Chapter 1: Kindergarten

THE BIG FAT orange Mom had told me to look for was right there on the door so I knew I was in the right place, even if I couldn’t read the words.

Room 105, Mrs. Gillette, Kindergarten Section 2 (Afternoon)

We were all standing in a line waiting to go inside when I stumbled. I thought a rock or something had tripped me, and I turned around to look for it. There wasn’t any rock but she was right behind me, smirking.

“You pushed me!”

I was only stating the obvious. I mean, there wasn’t any question about it.

“You pushed me first.”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Liar!”

“Now you’re calling names. I’m going to tell on you.”

“Crybaby.”

“You’re the crybaby.”

“No, you are.”

She didn’t answer. She hit me.

I hit her back.

“Now, we’re even. What’s your name?”

“Sophie. What’s yours?”

“Ben.”

And that’s how I met Sophie on the first day of kindergarten at Central Elementary School.

We hated each other on sight, but we quickly realized we were the only two kids on our block who were in the afternoon session that year.

War makes strange bedfellows.

“Go around the other way, Ben. I’ll yell when it’s time.”

I waited a couple of minutes, and then moved, one step at a time, up to the corner of the house. When I heard Sophie’s yell, I jumped out and pulled the trigger as fast as I could. The powder stinks, but it makes a very nice “pop” as each cap explodes. Even with misfires, and there were a lot of those, you could go through a whole roll of caps pretty fast.

As usual, we had them cold. They never learned. Maybe the morning session was for stupid kids or something, but our subtle technique of attacking from two directions never failed. It’s not that they never tried the same thing on us. They did. Only we were always ready for them, but they never figured out how to defend against us. It was simple, really. We paid attention. They didn’t.

Sophie and I started our fights just after the double sessions ended and we had more time in the afternoons. I was fooling around in my backyard one day after school, trying to decide how to dig a better set of ditches to water the fig trees we had in the corner, when she tackled me.

I knew who it was, of course. There was only one person who would pull that kind of trick. I shook Sophie off, rolled away and jumped up. Then I went after her as she ran. We were pretty evenly matched, and I got her just as she was about to disappear around the side of the house. Tackled her and brought her down. Scrambled up with my legs on either side of her skinny torso and held her wrists flat on the ground. We were about the same size, and she wriggled and shoved and almost got away, but I had her.

“Give up?”

“No!”

“OK. We’ll just stay like this.”

Well, that’s fine to say, but are you really going to spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on someone when there’s irrigation ditches to dig and water to run? Not me, that’s for sure.

“Don’t try that again.”

“Hah!”

That didn’t sound like much of a promise. It wasn’t. She pulled the same trick the next day, and the day after that.