“Do you play baseball?” I asked hopefully.
“No,” she replied, and I tried to hide my disappointment so she wouldn’t feel bad. “I like to take pictures though.” The way she said it, almost in a whisper, made me think it was a secret.
“Cool,” I said. Even though I’d never taken pictures before, so I had no idea if it was actually cool or not. “I bet we’ll be seeing each other a lot more now. I like to hang out with the guys.” I wanted her to know that I was one of them.
“I come out with Gaby and her friends sometimes, but I’ve never met those boys before today,” Gwen said, looking at the group who were now standing in a circle and laughing about something. She looked kind of nervous.
“You don’t have to worry about those guys, they’re cool. And I don’t mean they act cool when parents are around and stuff, they’re cool all the time. They take me to the go-karts and stuff sometimes. Do you like go-karts? You should come.”
“Okay,” she replied with a smile, and I could tell she was probably pretty shy.
“Maybe we can hang out at school sometime. Have lunch,” I said, then I added, “Not at recess, unless it’s raining. I gotta play baseball during recess.”
“Why?” she asked curiously.
“Because I want to be the best,” I admitted with a grin. “I’m going to play in school, get a scholarship to USC, then go pro.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “So I gotta practice whenever I can … But we can still have lunch and stuff.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I’m sure you have friends that you sit with.”
I looked at my brother, smiling, his arm around his new girlfriend’s shoulder, and I could tell he liked her. A lot. That meant our group of friends had just gotten bigger, to include the girls. And if my brother thought it was cool to hang with girls, then I did too.
“You’re my friend too, okay?” I asked. She looked up at me, eyes wide, so I continued. “You don’t have to be afraid to come up to me at school, or sit with me at school. Anything you need, I got you.”
Gwen smiled sweetly at me. I took her hand in mine and started pumping my legs. She did the same, and soon we were swinging high, laughing as our stomachs dipped with each descent. We kept out hands locked, and I knew, deep down, that I’d just made a friend for life.
I just had no idea how much she was going to mean to me, and how close I’d come to losing her forever.