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Fourth grade is actually pretty important. You’re reading chapter books, even if some of them you already read in third grade at your old school. It doesn’t matter if you have repeats, because you like the new school better. You decide that on the first day. It doesn’t go so well the second day, but you can’t change your mind. Mom’s face lit up so bright when you told her things were good, no, awesome!
You can’t take that brightness away.
The other kids are bigger than you. That’s because you take after your mom, and she’s small. She says petite, but that’s a make-fun-of word, you’ve found, so you don’t say it when the kid with the squashy nose calls you squirt.
You cry two times the second day, and three times the third day. You don’t like that kind of counting, so after that, you’re done.
You’re in the fourth grade, and you can take it.
Everybody here talks football. There are signs in all the yards, blue and yellow blurring together like so many other things you drive by. Even when Mom drives fast, you see enough to know that the signs are telling the numbers on the players’ jerseys. The words that don’t make a lot of sense in other sentences (quarterback, fullback, tight end) are the positions that they play.
You know a lot about football, because two of Mom’s old boyfriends, the one you liked and the one you didn’t, talked about it all the time, and turned on the TV to the game when Mom was clearing away the pretty dishes from the table.
You watched and listened, real polite, because coming over for dinner was a big deal. Huge. It didn’t happen with every guy.
It happened with Hank only a couple times. He was the one you didn’t like.
Everybody here talks football, because the Dillon Panthers are the best team around and they’re right down the street at the high school! You drink up facts about them almost as fast as you drink your chocolate milk, or as fast as Mom drinks her soda with lime.
Mom says soda is bad for your teeth, so you can only have it sometimes. You like it, but the bubbles prickle, which is probably some kind of bad.
There are a lot of players to know about, but you decide (and actually, the other kids agree) that Tim Riggins, #33, is the best. He’s fast and strong and wins a lot, and everybody wants to play fullback like him.
Everybody talks, and doesn’t listen to you, but you know something they don’t:
Tim Riggins lives next to your house.
So Mom’s gone, and you have a football and an opportunity. Tim Riggins is right there, in his driveway that’s right next to yours, even if all you can see of him is a pair of long legs stretched out from under his truck.
This is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.