Steen is 12 years old; he just completed 6th grade back home, where it never dawned on him how much he was part of it all.
This boy... in a place where shy boys don't do so well.
Writer’s note
A boy experiences for the first time what it's like to feel like the outsider. All he wants is to get away. After all, he doesn't have to be there. Waiting for someone to be nice to him is a game he never played before, and doesn't know how.
The new boy crashes the school's-out party of mid-June, where he feels the suspicious eyes of the 6th-grade boys upon him. Steen is afraid to talk to them but wants so bad for them to like him. Football, basketball, track & field - the playground sports throw him into a must-win situation: he either comes up big on a field day under a big American flag or else nobody wants you, not one other boy.
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The beginning of the story…
THIS ISN'T really the school I go to. My school back home is out for the summer and we came here to visit some relatives. Well, my cousin is this girl my age. Somebody thought it would be fun if I went to school here for a few days.
It wasn't my idea. At first I didn't mind because maybe I thought it would be like my school. It wasn't until this morning that I saw the trouble I was getting myself in for. My cousin's friends are the girls she knows and that puts me, a 6th-grade boy, in with all of them.
I don't like the way the boys in the class look at me. It makes me feel weird. I could explain it to them but I don't see how that changes anything. They would still see me as the boy who hangs out with the girls in this class. Because I do.
I don't want to but when I thought it would be easy for me to go up to those boys and start talking to them, I found out I was wrong. I can hardly even look at them because they are looking back and I don't mean friendly. They look at me like I don't belong here. The thing is, I feel like they are right. This whole thing makes me feel like I wanna go home.
This is the first day of this and we are past the lunch hour. I was hoping the boys would rescue me at lunch but I think all they did was talk about me to themselves and I've got no idea what they said. All I know is no one came up to me and said anything like hello.
I didn't do it either. I stood around where the girls were playing their stupid games. Some of them came up to me and said the things I wished the boys would have said. They said they were glad I was here and they hoped I would have a good time.
I knew the boys saw all that and it only added to how dumb I feel. I feel like everybody is looking at me and thinking things about me that I don't want to know.
All I'm doing now is waiting for 3 o'clock. I'm gonna have to do some explaining, or some lying, to get out of having to come back here tomorrow. So many people are involved, including my parents and my relatives and the school principal and the teacher. I can't just say that I don't like it, because they don't want to hear about that after they got it all set up. I don't want everybody mad at me.
I can tell them the truth, that I'm scared and I feel way out of place. That's another thing they don't want to hear, how I feel about something. They will tell me that I don't feel that way. I just need to get in there and make friends, that's all. It's as easy as pie.