''Students, I'd like you all to welcome our new student, Preston. Be very nice to him, and give him a big Willowbrook Elephant welcome,'' Mrs. Smith said to the class before pointing to his to the desk.

Being rather shy, Preston stayed pretty quiet on his first day. While watching the other kids, he noticed something strange; one boy never played with the others.

There was something different about that kid. He talked, dressed, and acted differently from the others. The other kids noticed, too. When the boys and girls were playing knights and princesses at recess, Dion asked to join, and one kid yelled, ''You

can be my servant!"

The other kids nodded their

heads in agreement.

This made Dion very, very mad!

So when the kids playing knights galloped past, he threw mud.

When a girl pretending to be a princess asked him to fetch her water, he pulled her pigtails.

This time the teacher saw and sent Dion to the time out chair saying, ''Dion, you can't behave like this everyday. Why can't you just play nicely like everyone else?''

Dion didn't reply, just stomped over to the all too familiar time out chair.

Preston was shocked; this had happened before? Why was Dion so mean?

That night when Preston's mom asked him how school was, he told her about Dion. "It sounds to me like he needs a good friend like you. Now it's late; goodnight, Son."

"Goodnight, Mom."

So the next day during recess, Preston walked up to Dion who was sitting alone and said, ''Do you want to play Kings with me?''

Dion looked both ways to make sure he wasn't talking to someone else and then jumped up to gallop away to the pretend castle.