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playing at the other end of the gym. For a few minutes things almost worked out. My thumb hurt when I hit the ball but that seemed to lessen as we played.
    I made a couple of good setups and then one pretty fair spike and I hoped that somebody from the other end was watching.
    Like Rachel.
    But when I looked all the girls were in a circle choosing teams, and missed me being cool.
    The thing is I don't know why Amber and Rachel were important to me. Neither of them even really knew I existed.
    Now that I had loused up in front of them I wanted to impress them when I
wasn't
such a mess.
    Not that such a thing could ever happen.
    We played on and I kept an eye on the other end of the gym hoping that Rachel would turn and see me at least once.
    One of the boys on the other team had a smashing serve that just barely cleared the net and came in like a cannonball.
    I glanced at the girls. Rachel happened to be facing the boys' end of the gym.
    Just as the rifling ball caught me dead in the face, splattering my nose, driving me back and down to the floor bleeding, and worse, tripping two other players, who tripped other players, who tripped …
    Pretty much the whole team went down and the last thing I saw was Rachel.
    Pointing at me.
    With a smile.

Day Twelve

    Right about now I should mention that I'm a normal boy.
    I mean I'm crazy, sure, and I fall over and can't talk too much to girls and I'm a walking zit and, all right, I've never been cool. Ever. Which probably means I will never
be
cool. I'm just not wired that way: to be good at sports or play in a band or say the right thing at the right time. I'm not that person.
    I just looked at that last paragraph and realized it's all true. So
I
feel really good about myself….
    Come to the circus!
    See Doo-Doo try to play volleyball!
    See Doo-Doo the Zit Boy close a locker on his thumb!
    But I'm normal, which means we have to mention something that normal boys do. We don't have to talkabout it a lot because everybody knows pretty much what I'm talking about and how it all works. It's not rocket science.
    So I have been on the Internet and seen the pictures. Sure. And the magazines. And what's happening to my body is what usually happens. Various parts function the way they're supposed to.
    I'm normal.
    But that's not what this journal is about. That part of it is kind of like going to the toilet: It's something lots of people do, but you don't have to talk about it.
    I have an uncle who told me once that religion, sex and money all had one thing in common: People who really had them never had to talk about them.
    I wouldn't know anything about that, since sex is off in the distance waiting for me. I hope it will be nice, not too scary, and won't destroy what brain I have left. I know sex is important but it's always been like a beautiful sunset somebody else sees and tries to tell you about. No matter how well they describe it you won't really know until you see it yourself. Although I'm a little concerned that it might actually
be
like rocket science: kind of hard to do well.
    Religion has always been private for me.
    I don't have any real money.
    So.
    I sat by the windowsill this evening. School had gone as usual.
    I tripped in the hallway.
    The school nurse saw the bald spot on the back of my head and had me come into the office to be examined and make sure I didn't have ringworm.
    Which isn't a worm, by the way, but a kind of fungus. Like athlete's foot.
    See Doo-Doo the Zit Boy grow fungus on his head!
    The rest of the day I noticed people moving away from me in the hallways because, as it turns out, ring-worm is very contagious.
    You can get it from your pet. Did you know that? Or from the neighbors' pet.
    I do
not
have ringworm.
    So now I sat by the windowsill and watched the bird. He's growing feathers all over. Today he's covered with a kind of fuzz that's spreading into feathers.
    He still looks silly…. I just realized that the guy who said that, me, has a thumb as big