The ugly truth was that the numbers on the chalkboardhaving failed to engage his imaginationwere as good as invisible to him. And so he read Spiderman, which had color and texture, danger, stakesuntil the sun passed behind a cloud and directed his attention through the louvered windows: where he saw a flock of seagulls erupt from the playground, beyond which and across the street lay the YMCA, and realized, or perhaps only imagined, that they had scattered before a stampeding triceratops, which was itself being pursued by a Tyrannosaurs rex, which he watched until the creature had disappeared around the edge of the building.