One week after the funeral I went back to school.

I had this belief that you couldn't let anything get you down for too long. This counsellor came to our house to help us through the grieving process.

I didn't want to think of it as a process.

You brush your teeth using a process.

1. Acquire toothbrush.

2. Acquire toothpaste.

3. Open toothpaste.

4. Squeeze small amount of paste on to head of toothbrush.

5. Insert toothbrush into mouth and rub around for a while. If you feel like you have to, go chicka-chicka-chicka to make it feel more like a game.

6. Rinse mouth with water and spit.

I didn't think that getting over my dad was going to be a step by step process. I wanted to tell the counsellor lady to go to hell, but Mum had invited her, so I shut up.

I just didn't want to think about it anymore. It had been two weeks since he'd died, and I was getting bored of thinking about one thing for every second of every minute of every day.

I wanted to stress about homework, or get a boner about Sarah Bilkworth's boobs. I would have danced with her at a dance with a huge boner, and the embarrassment later on would be worth trading for one second of freedom from the death cloud of thoughts about my dad.

My best friend's name was Viktor, with a full-on K. His parents were refugees from some war that killed everyone else in his town when Viktor was just a baby, so they came over here to live. Viktor didn't remember anything about the war, but any time his mum talked about it she started to cry. His dad had fought in the war, and would often stare off into space for hours on end, mumbling incoherently in his mother tongue.

Viktor usually came over to my house instead of the other way around.

Viktor didn't come to the funeral. His parents wouldn't let him go because it was on a school day, and they wanted him to get the best education he could so he didn't have to go back to his old country for their mandatory military service.

I was glad our country didn't do that. Getting shot looks like it would hurt. My brother shot me with a BB gun once, and I still had a mark.

I wasn't mad at Viktor for not coming. It was probably better that he hadn't seen my cry until my tears made a river with my snot and it poured down on to my shirt.

I went to my locker on that first day back to put my bag away. My bus got me to school about half an hour early, so I had tons of time to sit around. Viktor got there about ten minutes later, and we'd done some locker trading with Tiffany Bergquist and Charlie from Laos to get our lockers side by side.

Tiffany Bergquist used to go out with Viktor, and I think she still liked him. Whenever she brought it up, he pretended he was gay.

Charlie from Laos was from Laos. He didn't mind trading lockers.

"Hi," Viktor said.

"Hi," I said.

We didn't say anything else for a bit. I reached into my locker and pulled out my bag. I was hungry. I ate my apple and my sandwich. All I had left was my granola bar, and a tightly plastic-wrapped pack of homemade peanut butter cookies. I ate the granola bar. I would have the cookies for lunch. Mum always said breakfast was the most important meal of the day. I didn't care. I thought that whatever meal had the best food was the most important meal of the day.

Dinner usually had the best food.

My science teacher, Mr. Schottenbreit, said that we literally were what we ate. If we ate garbage, we were garbage. I hadn't yet tested his garbage hypothesis.

"How are you?" Viktor asked. He usually said something like 'How's it going?' or 'What's up?' but 'How are you?' was because my dad was dead. He said it very seriously, and didn't make eye contact. His eyes were light brown, but not so light they looked like sand. Sand eyes would be weird. Viktor's eyes were more like the colour of a desk.

"I'm okay," I said, which was true.

I wasn't great.

I wasn't terrible.

I was right in the middle.

Sometimes I was way, way down and wanted to have a huge hole built in front of me so that I could crawl inside of it. Then I wanted someone to call a construction company and an architect and have them design and build the biggest building in the history of the world right on top of my head. I wanted the building to be so big that if you stepped outside on the top floor without a spacesuit on, you would die right away because you were outside of the Earth's atmosphere. The building would have 1,000,000 people working inside of it, and all of them would step on my head after they parked their cars in the basement and went up the elevator to their offices.

Today I was okay.

"It's good to see you," said Viktor.

"You too," I said.

"I'm sorry I didn't come to the funeral." 

I shrugged. Shrugging was a stupid gesture, but I couldn't help myself from doing it half the time. It didn't mean anything. It was like saying 'I don't care at all about what you're saying, and if you were dead, I wouldn't be sad.'

"It's okay. It was boring anyway."

The bell rang. We grabbed our books for our first classes. He had English and I had Socials. I couldn't remember what section of government we were working on, so I just took all three books: judiciary, legislative, and executive.

"Did you cry?" he asked.

"A lot. I had snot rushing into my mouth."

Viktor nodded. It was almost as if he was impressed. "Crying is good. My dad cries sometimes."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah. I thought it was weird at first, but he always feels better afterwards."

We closed our lockers.

"See you at break," he said.

I still sometimes called it recess, even though you weren't supposed to call it recess after Grade Seven. Viktor turned around and headed towards the English classroom.

"Viktor?" I said.

He stopped and turned to face me.

"Yeah?"

"I have to ask you something at recess."

"Cool."

It was sign of the strength of our friendship that he knew now was not the time to make fun of me for saying recess.

"It's not that important."

"Okay."

"Actually, it's important to me."

"Okay."

"Cool?"

"Yeah, it's cool."

"Cool."

He nodded and walked down the hallway. I tucked my book under my arm and went to Socials. My Socials teacher was Vezna Malak. No one in the world had the name Vezna. It was a name you found in video games, as the love interest to the spiky-haired hero that ended up dying before the end or some random bad guy that wasn't the main bad guy but someone that used to be your friend and betrayed you to the evil forces.

My Vezna had her own style. She wore stripy shirts, and hiked her skirts up to just under her boobs. I could see why 'they' said that horizontal stripes were a bad idea on big people. If it wasn't for the many bizarrities of Vezna, socials class would lick pouch. We were right in the middle of the executive branch of government section. My dad used to go on and on about the government. I wondered what age people had to be before all they talked about was the government and weather. That was all my dad and grandpa talked about. The best was when my grandma would pipe in with some horribly racist comment about how that was the way things used to be, and why couldn't we just go back to that. Someone would have to explain to her that slavery and the oppression of aboriginal peoples was basically the purest form of evil, but she would just wave it off and offer everyone pie.

The bell rang and Vezna dismissed us. There was going to be a pop quiz on the executive branch next day. I didn't know how it was going to be a pop quiz if we already knew about it, but I was thankful for the notice anyways.

I shuffled back to my locker. My feet didn't want to leave the ground. Every step weighed seven tonnes. Each toe was filled with a solid concrete and lead mixture that was magnetized to the fifty-year-old school tiles that were all in need of a good scrubbing. I realized I was dreading break, and having to ask Viktor my question. I knew I couldn't avoid asking it, because it would finally set my mind at ease about something.

Viktor was already at our lockers by the time I finally got there. It had taken me so long to get back to the lockers that break was half over by the time I arrived. He was munching away on an apple, and I secretly wished I hadn't eaten mine already.

His apple looked really good.

I opened my locker and took out the cookies that I'd so carefully saved. I ate them all in one bite, and didn't even think about how I'd have nothing left for lunch.

"How was Socials?"

"Vezna was on fire today. She made us all think up a law we'd want passed."

"What'd you say?"

"Make being Batman legal."

"What'd she say?"

"She didn't. I said mine and she went right on to the next person."

"Cool."

I balled up the plastic wrap the cookies had been in and threw it towards the nearest garbage can. The ball bounced off the rim and landed on the ground.

I left it there.

"How was English?" 

"Really good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. We learned all about Ernest Hemingway."

I only remembered Ernest Hemingway from Sesame Street, when Grover went out sailing, and became the Old Man and the C. Other than that, I didn't have a clue what Ernest was all about.

"What did you want to ask me?"

He'd remembered. I was still working up the gumption to ask him.

I liked the word gumption.

There was something more to it than courage. Gumption sounded like it came from somewhere lower, somewhere deeper inside than just regular old courage. To muster up some gumption really took some effort.

I had gym next, so I took my disgusting gym strip from the top shelf of my locker and gave the ball of clothes a sniff. I nearly barfed it smelled so bad. I hadn't washed it all year, and I had gym twice a week. My b.o. was pretty gross. I smelled like onions. My sisters and I called it 'les oignons.' 

"You know how my dad is dead?"

Viktor snorted, but managed not to laugh.

I had to admit it was a ridiculous question, but again I was glad to have a friend like Viktor that wouldn't laugh at me when I was feeling weak.

"Yeah, I know."

"At the funeral, his best friend in the world came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder."

"Okay."

"Then he told me that I was the man of the house, and that I had to take care of things now."

"Right."

We'd come to it. The boiling, stinky wart of a problem that had been picking and festering at my brain for a week.

"I don't know how to be a man."

Viktor shook his head.

"You're not a man yet."

"That's the problem. I have to be."

"Why?"

"Because my dad's dead!"

Viktor's face furrowed in concentration.

"When do you have to officially start being a man?"

"As soon as possible. I think I was supposed to start the second his heart stopped. I'm falling behind. My family's in danger." 

He nodded. It was one of Viktor's habits. He would nod constantly as he thought and mulled things over. He also chewed the inside of his face, which was disgusting. It was like being a self-cannibal, and was made doubly gross by the fact that he was still alive as he ate himself.

"Apparently Ernest Hemingway was pretty manly," he said.

"Viktor, that couldn't be less helpful," I said.

"I know."

"Then why'd you say it?"

"I don't know."

The bell rang, and like a couple of well-trained ponies we started down the hallway towards our next classes.

I missed the pitching tryouts. Mum said I couldn't go because I was sick. If I missed school, I had to miss tryouts, she said.

I was getting sick of being sick. I told that to Mum and she laughed. She loved dumb word jokes like that.

I went to practice the next day, and they had already picked their pitchers. Martin, Kyle P. and Kyle V. were the three pitchers. I asked if I could be a backup pitcher, and the coach said maybe next year.

Kyle P. was the coach's kid.

I wanted to kick Kyle P. in the balls.

They made me be left field. When I stood in left field it felt backwards.

I wished our team was called the Blue Jays. We weren't.

We were the Sluggers. 

My dad didn't come to our first game. 

He didn't come to our second game.

After the third game I stopped looking for him in the stands.

We lost a lot. Kyle V. broke his arm wrestling with his brother, so Brad at first base was the new pitcher. The coach made me go to first base. He told me it was real easy. All I had to do was hold out my glove and catch. My first game at first base was when my dad finally came to a game. He parked really close to the back fence and didn't get out of the car. Our team was fielding first. I ran to first base and stood on it. The coach yelled at me to move further on to the field and don't stand on the base like an idiot. The other team was the Dragons or Raptors. I couldn't remember. I was too nervous.

Everyone was ready. Brad was standing on the mound. The first batter from the Dragons or Raptors stepped up to the plate. I recognized him. He was Troy, the big dumb kid that didn't go to school because he was too dumb.

Troy was the biggest kid I've ever seen, head and shoulders above everyone else on the field. He smashed the bat against his feet. Clumps of mud fell off of his cleats and splatted on the ground. His face was all saggy, like it didn't want to hang on to his skull. I wondered if he wasn't actually dumb, but just looked kind of slow. I'd never talked to him, so I didn't know. Brad lifted his arm and threw the ball. Troy swung the bat and the ball spetched off the very tip. The ball shot at me, and I didn't have time to react. It smashed me in the ear, and landed in my glove. I dropped to the ground, clutching my ear. Somehow, I managed to hang on to the ball. Troy was out, but I was done for the game. I couldn't hear anything, and my balance was all messed up. I sat on the bench. The coach clapped me on the shoulder and said that was a hell of a way to take one for the team.

We lost the game. Brad gave the other team nice soft pitches and they gave him seventeen home runs. I trudged out to our car that was still way at the back of the park.

My dad had watched the entire game and I only played one play. I hopped into the back seat, and he didn't even look at me.

"That was the most boring thing I've ever seen," was all he said.

We drove home in silence. My sister was sleeping in the front seat. She was probably bored too. Dinner that night was even more fun.

We had meat loaf. 

"You know what your son did today?"he asked. 

"He had a ball game, didn‟t he?"Mum said.

"He was supposed to have a ball game. He didn't play in the ball game."

Dad was getting his mean face.

"Why not?"Mum was getting her worried face.

"Why don't you tell her?" I told Mum about Troy hitting the ball into my ear and how I couldn't stand up without help for the rest of the game.

"You got him out, though, didn't you? That's good."

"No, it's not," Dad said.

"What?" Mum asked. 

"You were hit by a ball, son. Don't be afraid of the ball. If you're afraid of the ball, you're afraid of everything. The ball can't hurt you."

I wanted to tell him that the ball hurt pretty bad when it nearly brained me earlier. 

"You know how bad the ball hurts?"

I nodded.

"Really?"

I nodded again.

"I don't think you do."

I slowly took a bite of meat loaf. He punched my arm. It wasn't too hard, but hard enough to hurt.

"About that hard. That's how much a ball hurts."

He punched my arm again. It hurt more this time.

"Are you afraid of that?"

I fought back tears and chewed my meat loaf.

Punch.

"Now you can play baseball."