The trouble at my new school began the very first day, during the very first recess. It’s bad enough starting a new school when everybody else acts like they’ve known each other since diapers. And it’s bad enough when your new teacher makes everyone read a passage aloud from a story and then fusses over your “darling Southern accent.” Ms. Miller thought she was payin’ me a compliment, but no boy, sixth-grade or otherwise, wants to be put in the same sentence as “darling.”

But worse is recess, when you’ve got nowhere to go. It’s time-tickin’ torture. Ms. Miller had instructed us to “stay within the confines of the blacktop area for today.” I had no interest in making a further fool of myself by handling a ball, so I went to go sit in the shade of a tree off the edge of the blacktop. And I was just fixin’ to sit down when I noticed a stream of miniature black ants windin’ around the tree’s trunk. I stayed standing, studying them. They were nothing like the ants back home—those ants could haul a house away. These were small as fleas, scurryin’ up and down in a thin, winding line.

“Hey!” a kid on the playground called. “We use bathrooms in these here parts!”

The voice seemed off in the distance, barely reaching my mind ’cause I was concentrating on ants.

“Hey!” he called again. “Quit whizzin’ on the tree!”

What he was sayin’—and that his fake Southern accent was aimed right at me—hit like a bolt of lightning. I whipped around quick. I didn’t know him, but he was standin’ near the edge of the playground with a boy I recognized from my class.

“I was just lookin’ at ants!” I hollered, but it was too late. They ran off, hee-hawin’ like donkeys.

Back in class, Hee-Haw #2 spread it around to the guys on his side of the room. I could see them grinnin’ and whisperin’, spinnin’ lies into truth. It was the first day of school and already the beginning, middle, and end of any hope I had for making new friends.

After that I took to hiding out. It was a whole lot safer than opening myself up to the hazards of a new school full of old friends. If they could make such a fuss over me watching ants, I didn’t want to find out what they’d do if they knew where I went after school.