Look Both Ways: List 2

Then Bryson rolled over, his plush mattress suddenly prickly like a bed of nails against his bruised body.

He wouldn't have—he wouldn't have been able to—but his mom made him. Made him unplug from the laughs and likes. From the catchy captions and antics from kids who barely spoke in school but had mastered saying the right things online, matched with the perfect light and angle to turn out-of-this-world boredom into an Oscar-worthy blockbuster.

Made him paranoid. So paranoid he even felt like every clock was actually a giant eye, and every time the bell rang he imagined it was the building laughing at him.

It wasn't strange to see him pretending to crawl up the lockers, or for him to perform tactical movements like barrel rolls in the middle of the hallway.

Ty understood that he didn't know the kind of war he was simulating in the game. That his controller wasn't a rifle and his raggedy family-reunion T-shirt wasn't a flak jacket.

Ty understood that he didn't know the kind of war he was simulating in the game. That his controller wasn't a rifle and his raggedy family-reunion T-shirt wasn't a flak jacket.

Ty knew the anxiety of a kind of war. He knew the adrenaline and the confusion of it all.

Bryson shuffled his way over to the door, his body still feeling like garbled pixels.

Bryson shuffled his way over to the door, his body still feeling like garbled pixels.

Ty stood there breathing heavy, holding three or four roses. It was hard to tell exactly how many because they were mangled.

Ms. Wockley stood at the door to the school, her face a pink raisin, made raisinier whenever she was in discipline mode, which was all the time.

She turned and added, "When you two grow up, I really hope you become more than horse and jockey, because people lose a lot of money betting on horse races."

There's a sound in the air. A shrill and chill.

But for Kenzi and Simeon, this was where they could let loose. Where they could run and slap the street signs pretending to dunk. Where they could stand on the blue mailboxes like pedestals or see who could balance the longest on the tip-top of a fire hydrant.

Always smelled like incense smoke trying to mask dirty mop water.

"Oh, no need to ask her that. I can tell you. She only dropped me once, into a vat of gold."

A slight breeze blew litter around. Plastic bags floating like jellyfish, and a deflated birthday balloon—one of the shiny metallic ones—lifted and zipped through the air like happy shrapnel.

And Kenzi looked at Simeon, knowing Simeon knew that he wished the smoke from the paper candle could drift, could carry a note through the air, across the city and state, over lands and highways he'd never been on, through barbed wire, stone, and iron, ghosting its way through bars and into the ear of his brother.

But when Clancy had told him to go long and heaved the football into the air, Satchmo had tried his best to extend his body, stretched out for it, but it was just beyond him.

The story goes that Louis was nicknamed Satchmo because he had such a big mouth, a "satchel mouth."

He turned his head to see what he knew he'd already seen. To make sure that his first thought—and peripheral vision—hadn't lied.

Guess he was ready now. And not for a small one. Not for a furry football. But for a big, husky thing that looked like it was mixed. Some German shepherd. Some Labrador.

That was all he needed to see to start devising plans.

As he slinked past Mr. Jerry's front door, coming up on his side yard, Satchmo's backbone became rawhide, his stomach a squishy chew toy, his palms wet but his fingers dry like dog treats, when he heard the bark.

Well, not really a bark, but the gruff voice of an old man.
"Satch! Satch!"