Middle infielder Tim, 16, knows how to play baseball - it's just that he doesn't know how to play the game of love.
You can't NOT tell a story... within three seconds of you walking in the room, they know what they need to know, your hat doesn't do you any good.
Writer’s note
Baseball won't be central to everyone's American experience - but it will be somewhere in there. My theory is that everyone has made one trip to the plate - if not in an official game, then in some kind of makeshift at-bat. As a result, the expression "three strikes, you're out" resonates on a personal level. If those words mean nothing to you, trust us, you don't want to know.
Uptight high school boy faces two problems: 1) find a boyfriend; 2) keep it secret if you actually do. The coming dance in this overseas American school, a place stuck in the Arabian desert, will spin everything toward the real and the possible. But people love to gossip and Tim can't stand it when they do - he is going to have to get used to it or else forget about the whole thing.
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The beginning of the story…
TIM, 16, took the new boy out to the desert. When they got there, he hardly needed to explain anything. The dune rose hundreds of feet from the desert floor.
"Just wait till we get to the top," Tim said.
He needed to get there, away from all the hassles in town. The problem was every kid in high school that couldn't mind their own business about your personal life.
"This is something else," Shane said.
They sank up to their knees, but made a deceptive progress up the face of the strange mountain.
Having Shane with him changed the world for Tim. The dunes were more than sand and blue. They were more than a place where the wind could practice its skills.
"We'll walk to the western side," Tim said, all but lost at the top, "and catch the sundown."
From a place over the water, the sun aimed one last beam at a low angle to the desert basin. There was nothing down there but a flat surface, where the winds tumbled and the waters dried.
"Okay," Tim said, "I'm gonna take two leaps off of here." He squared himself to the edge. "Later, we'll do five leaps side by side."
"Like the cow jumped over the moon," Shane said. He must have known what was going on.
Tim took a run and left earth for the free fall of space. If he had to jump over the moon to get to Shane, he would. The air rolled by and the sand waited patiently for his return. He planted his right foot and sank deep in the landing, then released hard into another leap.
He would find out soon enough if he had made it over the moon. This time on the landing he let himself fall back in the sand, back in the impression he had just made. He looked immediately up the shoulder of the mountain for a sign that Shane was about to follow.
Shane's first jump was graceful, like the flight of the Arabian falcon. He tilted coming off the first landing, and the second flight bore the name of the least graceful bird in the sky. He landed about 20 feet short and rolled down the mountain until Tim caught him.
"Are you alright?" Tim said.
He held him as gently as he could, and Shane held on tight.
"Man, I lost it," Shane said.
"Are you okay?"
"That was fun." Shane put his head against the face of the mountain.
Silence replaced their laughter. Tim stared at the deepening blue above them, almost ready to go where it would take him.
"It just keeps getting bluer," he said.
"It's so quiet."
Tim made no effort to move or speak. The blue got bluer. Shane was still there, holding on.
"Thanks for bringing me here," he said.