Introduction: the shy new fourteen-year-old in Hal's Big Buddy group

texture · 3 Nov YDAU

• When: 3 Nov YDAU, ~1640h, E.T.A. boys' locker room after P.M. challenges
• What: Arslanian is introduced as new this year, ethnically vague, fourteen, all feet and teeth, and terribly shy — a lurking presence just outside the steamy locker-room doorway, poking his head in and withdrawing while the upperclassmen slump around anatomizing fatigue. The narration places him in Hal Incandenza's Big Buddy group for Y.D.A.U. (with Peter Beak and Kent Blott, plus Evan Ingersoll off the books). Later in the scene his "shoes and incisors appear briefly in the doorway's steam, then withdraw."