[4-minute read]
Some people don’t follow directions very well. He wanted to do it right, he really did, he always wanted to do the right thing but he had gotten a little confused that day.
He’d always thought there was only one place for all that nutty energy, and that was Games With the Boys, so many games, though not that many boys. It was always the same crew, with the odd newbie thrown in who would sometimes come back for more but most often wouldn’t. Not everybody wanted to play that hard or that long, but there you go. One schoolboy morning, he learned a new thing.
He turned his head, more slowly than he would have to find the outfield fence while racing back for a deep flyball, less furiously than when detecting tacklers with a brown ball under his arm. He was in the right-hand row, four desks from the front. She just walked into room 10, eyes down and too many books held against a softening chest. She bustled right by.
Surely he wasn’t too obvious. His hair was a little longer now. He didn’t stand out so much, Sunday school cuts and careful combing having been refused. The loud girl had stopped spitting his name in scorn. This was pleasant, but he still never talked to any of them. Why bother? Mr. P. always took their side, wasn’t fair, but it didn’t do any good, and that guy had some scary vocabulary and a wooden pointer that he didn’t just point with. Anyway. Game Boy kept his head down, too, until the girl with the long blonde hair was two desks past him.