American Pschoolyard
“Thanks so much for watching my teddy,” Joey says. “Nice sand cakes. How did you get them to look so yummy?”
“Lucky, I guess.”
“Cool shoes, let me guess.” Joey pauses to suck his thumb. “Sketchers?”
“Hm-hmm.”
“Are they the kind with wheels under them?” Joey reaches out to touch my sneakers, his thumb dripping with drool. I slap his hand away.
“Thank you. No touchie,” I say, and Joey turns away, sulking.
Pauly walks by our side of the sandbox on his way off the playground. He’s wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles hat (Donatello), and has a Spiderman lunchbox under his arm.
“Hi Marky,” he says. “Nice shirt!”
Pauly has mistaken me for this doodoo-head, Marky, even though he’s only seven and I’m already eight. It doesn’t really matter though since Marky is in cub scouts too and is in fact the same exact rank as me, and he also has a penchant for T-shirts with wolves on them and playing with sand. Marky and I even ride the same bus to school, even though I have a better spot in the back row where no one can see what I’m up to.
“How did your fingerpainting turn out?” Billy asks.
“It was alright,” I say.
“Just alright? Not great?”
“Great,” I say.
Two of my friends, Billy and Ben, walk over to the curb of the sandbox and sit down.
“Hey Pauly,” Billy says. “Congratulations on that dinosaur you painted the other day.”
“Thank you, Billy!” he says.
“Listen, Pauly. Let’s play Pokémon.”
Pauly shakes his head. “No can do. My mom is taking me to Chucky Cheese. Great pizza and songs. Not like you guys would stand a chance anyway,” he says, flashing a Gengar card. “See you guys.”
As Pauly is walking away, Ben just shakes his head in disbelief. “Chucky Cheese on a Wednesday afternoon. How did he convince his mom to take him there?”
“I think he’s lying,” Billy says. “That Gengar looks like a fake, too.”
I see my chance. I go through my pockets and take out my own Gengar card.
“What’s that? Sweets?” Ben says.
“See for yourself. What do you think?” I hand him the card.
“Nice! He has so much HP, and it’s so shiny.”
“That’s because it’s a holo. Got it in a booster pack from the comic book store yesterday.”
“Very nice, Patrick. But that’s nothing. Take a look at this,” Billy says, taking out a card of his own. “That’s an Alakazam. Sabrina has one and she’s the coolest gym leader.”
Joey looks up from the sand he’s been eating. “That’s really cool,” he says.
I’m clenching my fist and I count to ten — like mommy always says — and calm down.
“Cool,” I croak.
Joey is holding Billy’s Alakazam up to the light. “Really cool. This one is holographic too! It has way more colors than yours, Patrick.”
I can’t believe Joey prefers Billy’s Pokémon to mine. Doesn’t he know that ghost-types beat psychic-types?
“This is really super. How did a git like you get such a strong Pokémon?” Joey says. “But wait, you haven’t seen nothing yet.”
Joey pulls a card from his jacket and holds it up for our inspection. My tongue feels like a piece of dead meat in my mouth, and my tummy is starting to hurt. I’m regretting whipping out my Gengar and having started this comparison of cards. With trembling fingers, I take Joey’s card and inspect it more closely. I can’t believe it, a holographic Charizard, in a protective plastic covering. Oh my God, it’s first edition. I drop the card in the sand, and I feel sick.
“Is something wrong, Patrick? You look kind of green. Are you going to throw up?”
I drop down in the sand, defeated. There is no way my Gengar can compete with Billy’s Charizard. Charizard is the strongest Pokémon of them all, even the ten-year-olds know that. How can I be the very best when Joey — who still eats sand and sleeps with a nightlight — has a cooler Pokémon than I do? It’s over for me, I might as well get into Digimon, or Metabots.
Suddenly I get an idea, and I sit back up. “Well, my cousin has a Mewtwo, and he says he can get me one too.”
“Nuh-uh,” the others cry in unison.
“Yuh-huh,” I say. “My uncle works for Nintendo.”
