Boy didn't talk much, and I didn't even know his name. Everybody just called him Whistle. I don't know why.

I volunteered in the community center, and I knew that this would be an experience like nothing else. I wasn't real keen on it either, but my sister talked me into it. "They got a violin teacher, a guitar teacher, even a drum teacher and a voice teacher... but no dance teacher. Those kids want to dance," she told me, and I shrugged my shoulders, and I frowned, and I said okay. Wasn't like I had anything else to do. The injury to my ankle sidelined my dreams.

Whistle was one of the little ones. He was in seventh grade but when I first saw him I assumed he was about nine. He was beat up. Could have been at school, could have been at home... could have been both. He didn't say. He just slumped his shoulders and darted his eyes, carrying himself with all the instincts you recognize in a creature who knows he's prey.

I don't know if I immediately liked him, if or I learned to like him, but we developed a friendship somehow. When I started the dance lessons, all the kids told me they wanted to do the hip-hop dance, they wanted to spin on their heads, they wanted to pop and lock, all that "cool stuff". Whistle just wanted to dance.

I could see it in those wide brown eyes of his. He wanted to escape. Maybe that's why we became friends.

My sister decorated the makeshift dance studio. The center couldn't afford mirrors, so it was just a room with wood floors with the chairs cleared out. I think it was once an auditorium for a church. My sister put pictures all over the walls, all kinds of things. Some were photos, some were paintings. She just wanted it artsy, I guess.

Whistle had a black eye that day. It wasn't unusual, but he slumped more that day, too, and his eyes were quicker, like he was certain a lion was crouching in the distance, and he'd turn his head, and he'd frown. He was distracted, and he was out of step.

After the group lesson, and the kids were filed out, I waved Whistle over.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

He shrugged.

"You didn't work hard today, Whistle. Usually you do. You seem distracted."

He shrugged again, staring at the doorway, a cornered mouse. I was struck again by just how little he looked, how vulnerable. His head was shaved, making his body look even bonier, even smaller.

"Whistle, what kind of dance do you like best?" I asked on a whim.

He stared at me. Then, with childish eloquence, he said, "I like wheat fields."

"Wheat fields." What was I supposed to say?

"Yeah," he said. He looked at the door again, but he didn't look as desperate to escape this time. "My mom told me 'bout 'em."

I remembered he'd probably never been outside the city before, never seen a wheat field except in pictures.

"What do you like about them?"

"Their dance," he said, and shrugged again.

"Why... don't you show me?" I asked, hesitant.

I could see it in his eyes again, he wanted to escape. I couldn't have asked a better question.

"Yeah," he said, "okay."

We didn't put music on. I don't know if there was any music that would have fit the dance, except for the music of the wind against wheat, rustling, breathing, sighing. The boy danced, he danced for his escape, and I could see it. I could see the wheat in the fields reaching toward the sky, the heads bending the weight of the grain, like bowing to the sky. I could even see the sky, clear blue, dappled with clouds like pebbles.

Whistle finished dancing. And he smiled.