Then the boy’s observations begin: he looks under the direct left and front right and back desk, contorting himself in his chair to hunt all round the floor beneath him for the tick.

Girl to his front right, wearing a skirt: “Perv! Stop lookin round!”

The boy doesn’t care about the girl’s legs: he wants to see the tick. “Leave me be! I’m looking for something.”

“Yeah, right! I’ll tell!”

“No I saw a tick and flicked it and now-” The boy misses the tick and wants to see it again.

In his years he’s met the tick from time to time; reading an old book he’s even encountered it every few pages. It is as if the tick is accompanying him, appearing in the old and used things the boy happens upon.

The search is successful after all: now the boy’s eyes are fixed on the tick. The tick scurries around wildly with apparent randomness, sometimes traveling far beyond the desk and sometimes right near the boy’s shoe. To the boy nothing exists but the tick: nothing is of importance but the red dot fluctuating around the floor like a bit of pollen in oil.

And now the tick adventures further along the floor of what is an ocean to it and out of the boy’s sight, leaving him alone once more.