“Good.” Amanda took the seat on my other side, where the name tag had a ladybug sticker and a name that started with A. She said, “My name’s Amanda. What’s yours?”
“Toph—I mean, Chris,” I said, remembering that Matt had also said that Topher was a wimpy nickname that would make me have no friends. My name tag said Christopher, so I could say either. “Chris Burke.”
I shared my oatmeal scotchies with Amanda at lunch. There were assigned seats in the cafeteria, but I’d have sat with her anyway. I didn’t know anyone else.
“These are good cookies,” Amanda said. “What are they?”
“Oatmeal scotchies. My mom makes them.” I offered her another one. “I think the recipe’s on the bag of butterscotch chips.”
I knew it was, because Mom and I had made the cookies, but for some reason I didn’t want to admit that.
“Oh.” Amanda chewed the second one. “My mom doesn’t make cookies.”
“Does she work?”
Amanda took a second bite and shrugged. “She doesn’t live with us.” She gestured at Nolan, who was picking on some other kid, the second-smallest kid in class. “Nolan lives next door to me. He thinks he’s tough because he’s the best hitter on the team, but my dad says I’ll be better than him by the time the season starts.”
“Oh.” When Amanda had said “best hitter,” I thought she’d meant fighting-type hitting. Now I realized she meant baseball. “You play baseball?”
“I used to. But they said I had to switch to softball because I’m a girl. It’s so unfair, because I’m better than most of the boys. Dad says that’s what they don’t like.” She took a third cookie without asking. I didn’t care. As usual, Mom had given me way too much food, hoping I’d bulk up, like Dad said.
“Aren’t you one of the best on the softball team too?” I asked.
She snorted like that was obvious. “Do you play?”
“Softball?”
“Baseball. You don’t have to be big to play. Lots of smaller kids are fast.”
I shrugged. I sort of wanted to play, and my dad would have loved it. But he’d probably be too busy with work ever to practice with me. Matt only played with his DS, and my mother wasn’t into sports. I knew there were tryouts, and I didn’t want to be the worst.
“You could come over, and my dad would practice with us.”
“Really?” It was like she’d read my mind. “You could come over to my house and . . . make oatmeal scotchies with me and my mom.”
“Cool.”
From then on, like oatmeal and butterscotch chips, Amanda and I were hard to separate.
2
So that was the start of Amanda and me. People were singing the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song about us by the end of the week, and even though Amanda was always the first-picked girl when we played team sports in PE class, while I was the last-picked boy, when she was captain, she always chose me third.
“You have to practice,” she told me when I didn’t get a runner out in kickball because I was cringing away from the ball. “This is kickball, Chris. Kick. Ball. The ball is soft, so it doesn’t hurt even if it hits you in the face. See?” She tossed the ball at me. I ducked it.
She sighed. “What are you going to do when we start softball?”
“Isn’t a softball soft?”
“No,” she said, like that made sense.
We had our first playdate the Saturday after school started. My mother drove me to Amanda’s house. “I’m so glad you made a friend,” she said on the way “Would I know Amanda’s mother?”
“She doesn’t have one.” Mom gave me a funny look, so I added, “I mean, her mom doesn’t live with them. She lives with her dad. And her sister.”
I didn’t know why it mattered, but I sensed it did. “She’s really nice, and her dad sounds nice, and she says he’ll teach me baseball. Please let me go over there. She’s my best friend.”
Amanda was more than my best friend. She was my only friend. While Amanda knew people, girls from T-ball and soccer who talked about practices, boys whose families were friends with hers, they all pretty much ignored me. Or included me only as Amanda’s friend. Even at five, I sensed that. I was too small, too quiet, too insignificant. I was like the ugly duckling, maybe not actually ugly, but just . . . nothing. I didn’t know if I’d have made other friends had Amanda not adopted me as her personal project. Somehow, it didn’t matter. I’d had no real friends up until then, just playgroups with Mom’s friends’ kids. Amanda was the one friend I’d made by myself. Amanda seemed like enough.
“So is it okay?” I said.
“Of course it’s fine. I just want to meet her father.”