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 Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 11:30 pm
From somewhere on his body (how did he do that), Mr. N had extracted a packet of Skittles and was now putting himself to the task of eating them. The boy he was with said, "Cool, cool," in the way awkward strangers did, and the ball went Damon's way.
The ball game that followed was completely mundane. Nothing happened. The ball did what he wanted it to do, rattling through the hoop as though it had never left his hands. The ice did not melt, but it cracked enough for comfort as the other boys laughed and goofed off -- just little enough to not annoy -- and called him by his name. When one of them said, "s**t, I'm late for Psych," things started to break up.
Another one of the boys, the first one, approached Damon with the ball under his arm. "Is that your coach?" he said. "Like -- you play club, that's why you're not in the SH team?"
Awkward.
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Posted: Tue May 04, 2010 8:32 am
He relaxed, just a little bit as ball by ball went through the hoop, although Damon still was tense with a little nagging voice at the back of his mind that sounded eerily like his mom. No one that knew his mother would be surprised at that thought; Mrs Amary was known to demand a lot from her children, and a prime example was Delphine being sent to Crystal Academy. If Crystal was co-ed, she would probably have sent her son there too.
Damon wasn't expecting the boy to continue talking to him even after the hoop practice ended, but said nothing, arms crossed. He glanced back at Mr N as the other boy mentioned the former, and then shook his head. "I play with him sometimes. Not a lot though." Not since that incident. "I'm uh, in the track team." He said, as if that was a good explanation to why he wasn't on SH's basketball team.
It was hard to think of what he should say without embarrassing himself.
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Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 1:47 am
This wasn't a good explanation, but the other boys didn't push it. It sounded lame. Best he could hope for would be that they thought he'd get poached by the Destiny City U team, that he was being kept under wraps like Batman, some kind of secret basketball weapon.
"See you around," said the boy. And Damon thought it had ended there, but the rider came: "We'll be here on Friday same time."
Mr. N was standing, smiling, as the boys filtered past him with the ball in tow. He did not do anything corny like hold his hand out for a high-five (you never could tell with Mr. N). Instead, he popped another skittle in his mouth and said: "How was that on a scale of one to ten?"
Mr. N also did like his scales. He said, "I gave it a nine, but that's because this packet consists of all the red ones. Very minimal green."
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Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 8:12 am
"We'll be here on Friday same time."
Damon watched them mutedly as they went off, shell shocked as the words slowly sank into his mind and it was processed into understanding. Then, there were different emotions swirling within him, so many that it only confused him as he was trying to make sense of it.
"When I was young," he said, still staring off into the distance after Mr N talked, "I thought Skittles were M&Ms. And then I found out they were lying to me with their similar shape and size."
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