- Hally, a seventeen-year-old white boy, comes into the tea room from school and greets Willie and Sam.
- Sam's teaching Willie some dance moves and Hally cheers him on.
- Hally asks them how they're feeling about the big dance contest. He says they look like they're ready.
- Sam tells Hally that his mom isn't in the tea room; she got a phone call from the hospital (his dad's in the hospital) and left. Hally wants to know if that means his dad's leaving the hospital.
- Hally gets ready to have some lunch the guys have prepared for him. He looks over some comic books that a neighbor left on the table for his father and declares them "mental pollution."
- Well, excu-u-u-se me.
- Hally's really worried about what his mom's doing at the hospital on a non-visiting day and tries desperately to interrogate Sam, but he can't get any information out of him; Sam doesn't know anything about it.
- Hally finally convinces himself that his dad must have taken a bad turn and that his mother's just gone to help him out. He really doesn't want the guy coming home.