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Seven years old/2nd Grade/October
“Where are you, Morg?” I mumbled as I looked around the playground for my brother. My green Swatch watch showed 12:10 on the see-through dial.
He should be out of the lunchroom by now.
I hit the tetherball ball around the pole so hard and fast that the kid I was playing didn’t even have the chance to touch the ball.
“Man, you win again, Hollis,” the boy from another class said as he left the court and walked toward the end of the line.
Where was Morgan? He was supposed to come to the tetherball court as soon as he finished eating lunch.
I kept looking in the direction of the ramp where the lunchroom entrance was. There were kids from Morgan’s first grade class already outside playing.
“Serve, Hollis,” the new competitor said as he took his place on the court.
“Nah. Here.” I lobbed the ball over to him. “I’m going to go find my brother,” I said and jogged toward the ramp.
I spotted Morgan coming down the ramp by himself with his hands in his pockets. I waited for him at the bottom. He looked sad and not like himself.
“Hey,” I called out to him when he was a few feet from me.
He looked up at me, and I could tell he’d been crying. His lip was puffy and there was a little bit of blood.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Liar. What happened?” I folded my arms across my chest and waited for his reply. He started to cry and looked up the ramp toward the Snack Shack.
“A kid… he shoved me and knocked my popsicle out of my mouth as I was leaving the line.”
“Did you tell a monitor?”
“No. I couldn’t find one. He knocked my popsicle onto the ground. It was my treat for winning the spelling bee.”
I looked around the playground and saw a monitor attending to another kid by the swings.
“Which kid was it?”
“I don’t know. He was a bigger kid.” I looked around with Morgan. “That’s him over there by the water fountain.”
Morgan pointed out the kid. I only knew him as a fifth grader.
“Come on,” I said and tugged on Morgan’s sleeve.
“What? Where are we going?”
“We’re going to get your quarter back from him,” I said calmly.
“What?”
“What he did isn’t right. That was your popsicle that you earned.” I stopped and turned to face him. “Remember what Dad says?”
“Yes,” he whined.
“What?”
“No one has the right to take anything away from us that we earned,” he replied.
