Freeze!

Chapter 1

For me, school sucked. Sure a lot of people probably think that school sucks for them too, but do you get beat up everyday? Do you go to school everyday in fear of getting hurt by more and more people. Do you have no one to call your friend except for the nice lunch lady who gives you extra french fries because she feels bad for you. Yup. My life at school definitely stunk. Bad. My only escape from all that was tennis.

When I get home I always run to my room and grab my tennis racket and this old deflated ball that I can barely hit with and run to the garage. Once I'm back outside I take my racket and start to hit my tennis ball as hard as I can against the garage. I love hearing that thwomp as it hits the pavement. All me fear, anger and sadness is put into hitting that ball.

I'd discovered the racket and ball when I was walking home from school one day. It was just laying there in the middle of the street, waiting to get run over, so I quickly grabbed it and sprinted the rest of the way home. Back then I didn't know how to play tennis. In fact I barely knew what the sport was! I took that racket and just whacked the ball, or at least tried to. Over the years I had taught myself how to play tennis, and I had gotten pretty good at it. The more I played, the better I got.

My parents didn't care about me playing tennis against the garage. In fact, for all I know they didn't even know I had picked up the sport. I mean we never talked anyways. We just took our separate paths. Usually to avoid seeing them I would just make dinner for the three of us, and take my share of the food to my room. This soon began to become a habit of ours. I never saw them, they never saw me. It was easier that way. Especially after what had happened at that party. I shiver at the thought of it.

Anyways, I was having a really bad day. The bullys at school somehow figured out my locker combination, so they stole everything. And I mean everything! They took all my books for all my classes. They took my phone. And they managed to take my laptop! I had worked my butt of to pay for that. I literally had to work at Dunkin' Donuts the whole year after school and in the summer. I remember feeling so proud when I had bought it. I had no one to tell of course. It was like keeping a secret with myself.

So yeah. I was really ticked off today. I took the ball in my hand and hit it as hard as I could. It bounced right off of the garage and rolled down the street.

Great, I thought to myself, Could this day get any worse?

I ran down the street looking for my tennis ball.

One of the benefits of living in a crappy neighborhood is that there is never anyone on the roads. So running down the streets as fast as I could, I wasn't scared that I'd get run over or something.

As I was running out of the corner of my eye I spotted something yellow.

Yes, I cheered in my head, Maybe I am having some luck today!

But looking at the tennis ball, I knew it was way too yellow to be mine. Over the years my tennis ball had been so used that it got some holes in it and had turned a light brownish color.

A new ball! I thought as I raced to the grass where the ball lay.

Sweet!

The ball felt so weird as I placed it in my hand. I had grown so used to having a dirty ball that I forgot how a brand spanking new one felt! I couldn't wait to go home and hit it.

As I drew close to the garage out of breath I wondered what kind of ball this was. My last ball was a cheap knock off brand. I wondered if this was a Penn or a Wilson. I had always dreamed of how those sounded when they hit. How they interacted with the racket.

Once I reached the garage I grabbed the tennis ball and flipped it over. I tossed up my ball getting ready to serve and just before I hit it I muttered to myself what it said on the tennis ball,

"Freeze"