Breaking the Fall by Michael Cadnum

weren’t moving anymore, and all over the grass under the tree.
    I moved back and sat on an overturned wheelbarrow so I wouldn’t inhale the yellow poison, but he wasn’t even wearing a respirator. “Chinese elm,” he called. “Nothing but problems.”
    Sky wanted to know what her father and I had talked about.
    â€œIt was pretty profound,” I said.
    â€œHe’s very serious.”
    We were both eating pattimelts on Piedmont Avenue. It was the first time we had ever eaten anything together, and I was eating very slowly.
    She added, “He believes in me, Stanley.”
    She said this so solemnly that I needed to make a joke of some kind. “Is there some question? Do some people say you don’t exist?”
    Having said that, I didn’t like the sound of it. Sky’s family was not to be joked about.
    Her eyes were downcast, and she was no longer eating. “He worries all the time.”
    â€œHe looks calm.”
    â€œHe’s slow, but he’s not calm, Stanley.”
    I ate the crust of my pattimelt, which was crunchy and flavored with cheesy grease.
    â€œHe remembers some stuff about you.”
    â€œI’m an all-right person.” The statement sprang out of me, and I grabbed a paper napkin.
    â€œBut you remember when the school blew up.”
    This made me crumple my napkin into a wad. “That’s ridiculous,” I said, feeling small and futile.
    The school had blown up before I had even gone there, before I was even a freshman. I had slept through it, but it blew out windows from Trestle Glen to Chinatown. Dozens of students had been questioned, past, present, and future high school students, and I had been dragged into the investigation because I used to smoke cigarettes behind the auto-shop building.
    â€œHe would hate it if I got in any kind of trouble, Stanley.”
    â€œDoes knowing me automatically mean you’re in trouble?” I really can’t stand the way words spit out of me.
    Sky took my hand from across the table and opened it up, actually turned it over and parted my fingers with hers without looking at it, looking right into my eyes all the time.
    â€œTu likes you a lot,” she said.
    â€œBut you don’t,” I heard myself say.
    Sky doesn’t strike poses, and she doesn’t flirt. She considered my words. “I like you, too,” she said.
    I thought: but . She’s going to say, “but …”
    She didn’t. She glanced down, and kept her hand where it was.
    â€œWho is this other guy?” I said, and wanted to put my hands over my mouth.
    She withdrew her hand. “He’s not important.”
    But she said this regretfully, as though the other guy was a large, churchgoing, nonsmoking person her father adored.
    Careful, I told myself.
    Be very careful.

20
    I swung hard, and missed.
    The pitching machine was a gun, a cannon, and it fired so hard the pitches were streaks. The machine made a high, musical note, clicked, and then whipped another pitch to the back of the cage.
    Afternoon: that second chance in the day, that chance to do something right.
    I fouled one off, and the velocity spun the pitch up, into the sagging chain-link above. I didn’t belong here anymore. But the other players let me take a turn, remembering the days when I used to belong there. Surely I would do so well this afternoon that the coach would see me and change his mind. Surely I had a right to a second chance. Everyone knew how hard I tried.
    I wasn’t doing too badly. Not well, but not a disaster, either. I loved the smell of grass under my cleats, the blades squashed and releasing that scent of newness. I knocked the damp earth out of my cleats. I had been wrong, I saw this now. I should have been here every afternoon, where I belonged.
    Jared had dragged me away, convinced me that sports were for losers, and the best sport of all was his own secret game. He had been right. His sport was