Ira Glass

He lunged toward the nearest wall of the cage of girls around him.

The girls peeled away from him as though sprayed with a hose, bumped shoulders, clung shrieking to each other's sleeves.

Some of them were singing the song we sang about Timothy Stokes.

Timothy Stokes, Timothy Stokes, you're going to the home for crazy folks.

And the one singing the loudest was Virginia Pease herself in her furry black coat and her bright red tights.

Virginia had blonde hair, and she was the only girl in the fifth grade with pierced ears and painted fingernails.

And Timothy Stokes was in love with her.

I knew this because the Stokeses lived next door to us, and I was privy to all kinds of secrets about Timothy that I had absolutely no desire to know.

I forbade myself with an almost religious severity to show Timothy any kindness or regard.

I would never let him sit beside me at lunch or in class, and if he tried to talk to me on the playground, I ignored him.

It was bad enough that I had to live next door to him.

It was toward Virginia that Timothy now advanced, a rattling growl in his throat.

She drew back behind her girlfriends, and their screaming now grew less melodious, less purely formal.

Timothy crouched down on all fours.

He rolled his wild white eyes and took a last look around him.

That was when he saw me, halfway across the yellow distance of the soccer field.

He was looking at me, I thought, as though he hoped I might have something I wanted to tell him.

Instantly, I dropped flat on my belly, my heart pounding the way it did when I was spotted trying to spy on a baseball game or a birthday party.

I slid down into the ravine backward.

At first, I could hear the girls shouting for Mrs. Gladfelter, and then I heard Mrs. Gladfelter herself sounding very angry, and the bell sounded the end of recess, and everything got very quiet.