““School is no better. Since the day I “played’ fastball, when I step up to the chain-link fence each morning, my shoulders hunch up, my mouth dries, and my head goes blank. A big cloud just swallows up everything about me. It’s like the schoolyard is a big miasma – one of those make-believe poison clouds that scientists once thought killed you until they figured it was actually microbes in water and microwaves and other stuff that really gets you. Yeah, DJ’s a mind erasing miasma, and it’s eating my brain. I forget everything about velocity. I can’t remember the reasons we were in World War I. Each period, I stare at the clock, thinking about getting from one class to the next without meeting Yaqui, like that’s the real test. Sitting in class is just what I do in between.””
