A Life Guide To Prolonging the Inevitable

Chapter 4

Wednesday, April 18thth, 2001

If this was supposed to be Field Day, then why in the name of Galactus the World Eater was half the grade on a goddamn blacktop?

This was one of the many questions swarming around in my partially-developed brain as I sat up against the chain link fence, my legs pulled into me and my sketchbook in my lap. The other half of the grade—the half that included my only two friends in the entire world—was having lunch on the other side of the playground. The teachers and chaperones had split us randomly into two groups so the events would run more smoothly, and as my eyes wandered over the top of my Bat-symbol drawing, they landed on Jordan and Bobby.            

From across the grass, I could see the two of them laughing about something—probably the farting noises coming from the bottle of ketchup as they squirted some on their hotdogs—and I felt my stomach tighten.

 I wasn’t mad at them, necessarily. More so at the adults who (despite my pleas of “but I don’t know anyone else”) had split us up anyway. “Field Day is about making new friends,” one of them had told me, and as much as I wanted to snap, “No, Field Day is about getting out of school so you can be with your friends,” I held my tongue. It wasn’t worth the dent in my well-behaved-student reputation, and so I sulked to the other group where I spent the remainder of the day by myself.

I sighed and with an oh-well mentality, I took my pencil and started to draw again, but my page suddenly darkened. Someone was standing over me, and judging by their hands-on-hips shadow, they weren’t going anywhere. I raised my head and squinted up at my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Ross.

Mrs. Ross was a skinny woman—gangly, would probably be a better term—with a bob-style haircut and enough energy to chase a gazelle til it dropped dead. Today she was wearing a tartan skirt and striped tights, and the adjective ‘clashing’ would’ve been a vast understatement here.

“Charlotte,” she said, and I know I was only eight, but she cooed at me like I was a baby, and it plain pissed me off. “Why aren’t you playing with everyone else?”

I looked past her chicken legs at the game of kickball that was happening in the middle of the blacktop. They’d tried to cram all fifty students into one game, and the outfield looked like a can of sardines. There were up to three kids covering each base, and the line to kick the ball stretched all the way down the fence.

“I don’t wanna,” I told her, in the most polite voice I could manage.

“But this is Field Day, Charlotte,” she told me. “It’s about teamwork. It’s important that you participate.”

Participate, my ass. I had done tons of participating today. I’d shoved my entire bottom half in a burlap sack and jumped around like a retarded lemur, even though there wasn’t anyone I knew to cheer me on. I’d sucked it up and joined the Hokey-Pokey circle during DJ-hour, even though I didn’t have anyone to turn to and giggle with when they made you shake your ass. I’d even knocked down all the milk bottles during the circus games, regardless of the fact that no one congratulated me on the lopsided giraffe balloon animal I got for doing it.

I’d done everything that I was supposed to all day—without any friends at my side, nonetheless—but there was no way in hell I was going to go join that game of kickball. I had the hand-eye-coordination of a blind single-finned trout, and I was in no mood to embarrass myself in front of more than four dozen people.

“But Mrs. Ross, I really don’t like—”

“I can’t give you any credit for the day if you don’t participate, Charlotte.”