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Saturday, April 18

DAVID

“There’s a shipment of baseball caps to unpack,” Pop says. “We need to get those out on the floor pronto!” He pats an empty rack right near the front of the store.

I smile and nod because the really awesome thing is that Pop is not speaking to me.

“Sure, Mr. Fischer,” Luke says.

Who would have guessed. Luke, in possession of all of his toes, and star catcher for the E. C. Adams Middle School baseball team, is also the newest L. H. Fischer Sporting Goods employee. Of course, Pop pays him, which is a better deal than I ever got. And being that Luke is only thirteen, Pop has to keep it off the books, and pays him in cash, which is not entirely legal, and is a new side of Pop that I kind of like.

What am I doing? Well, I’m technically working at the store too—I’m at the register, and ready to ring up any eager customer who wants to buy a new aluminum baseball bat, or a pair of running shorts, or a tennis racket. But it’s two o’clock on the first warm spring Saturday and the store is almost empty, so my services are mostly not needed.

So I’m working on my latest comic book, which I’m calling When We Were Friends. It’s about me and Sammie, disguised as a cat and dog. I’ve given them names: Chester the dog and Goldie the cat.

I’m using a lot of symbolism, so that no one will know it’s me and Sammie, except me and Sammie. Like I’m telling the story of how we first met as being at a dog park, and Goldie knows more about the rules of the dog park than Chester does. She knows how to roll over and how to catch a Frisbee and how to play tug-of-war with another dog. The other dogs and their owners don’t even realize that Goldie’s a cat because she’s so good at all the dog tricks.

Pop strolls over and takes a look at my drawing, chuckling at Goldie’s fake dog nose.

Luke hauls the box of baseball caps to the rack where Pop wants them displayed, opens the box, and starts slapping prices on the tags and hanging the caps on the rack.

“Coach D’s got us doing a mandatory practice tomorrow at the batting cages,” Luke tells me. “He’s really cheesed off about the loss to Briarcliff. Says we all need batting practice.”

“Bummer,” I say.

“It’s okay. Better than Hebrew school.” He grins.

“Yeah,” I say. “But pretty much everything except a rectal exam would be better than Hebrew school.”

Luke laughs.

The truth is, I miss baseball a little. Like on a scale of one to ten, I miss baseball a two. I miss being part of a team, and I miss the way it made me fit in. But honestly, mostly what I miss is being on the team with Sammie, and Sammie’s not on the baseball team either, so the team I miss isn’t the team that’s playing now. It’s the team in my memories. The team that used to be.

But sometimes you can’t go back to what was. Sometimes you can only go forward, with who you really are right out there for everyone to see. So Sammie’s playing softball, and I’m the official girls’ softball cheering section at home games. I show her my comics and she gives me great feedback, and we talk on the bus about whether we’d rather be forced to breathe in Mr. Pachelo’s fart smells all day or eat horse meat for every school lunch.

But she’s best friends with Haley now, and I have Luke and Arnold and Sean. I hang out with the same group of guys at lunch, and they kind of tease me about my comics and kind of don’t understand why I’m not playing baseball, but mostly they’re okay with it.

I look down at the drawing in front of me, and for just a flash I feel a little bit sad, but then I get back to drawing because it’s a story I want to tell, even if I don’t always look so good in it. Because it’s the truth about when we were friends.