I am playing marbles in the shade of the school building. The concrete feels cold to my hands and knees, but I know that the concrete just on the other side of the line that separates the shade from sunlight is burning hot. The game is of my own making. The object: to see if you can shoot a marble that will come to rest half in cold, half in hot. Another part of me remembers something of another game that I had made up, one in which you took a coin and flipped it, trying to calculate the odds for it landing on its side. Erase that. Inappropriate. I'm shooting marbles.

I sense the big kid watching me play my game. I continue to shoot my marbles. Click. Click-click-click. The big kid's footsteps on my playing field, right on top of my favorite neon agate that was sitting in the shade two millimeters away from the line. I am afraid that it will be crushed. I do not know why.

"Still playing marbles? What's the point of marbles? You don't even play it right. You're supposed to draw a circle, then knock marbles out of the circle. That's how you get more marbles. Where's your circle? Don't you know the rules of the game?"

I try to ignore the big kid. It is my game. I watch the foot over the neon agate. I can see the dimple that marks where the marble is in relation to the sole of the shoe that rests on the ground. The line between light and shadow crosses the sneaker... MORE