Grade Four

I've never had many friends with all my walls and shit but I would always a couple. This one friend was the cousin to the most popular kid in the whole grammer school.

Once we went to some community center that had a bumper pool table. When it was your turn, you played the winner. Joey played first and won and then I beat Joey. The kid that played me next was the brother of the second most popular kid in the school. I beat him. The kid after that didn't go to our school but he was known as a tough guy in the neighborhood, among the preteens anyway. There was a girl with him, she was sitting at the pool table leaning on his end, the end I was shooting to. She was pretty and a year older than Joey and me, she usually hung out with the older girls. She wasn't known as a good girl, although nobody could name names or give specifics.

I was beating this second kid and it started to bother him. I didn't give a care because I was just playing to play and mostly because I didn't like him. He was a punk. He had a problem getting beat but some quiet 'unknown' kid on the honor roll. I guess the girl that was with him had a problem with it too because she started putting my pocketed balls back on the table.

I don't know how many she put back on the table, it couldn't have been more than two, but my friend and I caught her in the act with one of them. She was going to take it back off the table but I told her to leave it where it was and then beat the kid anyway.

I handed off my cue stick to the next kid in line and walked out. Joey never asked me to go back. I pretty sure he caught some heat for being my friend but that didn't stop him and he never said anything.