She lied to her teacher one day, but it wasn’t really a lie. Her teacher wanted to know how recess had gone; she wanted to know if the other girls had taunted the child with calls of “I wish you were dead” for another day. They hadn’t, but recess hadn’t been fine like the first-grader said. It had been worse.
She had a crush on a sixth-grader who rode her bus. He was tall, quiet, and dark-haired. He would later sign her yearbook — in cursive — and she wouldn’t read it until she was older.
With a kickball in her hands, up on the hill next to the warm brick of the building, with the noon-hour sun trekking up the southern sky from east to west, she smiled when she saw Aaron sitting with his lunch tray on his lap.
Bright and yellow was the day.
“Hi Aaron,” she called, bouncing the kickball high off the ground. Stretching her hands to retrieve it, she missed, and the kickball bounced happily into his mashed potatoes.
She blushed brick red and ran far across the playground to the swings and slider and spent the rest of recess dreading the coming question.
“How was recess?”
“Fine.”
But not really…