After school on Wednesday, Andy and I are riding our sixth-grade cars downtown. My sixth-grade car is a Huffy, and his is a Schwinn.

“Wanna jump it?” Andy says, nodding toward a lump of dark brown dirt.

We’re riding along the stretch of pavement behind the supermarket. It’s somewhere between a driveway, an alley, and an actual road. It’s where the delivery trucks pull up, but there are none here now. The market sells potted plants, and it looks like maybe someone dumped some out or ran some over or something.

“OK,” I say. I start pumping harder and stand up in my seat to get more power. I sit down right before I hit the lump and lift up on the handlebars to help with the jump.

It doesn’t matter. The dirt isn’t hard enough, and my wheels just cut ruts in it as they roll over. I fishtail a little at the end, but I don’t go down.

“Lame,” says Andy.

“Lame,” I say, and we pedal on into the parking lot.

Andy dodges a car as it backs out of a parking space.

“Jerk!” he yells. Then he turns to me: “They didn’t even signal.”

You don’t have to signal when you back up. I mean, there is no backup signal on a car. “Jerk,” I say, anyway, because it’s not worth pointing that out.

I feel like a dork with this helmet on, and I bet Andy does, too. But we have to wear them here. (A) It’s the dumb law, and (B) there are too many people downtown we know, and they’d tell our folks. So it’s like we’re legally obligated to look like dorks. All we can do about it is call people jerks and attempt to jump over anything in our way.

We hop the curb onto the sidewalk and pedal on, looking for the next thing. Then we spend another half hour or so just tooling around downtown before we start hitting the same roads and alleys and sidewalks for the second and third time.

Behold downtown Tall Pines! There’s just not that much to it.

“Pharmacy?” I say.

“Yeah, OK,” says Andy.

We coast to a slow, thumping stop in the bike rack in front of the Tall Pines Family Pharmacy. Then we get off, take off our dorky helmets, and fasten our dorky bike locks.

“Your hair is deeply disturbing,” I say to Andy.

“You got a little helmet head going on yourself,” he says.

I smooth mine down, and he pushes his up into a faux hawk.

“Are you going in like that?” I say as we push through the door.

“Why not?” he says, but when I look back I see him smashing it back down onto his head.

We walk over to the magazine rack to check out the comic books and stuff. I realize I’m a little nervous, and it’s not because this month’s comics are in. I still haven’t really told Andy about, you know, everything. It’s something I have to do. He covered for me, and, I mean, I think he sort of knows anyway. Not telling him would make me a jerk, a real one, so I’ve got to bite the bullet and do it. If I don’t do it soon, he’ll go ahead and ask. And just him having to ask will make me at least half a jerk.

He holds up Maxim magazine so I can see the woman on the cover.

“So…” he says. “You heard anything about Campbeltown?”

That’s who we’re playing next. Campbeltown is a section of Tall Pines, and definitely not the main section, either. They have their own little school and their own team, though. You’d think they wouldn’t be that good, because there aren’t as many kids. The ones they have are big, though, like big farm kids.

“I don’t know,” I say. “They kind of took it to us last year.”

“Yeah, but J.P. wasn’t pitching,” says Andy.

“Yep, and I don’t know if those two really big kids are still on the team.”

“At least one of them must be too old by now,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, “the bigger one.”

“Can’t argue with that logic,” he says.

“Hopefully they’re both gone.”

“Yep. Why weren’t you at the game Saturday?” he says.

I carefully put back the magazine I’m holding. I don’t say anything right away, and neither does he.

“Because I’m a jerk.”

“True,” he says. “Still doesn’t explain it.”

“Well,” I say. “You remember the week before?”

“Yep,” he says.

We aren’t looking at each other. We just keep picking up magazines and comic books and putting them back.

“When I got hit in the head?”

“Not like it’s a vital organ for you, but yeah.”

“And then I got drilled by jerk-butt?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I had enough of getting beat up with the stupid ball.”

“I played four innings,” he says. “No one hit me.”

“Yeah, well, thing is,” I say.

“Yeah, what’s the thing?” he says.

“I was scared. Like seriously scared. Like I’ve been having nightmares.”

And now I’ve said it and I’m embarrassed and relieved and worried about what he’s going to say and whether he’s going to tell anyone. He doesn’t say anything right away, which doesn’t help. He picks up another magazine and flips it open. He looks at one picture, then closes it and puts it back.

“Everyone’s a little scared of the ball sometimes,” he says. This time, he looks over.

I look over, too. “Yeah, but I was, like, a lot afraid of the ball, all the time.”

He looks back at the magazines and raises his hand to the rack. But then he reconsiders and drops it.

“Well, get over it,” he says, at last.

I just look at him.

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” I say.

“Don’t give me that,” he says, and now Andy is looking me right in the eyes, daring me to disagree.

“What?” I say. “It’s true.”

“You weren’t trying to get over it on Saturday,” he says.

I start to say something, but I stop. He’s right. He’s just standing there, staring at me.

“I was trying to get away from it,” I say.

“Exactly,” he says. That’s check and mate, but Andy doesn’t even want to win this one. “Just … I don’t know…” he says. “GET OVER IT.”

The cashier cranes his neck to look over at us.

I want to say something. I want to say: Well, I’m trying now. But he knows that. At least I hope he does. I was at practice. I took my cuts. We’re both quiet for a little while. The cashier looks away.

“Sour Patch?” Andy says. He is physically addicted to Sour Patch Kids.

“Yeah,” I say. I want to say something else, something smart or funny, but I don’t. The kind of comeback I need can’t be made in a pharmacy.