“Or an agent,” said Laura Gwen. “Someone to book you into jobs.”
“Fight your battles for you, buddy.”
“You’re part of the family, Sydney,” Laura Gwen said.
“Thanks anyway,” I said. “So far I’m getting along.”
“But you want to do more than get along, buddy,” Digger said.
“I’ll think about it, thanks,” I said.
“We’d see that nobody takes advantage of you, Sydney,” said Laura Gwen.
“A little guy like you,” said Digger, “needs a big guy to look out for him.”
“You think about it, Sydney,” said Laura Gwen.
“Just think about it, buddy,” said Digger.
Laura Gwen said, “I’ll dust your shell when we get there.”
I left them by the locker room and walked over to the field. The teams were doing loosening-up drills, wind sprints, and light practice.
Coach Korn was still with the Bombers, his old self, barking out insults and orders.
I sat in the front row and watched for a while, then I took out the book about Mongo, the dwarf detective.
I read while the action went on around me.
The coach was yelling, “That pass was too soft! Zip it! Zip that ball!”
Mongo was about to rent a car while I tried to figure out how his feet were going to work the pedals of a rental car.
“You broke your pattern! You broke your pattern!” Coach Korn was barking.
The sun was that same hot one from the day before, and there was not much breeze from the lake.
The two school bands were arriving, taking their places on opposite sides of the field, tuning up.
Right around then I heard a girl’s voice, “I see you got the book,” and swung around and looked at her.
“Hello there,” I said.
Little Little La Belle was dressed in the Boots’ colors, a white skirt and a green sweater, with her sun-colored hair spilling past her shoulders.
I had to smile looking at her, sorry because I had a front tooth bigger than the others, with a filling out besides.
“I finally figured out who you are,” she said. “You’re The Roach.”
I tried not to smile too wide. “I know who you are, too.”
“Everyone knows me around here.”
I looked down at her tiny feet, which were in tan boots with stiletto heels. I used to wear boots that high myself when I was at Mistakes, but my legs were bad, and boots like that gave me backaches, too.
“Thanks for the book,” I remembered to say. “I’m still reading it.”
“I see.”
I got to my feet to see if even with those boots of hers I’d be taller. My hump made me look shorter, which was another reason I stood, and I found us eye to eye.
A tall man down on the cinder path, wearing a green sweater, called to her. “Little Little!”
“My father,” she said.
I shot him a look that could kill because I didn’t want her to go.
“How did you know I was The Roach?”
“I finally figured it out. I’ve seen your commercial. ‘You’ll be the death of me.’ … Does being a roach get to you?”
“It gets to my bank account,” I said, and we both laughed, and then I said, “I like it, besides,” I made up my mind then and there to get that tooth capped.
“What’s there to like about being a roach, besides the money?” she said.
Her father called her again and she shouted back that she was coming, so I began to talk fast. “I’m my own invention. I invented myself. All I know about myself is that I woke up one day over at Twin Oaks and they said my name was Sydney Cinnamon, which could or couldn’t be my real name, and that’s all I know. When I found out I was out of the ordinary, a ball in a world of blocks, I decided even if they don’t roll, I do. I decided to roll away, be whatever I wanted to be.”
“But a roach!” and she made a face.
“Well, I decided to be something people don’t like instinctively and make them like it. Something bizarre, like me.” I stole a look over my shoulder at her father to gauge how long I could hold her attention. “If I’d have been something besides a roach, I’d have been an alligator or a snake. Something people look at and go ‘Yeck!’ just because of how it looks and not for any other reasons. If I’d been a vegetable, I’d have been a piece of slimy okra.”
She laughed and said, “Hey!”
“I’d have been crabgrass if I’d been a plant, or a dandelion. If I’d been a piece of mail, I’d have been a circular addressed to Occupant.”
She said, “If you were a musical instrument, you’d be that tuba,” as a tuba tuned up across the field from us.
“Not me, I’d be bagpipes. Bagpipes tuning up are the worst noise I know.”
I was trying to think of other things to be, to keep it going, but half a dozen people were now standing near us, watching.
I gave a self-conscious pull to my sweater in back, and felt my tooth with my tongue.
“If you were a member of the weasel family, you’d be a skunk,” she said.
One of the women watching us said something that ended in “just darling together,” and Little Little’s father called her more insistently, and much louder. It sounded like LIT-TOE! LIT-TOE!
“I have to go,” she said.
My mind raced with a plethora of answers to that one: naw, hang in here; were you planning to go over to Stardustburger after? Can we talk more later?—and when I couldn’t seem to get any of them out, my mouth opened and out came, “Are you sure skunks are weasels?” … My face went red because that had issued forth, like a few soft raindrops squeezed out of a black thundering sky, when hard pellets of hail were called for.
She only laughed and lifted her hand to wave good-bye, while I felt a sharp sock of disappointment, watching her go.
When
