This is one of the mysteries about the running boy that Roy wants to find out. While all the other kids are getting on the bus and going to school, the running boy is running across yards dressed in dirty shorts and wearing no shoes. Roy probes Garrett about what other schools are in the area. Roy doesn't think the boy looks old enough to go to high school, and besides, the high school is...
This is one of the mysteries about the running boy that Roy wants to find out. While all the other kids are getting on the bus and going to school, the running boy is running across yards dressed in dirty shorts and wearing no shoes. Roy probes Garrett about what other schools are in the area. Roy doesn't think the boy looks old enough to go to high school, and besides, the high school is already in session when the middle schoolers are on the bus. There is a private Catholic school in the area, but the running boy definitely isn't wearing the required uniform of a parochial school.
When Beatrice enlists Roy's help in getting medical supplies for Mullet Fingers, Roy learns that he doesn't go to school at all. His mother, Lonna, had sent him away to boarding school after he had brought a baby raccoon into their home that had relieved itself in Leon Leep's slipper. Mullet Fingers had run away from all the boarding schools his mother had enrolled him in, and after his last escape, Lonna hadn't bothered to try to find him.
When Miss Hennepin summons Roy to her office after the emergency room incident, she asks Roy where the boy who used his name goes to school. Roy says he travels a lot, and Miss Hennepin asks, "Then he's home-schooled?" Roy sort of agrees to that. However, that's not the case. Mullet Fingers feels he has no need to go to school, but that he may go back sometime in the future. He feels his survival skills are sufficient: "For now I'm 'bout as smart as I need to be."
Mullet Fingers does not attend school. For a boy his age, that is against the law; it's called truancy.
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