yours? Chingolo, and yours? Manny, and yours? Lalo. From Miraflores? Yes, since last month, before that I was living on San Antonio and now on Mariscal Castilla, near the Colina movie theater. He was a grade grubber (but no apple polisher): the first week he came out fifth and afterwards always first until the accident, then he started goofing off and getting bad grades. The fourteen Incas, Cuéllar, Brother Leoncio would say, and he would recite them without taking a breath, the Ten Commandments, the three stanzas of the Marist Hymn, the poem “My Flag”
