Child's Play

The sun was about to set behind Ms. Steven’s house. Someone yelled at Mia to hurry up and pitch, and she scoured the bases for the culprit. Greg Abbott stood in front of a mailbox with a deep frown on his face. Mia frowned back at him and picked up the kickball which rested against her ankles. It was old, most of it retained its original red hue, but its ridges had smoothed over with use. With a light squeeze Mia could tell it hadn’t been pumped in a while. She swung it behind her back and forward again, letting it loose. It skidded across the pavement towards Chloe, who kicked her right foot up a second too early. The red ball slipped underneath her and into the arms of the catcher, a tall, pimply child named William.

“Nice kick, Chloe!” Greg yelled. He was growing impatient on second base. 

“Oh, shut up, Greg! It’s almost time to go inside anyways.” Chloe was right, Ms. Stevens’s house now fully blocked the sun. Mia recognized this as her cue to walk home. She started towards William and Chloe who were wiping the dust from their pants. 

            “That was a good toss, Mia,” William said with a smile. Mia noticed for the first time that he had braces. He must be the oldest of the bunch.

            “Thanks.”

            “Hey guys, we should get going, my mom gets really angry when I walk home in the dark,” Greg whined. He had emerged behind Chloe with his younger sister in tow. The players positioned at the other bases had already taken off in the direction of their homes. 

            “Yeah, yeah. Come on guys.” William placed the kickball underneath his elbow and began walking. The rest of the group followed.

            “So, Mia, my mom said you’re from a different town,” Chloe said. 

            “Um, yeah. I just moved here.”

            Chloe laughed. “No, I know that. I just meant that my mom said your town isn’t like ours.”

            “What would your mom know about Mia’s old town?” William asked. He spoke with the same confidence of Mia’s father. She liked William.

            “I don’t know! She said something the other day about how Mia might feel a little out of place.”

            “I’m sure Mia’s going to be just fine, Chloe.” 

            “I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” Mia said, cutting off the conversation. The group had arrived at Mia’s driveway, and she wasted no time jogging away.

            “Bye, Mia!” Greg called after her.

            Mia entered her house through a glass door. Most of the lights were off, aside from those in the kitchen. Her dad stood over the stove peering into a large pot. He was still in his work clothes, but had taken off his leather shoes at the front door. The sleeves on his collared shirt were rolled up to allow him better mobility in the kitchen. 

            “Hi, Dad,” Mia called while she untied her sneakers. 

            “Hey, Mia! How was kickball?” Her father turned from his cooking with a smile on his face. Mia knew how excited he was that she had made a couple friends before the start of the school year. She had endured numerous retellings of his own childhood moving around the country from school to school, which made it difficult for him to form any lasting friendships with his “peers.” 

            “It was fine.” Mia walked into the kitchen and sat down at their dining table. It was made of cheap wood, and it had six seats although the most it had ever seated was two. 

            “Well, how are your friends? You like any of them?”

            “Yeah, a couple. But I wouldn’t really call them friends yet. They’re a little weird.” Mia’s dad turned around to face her. The spoon in his hand was covered in thick, red liquid. 

            “Weird? Weird how?” 

            “I don’t know, they just ask me a lot of questions.”

            “Well, that’s what happens to the new kid. Trust me, when I was young I had my fair share of questioning…”

            As her dad droned on and turned back to his mystery soup, Mia looked out the window at the darkening sky. It got darker slower here, and for some reason the sky seemed a little more blue at night. Back home it only took a few minutes for the sky to change hue. 

            Mia liked her life before they moved. She had more space in her back yard, making for a much better kickball game. Her friends had etched the outline of the field into the dirt, giving it more permanence than three mailboxes. At least the kids here knew how to play kickball. 

            “Mia, are you listening?”

            Mia snapped her head towards her dad.

            “I was asking you to get some bowls out. Chili’s almost done.”

            Chili night. Of course. 

***

            “Alright, I think we should switch up the teams,” Greg said to the group. 

            They were huddled around the pitcher’s mound, if you could call it that. It was a pothole in the center of the cul-de-sac that the kids had picked at over the years.. The group nodded in agreement at Greg’s motion. It had been a few days since a team swap, and the games were growing monotonous.

            “Cool. So…team captains,” Greg said. He looked pensively around the group. “I mean, I can do it if no one else wants to,” he continued, looking down at his shoes. None of the group protested.

            “Fine, Greg. You can be a team captain,” Chloe said. She scanned the rest of the circle and stopped at Mia. “Mia, why don’t you be a team captain? You’ve played enough games with us.”

            “Um, sure.”

            The group separated from Mia and Greg, forming a line facing them. Greg went first, choosing William. Greg’s sister groaned and sat down on the pavement. She would probably be benched again.

            Mia chose Chloe due to the fact that she had trouble remembering the other kids’ names. After Greg made his next pick Mia scanned down the line and stopped at a tall girl in expensive running shoes. They hadn’t been formally introduced, but Mia knew she could run fast. Her brown hair was tied into a low ponytail and gelled to prevent fly-aways. Mia was pretty sure she was wearing a sports bra, and she felt a twinge of jealousy. 

            She pointed at the girl and said, “Um, you can be on my team.”

            The girl turned to Mia as if she was surprised she had spoken. Her face twisted and looked like she had just eaten something a little sour.

            “I don’t think so,” the girl said. Greg drew in a quick breath, and the other kids turned to the girl with their mouths open. 

            “Oh, what?” Mia responded breathlessly. She wracked her brain for times she might have offended the girl, but she had only met her a week ago. 

            “I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I’ll be on Greg’s team.”

            “Savannah, you can’t do that. Mia picked you,” William called from beside Greg.

            “I’ll do what I want. And what I want is to be on Greg’s team.”

            “Savannah, that’s not how we pick teams. You’re with us,” Chloe said.

            Savannah stopped in her tracks and said, “For God’s sake, guys. I’m not going to be on Mia’s team. If you won’t respect my wishes as a member of this kickball league I might just go home.”

            The children who had yet to be picked sounded protests as Savannah turned from the group and stormed off in the direction of her house. Chloe rolled her eyes.

            “We can play without her, it’s no big deal,” William said, trying to calm the group who had just witnessed one of their star players ditch them. The children grumbled to themselves, but William encouraged them to continue picking teams. Mia’s team prevailed through a dozen or so matches, but at sunset she was still repeating the morning’s events in her head. 

            On the walk home Greg and Chloe chattered away about their families’ weekend plans. It was a holiday weekend, and most of the parents in town were whisking their children away for a few days on the beach before school began. Mia walked with her head down until they got to her house. 

            “Hey, Mia! How was kickball?” Her dad called to her as she walked in the door. He was at the dining table with his laptop open.

“Fine,” Mia responded. She ran up the steps and locked her bedroom door behind her.

***

            “My mom said we shouldn’t ask about things that aren’t our business.”

            “Well, this seems to be our business, she’s in our kickball league!”

            Mia approached the group of kickballers who were obviously talking about her. The group was sitting, not standing, around the pitcher’s mound. 

            “Oh! Hey, Mia!” Chloe said. She shushed the younger members of the group who were rambling on about their parents’ advice. 

            “Um, hi guys. Everything ok?” 

            Chloe diverted her eyes. Mia looked to Greg, who was fiddling with his shoelaces. William dribbled the kickball against the pavement.

            “Yeah. Everything’s fine…” Chloe finally said, “…I think we were all just wondering, what was your old town like?”

            Mia knew what they were getting at. She had kept it pretty quiet that she had spent the last eleven years of her life on an old farm. Her dad said the kids here might think she was a little odd because she hadn’t grown up in a town like them.

            “Yeah…” Mia struggled to find the right words to appease the group, “…it was pretty small. Not as many kids, you know? The houses were also a little smaller, and farther apart. It just wasn’t as busy as it is here.”

            Some of the kids seemed satisfied with her answer, but Greg had perked up his head. Mia could tell he was formulating another question.

            “I told my mom about how Savannah doesn’t like you, and she said it’s probably because you grew up on a farm.” Greg said the last words with a sneer. The other kids began to murmur. Some agreed with Greg.

            “Yeah, that’s what my mom said. She said we shouldn’t have kicked Savannah out,” one of them yelled.

            “Hold on, we didn’t kick Savannah out, she went home because she didn’t want to follow the rules,” Chloe said. Mia was grateful she had someone on her side. 

            “She didn’t follow the rules because she didn’t want to be on Mia’s team. And I don’t blame her,” Greg said. His words stung Mia a bit.

            “My mom said that Mia grew up on a farm,” Greg’s sister chimed in, “and she went to a school like our parents did.” At this the children collectively gasped. Not even Chloe had a response in Mia’s defense.

            “Guys, I don’t know what you mean,” Mia tried to defend herself, “I didn’t grow up on a farm, my house was just on an old field where people used to grow stuff. That’s what my dad told me. And my school was just a school, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

            The children sat still.

            “I think you should go home. I don’t think we should be playing kickball with you,” William said. He wouldn’t make eye contact with Mia. She looked around at the rest of the group, searching for a sympathetic look. Chloe shook her head and turned her back. The other children followed.

            Mia’s eyes grew hot. She turned around and ran home. Her dad wasn’t there, he had left for work only a few minutes after Mia. She sat down at the dining table and remained there for the rest of the day, watching the sunlight move across her lap.

***

            “Hey, Mia! How was kickball?” Mia’s dad called from the hallway. He must have seen her shoes by the door. 

            “I’m in the kitchen,” Mia responded. Her dad crossed the room with a concerned look on his face.

            “What’s wrong, honey?”

            Mia explained what had happened when she went to play kickball. With each sentence the frown on her father’s face deepened. 

            “I don’t know what they’re talking about, Dad.” Mia sighed. Her dad sat quietly for a moment.

            “Mia…I should have told you this before we got here. The people here, a lot of them might not like the fact that we come from a town so far away. I didn’t think any of them would find out, but I guess that was a little naïve…”

            He drew in a deep breath. 

            “…Do you remember what you learned in history class last year? About all the cool computers and phones my generation made? And how we all loved our fun gadgets, sometimes a little too much?”

            Mia nodded. She did remember that unit. She liked imagining a younger version of her dad tinkering away in a lab with a white coat on, playing with a smartphone. 

            “Well, a lot of the people in this town think that stuff you were learning is a little, well, a little wrong…Mia, look…” her dad sighed again, “when you start school in a couple weeks, things might be a little different than what it was like back home. I want you to keep an open mind, but I also want you to be careful, and to question some of the things you’re learning.”

            “What do you mean, Dad? Weird how?” Mia’s dad picked at his fingernails. 

            “I just mean your classroom is going to look a little different, and you might learn some different things, that’s all. Now, how about some leftover chili?”

            Mia didn’t feel any better than she had a few minutes ago. 

***

            “Ready to go?” Mia’s dad opened her bedroom door. 

            “Yeah, let’s go.” She grabbed her backpack from its position on the back of her door. It was bright red – she had picked it out before third grade. Inside were leftover worksheets she had forgotten to throw away when school ended last year. The move had been pretty sudden, Mia had forgotten to clean out a lot of things.

            She and her dad didn’t speak much on the drive to school. They passed neighborhood after neighborhood, all identical to theirs. Even the trees outside the houses looked the same. Mia hadn’t realized how similar they looked before. At a stop light, she observed two oak trees with the exact same patterns on their trunks as the one outside her bedroom window. 

            Outside the school, Mia noticed her neighbors standing in a huddle. She thought about walking over to them, but she remembered the conversation with her dad. She didn’t want to start any trouble. A bell chimed three times, and all the kids started moving towards the entrance. The entire school was made of metal. Its exterior reflected the sunlight, making it difficult to look at for too long. 

            Inside on either side of her was a long hallway. A monitor above her head explained that the hallways were split in alphabetical order of the children’s last names. She turned to go down the hallway on the left. Walking past the open classroom doors, Mia realized the classes were filled with kids of varying ages. Outside the rooms letters were painted on the cinderblock walls. Mia found the room “B” and took an empty seat. This must have been what her dad was talking about. Her old school was split by age.

            Mia looked around the room and began noticing more disparities between this room and the school she was used to. There was no desk for the teacher, and Mia realized she hadn’t seen any teachers at all. In fact, she was pretty sure the only people she had passed in the hallway were other kids.

            She looked down at her desk, expecting the familiar wood grain. Instead, the desktop was black.

            Three more chimes sounded overhead, and the classroom door swung shut. The room filled with a white light coming from the desktops. They were screens. 

Mia looked around the room once again, trying to gauge the reactions of her classmates. They stared at their desks. The light changed once again to a photo of the school building’s exterior. A robotic voice spoke through the speakers in the ceiling.

            “Hello students, and welcome back to another school year! We are so excited to be teaching you once again. Today we will begin with some current events…let’s take a brief look at the Northwest, where our country has finally become unified once again through the leadership of Artificial Intelligence and the repair of the Weather Dome…”