Six Earlier Days Read Online Free PDF

myself.” With that, we head into the cafeteria and find our World of Boys. Even though I’m used to it by now, I’m still fascinated by how often guys split off into their own World of Boys at lunch, and girls head into their World of Girls. It’s such a steady pattern, they don’t even recognize it. If I could ask Mark about it, I’m sure he’d say that he was just hanging out with his team, with his friends. The fact that they’re all boys is secondary. But it defines everything.
    They talk about teams I don’t know, and girls I don’t know. They talk about video games I know, and TV shows that sound familiar. I don’t say much, and I’m lucky, because Mark isn’t really expected to. Only Sam pays close attention to me, to what I’m saying and what I’m not saying. He thinks I’m oblivious, shoveling down my fries. But I’ve learned to know when someone wants me to say something, or just wants reassurance that I’m there.
    I wait in fear for the comment that might rise from the scrutiny—an “are you okay?” followed up by a “you don’t seem quite yourself.” Sam, I sense, knows Mark well. But even when you know someone well—or
especially
when you know someone well—you are still looking for clues about who they are today.
    “Alicia, really?” Sam is saying now. “What do you think, Mark? Is Alicia your type?”
    I look at him. I can’t access fast enough to figure out who Alicia is.
    “I don’t know,” I tell him.
    “Well, what would you say your type is?”
    “I don’t know,” I tell him again.
    In my life, this is more often than not the most honest answer I can provide.
    I am even more tired in the afternoon, but again, it seems like I’m in the same boat as everyone else. Even the teachers seem more lethargic, and the lessons billow rather than strike.
    I only have one class in the afternoon with Sam, and he keeps largely to himself. I don’t know whether this is because he’s been caught passing notes in here before and knows better than to do it again. Or maybe he’s just tired, too. He seems lost in his own thoughts, emerging every few minutes to take in the teacher, or to send me a hello glance. I doodle in Mark’s notebook, then remember to tear out the page and throw it out at the end of the class.
    Basketball practice is directly after school. I’m relieved that it’s not a game—that’s too much pressure. In slower sports, I can access the things I need to know—the names of teammates, the meaning of plays, the things I know about the opposing team. But basketball is too fast, too reactive. Especially at the end of a long day.
    The movement wakes me, though. I release myself into the physicality of it—the push and pull on the court. Unsurprisingly, Sam and I are a team within the team—when there’s a chance to pass, his eye goes right to me, and mine goes right to him. Even though he’s short, he’s got speed, and because he’s got speed, he’s got respect. Mark, I can tell, is never going to be a star. He is a supporting player, the space between the stars that keeps them in place.
    There’s a big game coming up, and the coach is relentless. We are working on shots, running the court, practicing plays, facing off against one another—like most coaches, he wants us to have the grace and efficiency of machinery, and he wants to be the machinist. A new kind of exhaustion hits me, but it’s an alive exhaustion, not an asleep exhaustion. I am keeping up my paces and hitting my marks. When one of my teammates botches a shot, the coach tells him to stop being a girl. I wish I could tell him that I was a girl two days ago, and two days before that. Nothing is different. A shot is a shot.
    At the end of practice, the coach tells us to walk off the strain we’ve just put our bodiesthrough. Sam gravitates toward me, asks me if he’s still giving me a ride home. I tell him yes. Of course. When I hit the shower, he’s nowhere to be found. I get out, towel off,