The boy steps off the bus at the beach, slow and jerky. His limbs don’t seem to be properly attached. There is a crescent of black hairs across his upper lip. A woman with a name tag is waiting below. She calls him “Brent” or “Brentie”.

The boy knows his name but he has no language to express what it is like to see the sparkling ocean spread in front of him like a giant glittering pancake, the children playing on the sand, the swimmers diving under the waves and the sailing boats darting about the water like butterflies. Bereft of words, he lifts his face to the sky and cries out in guttural ecstasy.

He feels the sun on his arms. He feels the breeze on his face. He half-runs, half staggers towards the barbeque shelter where the others are. He knows he is a boy. But he feels neither boy nor girl. He feels neither tall nor short, not fat nor thin, neither dark- nor light-skinned, not rich nor poor. He just is.

When we wake, we tell ourselves about yesterday and make plans for today and tomorrow, the words streaming through our minds. When the boy wakes, there are no words or sentences about yesterday, today or tomorrow. His day starts in the light and ends in the dark. It starts with the chill on his body when he gets out of bed. He doesn’t own the bed. It is just a bed. But it is where he lies. The boy knows it is wrong to lie in a different bed. He can feel the wrongness.

The boy lives at a care home. The care home has clean white walls on the outside, messy rooms on the inside, a curved driveway out the front and a big garden out the back with wooden benches and surrounded with a wooden fence. The boy has an alcoholic mother who he sees at McDonald’s on a special day. His sister lives with a foster family and also comes on the special day. His sister talks all the time. The boy’s arms and legs jerk about while he tries to listen. Their mother gets them a Happy Meal each. He likes fries the best. Sometimes the mother lets the boy eat the fries off her plate, even though her arms are like sticks and her breastbone sticks out.

He often trips and falls. He can’t ride a bike. The boy doesn’t ever think about driving a car or getting a job. But he does want a girlfriend. His heart is feels tight when he sees another boy and girl together. He strokes the arm of the girl Lucy in the care home. He tries to kiss her and she yells out and he is sent to his room. He looks in the mirror and his head is small and his nose is short and turned up and his eyes are like the brown buttons on Mrs Ladley’s uniform. But he wants a girlfriend, more than ever. He can’t stop himself. They ask the doctor if they can give him Lucrin. The doctor says no.

He can’t kick or catch a ball. Other boys and girls don’t like playing with him. They say he is too loud and rough, that he doesn’t obey the rules. If music plays, he covers his ears and runs away screaming.

But he likes mixing colours. He likes painting on the back of cereal boxes. They call it Naïve art. One of his pieces won a prize. The judge says Brent Dulik shows great promise as an artist. The winning piece shows a boy getting off a bus alongside a park, with children playing on the nearby beach, people diving under waves and sailing boats darting about the water like butterflies.