Lena's Favorite Part Of Kindergarten Is The End

Hugh is a giant towering over toggle coats. He is as tall as the mothers, who arrive in dribbles, flushed and hair blown wild as if they have run all the way. Hugh helps Lena gather her projects, rolls up her finger paintings, and carefully stacks the macaroni sculptures on top of the delicate, official envelope, somehow making it all fit into her monnogrammed canvas book bag. He refuses to carry her spiderman lunchbox, even though it was once his, a boy's lunchbox, a girl in her class has told her, as if this involves some sort of betrayal. Lena can't always remember which things belong to boys and which to girls; the distinctions are recent and make little sense to her.
-Lisa Carey, Every Visible Thing