Page 3 of I've Walked Where You've Been
There was a strange moment where everything went blank—even the bond—as if time had been temporarily suspended so that Matty could watch in slow motion as Ethan’s head snapped back, body stumbling into the fence.
The silence only lasted a few seconds, however—a moment later, Ethan was on the ground, crying loudly.
“Crap, are you okay?” Matty crouched beside him, not sure what to do. He’d been hit by that exact ball in the face a million times. It hurt, but it wasn’tthatbad.
Ethan seemed to disagree very vocally.
The glass door slid open behind Matty, Ethan’s mom stepping out. “What happened?” she exclaimed, hurrying over to them.
Matty stepped away. “It was an accident! He was goalie, and the ball hit his face.”
“Aw, it’s okay. Just a mistake.” Ethan’s mom pulled Ethan into her lap, and he immediately clung to her.
Matty very, very carefully did not think anything about a nine-year-old being cradled by their mom just because they got a little hurt.
“Here, how about we go inside and do something a little calmer?” Ethan’s mom suggested. Ethan sniffled and nodded. Matty followed them into the house, guilt and annoyance all mixed up inside him.
They ended up reading.Reading. Not playing Legos or video games or hide and seek or some stupid board game.Reading.
Ethan seemed to realize pretty quickly that Matty was not good at staying still, especially not if it was for homework, which reading was. You didn’t read for fun. You did it because the teacher forced you to.
Matty looked at his mom in despair, but she was busy laughing away with Ethan’s parents.
This was going to be a nightmare. He looked at Ethan, quiet and still on his beanbag chair, reading some book about bugs.
Bugs.
“Can’t we do somethingfun?” Matty whined after a while. The book he’d been given was about space, which was cool, but he was supposed to be playing, not learning.
Ethan frowned at him. “This isn’t fun?”
“No. Let’splaysomething.”
“I don’t want to play. My head hurts from when you hit me with that ball.”
“I didn’thityou.”
“Oh, so the ball fell from the sky?”
“It was an accident.”
“My face hurts.”
Matty flopped back in his beanbag chair, scowling at the ceiling.
There was no freaking way this kid was going to be his best friend. There wasno way.
**********
Things only got worse from there. Anything Matty wanted to do, Ethan would pout and drag his feet about, barely trying to participate until they were both too frustrated to continue. AnythingEthanwanted to do was so freaking boring that Matty could barely stand to do it for more than ten minutes before he was crawling out of his skin.
Their parents tried to mediate at first. “Thirty minutes doing one thing, thirty minutes doing another,” they said. Not even that worked.
Everybody involved was relieved when the two-month mark passed, and Matty and Ethan could tolerate only seeing each other twice a week.
Ethan became nothing more than an unpleasant part of Matty’s routine. He’d go over to Ethan’s most of the time because his house was ‘bigger and nicer and there was a maid to look after them and cook them dinner’, reasons Matty thought were completely dumb.
Matty’s house might not be big, but it washis, and it wasn’tfairthat Ethan always got to have his things around, to be in his own space, while Matty had to be the one to adjust to the new reality.
