Samurai Summer Read Online Free PDF Page B

for a while.”
    “You’re not thinking of running away, are you?” said the other counselor, who snickered too. “We were thinking of organizing a game of burnball,” she continued. “You can’t leave now. Then there won’t be any good teams.”
    We looked at each other. It was a trick, of course. But we actually were the best. We’d been playing this kind of softball for years and could beat anybody.
    There was a group of kids standing in the middle of the playing field in the distance.
    They looked in our direction.
    “We could forbid you to be in the forest,” said the first counselor.
    She was wearing tight shorts. You could see a few black hairs squiggling out onto her thighs.
    “You’ve already done that, haven’t you,” I said.
    It was often like that. We’d be about to do something, and then the counselors would show up.
    All our plans were ruined. It was hard to think more than an hour ahead, and yet you had to do it.
    We split up into teams. My troop was spread over two teams. They were mixed girls and boys. Kerstin was on my team. I was happy about that. She was quick and good at catching the ball in mid air.
    Last week she caught a few that I’d hit when she was on the other team. She stood farther back than anyone else and waited. Everyone knew that I hit the farthest when I really connected with the ball, but she was the only one who realized just
how
far I could hit.
    Sausage was ahead of me at the plate. On the third attempt, he got off a three-yard hit using the girls’ flat bat. The ball rolled slowly into the grass. It was hard to imagine Sausage as a samurai right then. Or anytime. But he wanted to learn, and he was a loyal servant.
    The word
samurai
comes from the Japanese word
saburau
meaning “to serve.” Sausage had already understood that. For others it could take a lifetime—however long or short that ended up being for a samurai. But at the same time, a short life for a samurai was a very long life for an ordinary person.
    It was my turn at bat. I saw that Kerstin was standing up front at first base along with a few others who were waiting to run. They hadn’t gotten anywhere yet. I tossed up the ball and waited as it reached its highest point. I concentrated on the ball. It was all in the concentration. The ball was the most important thing in my life at that moment. It hovered silently in the air and waited for me to decide when it was allowed to start to drop. My will was stronger than gravity.
    I stood ready with the baseball bat. It was as long as a wooden sword, a
bokken
.
    I held it like a samurai ready for battle: with both hands and with the blade angled upward.
    I saw Kerstin and the others out of the corner of my eye. Everyone was motionless like the ball right now. They were in my control too. Nothing moved until I willed it.
    I decided to let the ball drop. I lifted my sword and swung. The sword hit the ball’s lower half exactly where I had aimed. That gave it more lift and spin, and before I’d even lowered the sword, the ball had disappeared so far up into the sky that you couldn’t see it anymore. It had been swallowed up by the sun.
    I knew it was my best hit ever. After a long moment, I let the sword fall to the ground where it transformed back into a bat.
    Then I ran after the others. There was no hurry. That ball wouldn’t come down before nightfall. But still, I ran as fast as I could. I wanted to catch up to Kerstin. I caught up to the others but not to her.
    She was waiting for me by home plate. Everyone on the other team was still looking out for the ball. I waited for someone to shout, “Ball ahoy!” but nothing came.
    Kerstin smiled at me.
    “Now we’re gonna win,” she said.
    Sausage stumbled in behind me.
    “What a hit!” he said.
    “I was lucky,” I said. A samurai must never brag. It’s a deadly sin. “Hit the ball at the right spot.”
    Kerstin smiled again. She seemed to know something about me that I knew too but had never told