Kid Dynamite started to laugh but the pain of it stopped him. “He hit me so hard every tooth in my mouth rattled. But with you standing here in front of me, I’m an ace.” Melanie wore a navy car coat with bone-colored toggles over her cheer-squad uniform. He said, “Why have you got the uniform on?”

“Basketball in Joliet tonight. We have a morning pep assembly. I don’t want to go. I want to be with you.”

They embraced again. Kid Dynamite kissed Melanie’s slender neck. He could feel an erection coming on and tried to back away but she clutched him tighter. He gave in and let her hold him completely. Students were walking by, the late ones. He felt her tears rolling down his neck. “Baby, my ribs, careful!” he said.

She said, “I’m not going to the game tonight. I want to be with you.”

Kid Dynamite felt hot tears of his own. He pulled his head back and kissed her. “You smell so good, you look so pretty. What you just said was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Oh God,” she said. “If it wasn’t for the basketball team, I would have been there.”

“You would have just seen me get creamed,” he said. The procession of students hurrying to school began to thin out. Suddenly five black students came out of Fiddler’s Grocery. Fid himself came out after them. He was a short heavyset man in a white apron. He stood on the wooden porch and took a final drag off his cigarette before flipping it out into the street and going back inside.

Kid Dynamite recognized the students, one of them was his friend, Eloise Greene, the club’s middleweight. Jarvis Jackson packed a wet snowball and fired across Smith Street. It hit the top of the corner mailbox. Kid Dynamite tossed Jarvis the “bird” and Jarvis Jackson cried, “Hey, motherfucker! You can suck my motherfucking dick, man!”

Kid Dynamite dropped his books and packed a snowball of his own. He aimed it at Jackson, but the snowball didn’t even make it across the street. It felt like one of his ribs had broken loose and punctured a lung. He bent over, clutching his side, as the students who had stopped to light cigarettes laughed at his pathetic toss.

Kid Dynamite looked up at Melanie and said, “I’m okay! I’m okay! Just sore and glad I missed. Jarvis a bad mo-tah scooter.”