Painting the Black by Carl Deuker

right, in stride and on the inside part of the bag. It can be the difference between being out or safe on a close play at third, but it’s hard to do. Even major leaguers blow it.
    I was lousy at cutting that corner, and I didn’t get any better that evening. The whole time I was running my mind was going a mile a minute. I wasn’t thinking about baseball; I was thinking about Celeste.
    You could say she’d been asking for it, at least a little. Dressing the way she did, strutting around every lunch period—she liked the attention she got. She liked it a lot. But doing what Josh did, right in front of everybody, humiliating her like that—it wasn’t right.
    I don’t know how many times I went over that scene in my mind. And I don’t know how many times I ran from first to third. My mind shut off and I went into a kind of trance until a voice snapped me out of it. “Not bad!”
    I looked up to see Josh sitting in the bleachers.
    â€œHow long have you been watching me?” I asked, a little embarrassed.
    â€œNot long,” he answered. Then he paused. “I didn’t know you were doing stuff on your own.”
    â€œI’m just trying to get in shape.”
    â€œKeep going,” he said. “Don’t let me stop you.”
    â€œNo,” I answered, heading off the field. “I’m done.”
    â€œLet’s go to Robertino’s,” he said. “We can get something.”
    I knew he’d searched me out because he wanted something. But it wasn’t until we were eating that he spilled it.
    â€œRyan, what’s Haskin like?” he asked, his voice soft.
    â€œHaskin? You mean the principal?”
    â€œYeah. Him. What’s he like?”
    â€œI don’t know. I’ve never spoken a word to him. Why?”
    Josh frowned. “He left a message on the answering machine. He wants to meet with me and my parents tomorrow.” He paused. “You were in the cafeteria today, weren’t you?”
    â€œSure. I was there.”
    â€œYou don’t think he’d suspend me, do you? He wouldn’t do that, not with the O’Dea game this weekend. I mean, he wants to win too, don’t you think?”
    â€œI don’t think he’ll suspend you,” I said, “but I don’t know for sure.”
    He frowned. “It was your friend Monica Roby who made a stink about it, you know.”
    My chest tightened. I felt as though he was somehow blaming me. “You did a dumb thing, Josh. And I warned you about her.”
    He scowled. “I think about that first time I saw Monica and how I was going to move on her. What a joke!”
    We sat for a while, both of us thinking of the summer, neither of us saying anything. “Let’s go home,” Josh said at last.
    Â 
    When I stepped into Ms. Hurley’s classroom the next morning, I looked for Josh. He wasn’t there. Every time the door opened my eyes shot over to it. But when the tardy bell rang, Josh’s desk was still empty. Ms. Hurley took roll, and then she started talking about
Walden
and how Thoreau moved out of his house and into a cabin in the woods because there was too much junk cluttering up his life.
    She asked us to consider what clutters up our lives, and a million things came to my mind. Television, radio, billboards, 7-Elevens, clothes, shoes, magazines, books. It suddenly seemed to me that almost everything in the world was junk.
    I was about to raise my hand when the door opened. Josh stepped quickly up to the front of the room, handed Ms. Hurley a pass, and then took his seat next to me.
    â€œEverything okay?” I whispered.
    He rolled his hand back and forth in front of him in a gesture that meant “so-so.” Then he slumped into his seat.
    I kept peeking at the clock, waiting for the end of the hour when we could really talk. With ten minutes left in class, Ms. Hurley passed out discussion questions. “Form