Bobby propped himself up against the fence and tried to catch his breath. He looked through the bars at the
generations of dead ancestors and wondered if they were laughing at him, too. He picked his iPod out of the tall
weeds.
Bobby didn’t want his parents to see him, at least not until the bleeding stopped, so instead of heading straight
home, he turned down McKinley Road away from his house and kept running.
As Bobby continued running, the sweat stung in his cuts, and once he had to use his shirttail to wipe the trickle of
blood out of his eye.
He had hoped this year might be different. The new kid on the team smiled at Bobby and had actually said hello a
couple of times. Today Bobby had resolved to speak to him and found the boy was friendly. It was that shred of
hope which motivated Bobby to really try his best in the scrimmage game at practice.
He had been so concerned with impressing the new guy that he hadn’t considered how Danny Taylor would take
being embarrassed. He hadn’t set out to embarrass anyone, that was just sort of a side effect, and, as bad as his
face hurt, it was almost worth it to see the look on Taylor’s face when, thanks to Bobby’s base stealing, a runner
scored.
Danny was the captain and quarterback of the football team, and although not the captain of the baseball team, he
was the shortstop and unquestionably the leader of the tightest clique on the team. Danny had the movie-star kind
of good looks that seemed only possible with the aid of good lighting and make-up. He attracted the attention of
everyone, male or female, as soon as he entered a room. Bobby had watched people fawn over Danny since they
were in the first grade together. “Oh, Mrs. Taylor, your son is sooo handsome...” it was the kind of adulation that
had helped Danny grow into the most insufferable asshole in school, which, given some of the other competition,
was quite an accomplishment.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, Taylor’s arrogance, he always had a flock of disciples around him as though
some of his greatness might drop to the ground and they could snatch it up. The first day of baseball practice in
tenth grade Bobby had glanced over at Danny. His radiance was such it was hard not to stare, and Bobby was met
with a slap to the face and the question, “What are you staring at, faggot?” There was so much threat and malice in
the voice that ever since Bobby had averted his eyes in the presence of the young prince.
He had learned long before that when you were his size    getting in the way of Taylor and his kind often meant
kissing a locker so he stayed away from them as much as possible. As Bobby’s grandmother used to say, “The nail
that sticks up is the one that gets hammered down.”
As Bobby ran, his face stinging, he had plenty of time to reflect on the futility and stupidity of having called attention
to himself at practice. The grandstanding seemed like the thing to do at the time, but now any chance he had of
fitting in on the team was gone. He marveled how he had once again managed to fall so quickly out of step.
Although he often suspected that he was the only one doing the right step, and everyone else was out of sync.


...The story continues in Chapter 2.
The back cover of Rounding Third....