J e r r y s p I n e L l I

RED YELLOW PURPLE GREEN 
Then she writes each student’s name on a slip 
of paper and mixes them in a box. She calls Ronni 
Jo Thomas up front and tells her to turn her head 
away and pick a slip from the box. The first name 
out of the box goes in the RED column, the next 
name in the YELLOW column, and so on until 
each student is assigned to a team. 
Gary Hobin is a Yellow. 
So is Zinkoff. 
“Oh no!” blurts Hobin the moment he sees 
Zinkoff’s name go up under his. 
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The teacher turns from the board. “Par-
don me?” 
“We can’t be on the same team again,” says 
Hobin. “We’re supposed to be on different teams 
each year, to make it fair.” 
Mrs. Shankfelder frowns. “Don’t be silly. 
There’s no such rule.” 
Hobin snarls under his breath, “There is now.” 
Ten minutes later Zinkoff receives a note on 
his desk. The note says, “Forget Yellow. Join 
another team.” 
On the playground at lunchtime, Hobin 
comes to Zinkoff. “Did you get the note?” 
“Yeah,” says Zinkoff. “What’s it mean?” 
“It means what it says. You’re not a Yellow. 
Join another team.” 
“But I am a Yellow. Mrs. Shankfelder said so.” 
Hobin is taller than Zinkoff. He leans down 
until his eyes are locked into Zinkoff’s. Zinkoff 
can smell the hot dog on his breath. “Listen,” 
says Hobin, “you’re not gonna make me lose 
again. There’s no way you’re gonna be on my 
team. Y’understand? Forget it.” 
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Zinkoff is confused. A week ago, Hobin was 
high-fiving him and calling him “The Zink!” 
And now this. 
“But I practice,” says Zinkoff. “I’m good now.” 
Hobin laughs. “You’re a loser. You lose. Go lose 
with somebody else. You’re not a Yellow.” He walks 
off, turns back. “And you can’t even walk right.” 
It’s in Zinkoff’s mind to say “But I got an A!” 
but he knows it will make no difference. 
Each team has a captain, Hobin, of course, 
being captain of the Yellows. In the days that fol-
low, Zinkoff approaches each of the other team 
captains and asks if they could use a new member. 
Each one says no. 
Zinkoff does not know what to do. 
He is tempted to tell Mrs. Shankfelder of his 
problem and let her handle it. But he thinks bet-
ter of it. 
He is too embarrassed to tell his parents, to 
admit that no one wants him on their team. 
He rubs his lucky pink bubblegum stone, 
hoping to change his luck. 
And he continues to practice. If anything, he 
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practices even harder and longer. He is not home 
for dinner on the last day before Field Day, and 
his mother has to send Polly out to find him rac-
ing cars two blocks away. And even as he gasps 
for breath walking home, listening to Polly harp 
at him, he knows what he will do. 
He gets up as usual the next day and heads off 
to school, but he does not arrive. He veers and 
walks the other way. In the distance he hears the 
late bell, and he wants to run to it, but he does 
not. He walks the streets of town. He looks at his 
feet, trying to see what Hobin sees. 
The town is the same and not the same. The 
same brick housefronts and sidewalks, but no kids. 
He feels the picture he lives in has been tilted. He 
has never been so aware of air, the space around 
him. He feels like he did when he wandered by 
mistake into the girls’ room. (He is the only per-
son he knows to have done so more than once.) A 
woman across the street in a flowery bathrobe 
leans from her front door to pick up a newspaper 
on the step. A yellow cat, emerging from an air-
shaft, studies him for a moment and darts back in. 
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He tries walking the alleys, and that’s worse. 
He’s unhappy everywhere. He is nowhere. He 
wishes to be somewhere. He wishes to be with 
people. But he cannot go to school, and he can-
not go home. Ultimately he walks to the nine 
hundred block of Willow. 
As he heads up the sidewalk he is comforted 
to see that the Waiting Man is there, even at this 
strange time of day. He waves to the Waiting 
Man and aches for a wave in return. It occurs to 
him to do a silly little dance, to see if the Waiting 
Man will smile, but he chickens out. 
Claudia, the little girl in the harness, is not 
outside today. He is tempted to knock on the 
door. “Can Claudia come out and play?” How 
silly would that sound? Him eleven years old. 
“Oh, mailman!” 
He turns. She’s across the street, leaning on 
the walker. He runs to her. He wants to hug her, 
he’s so happy she’s there. 
“Hi,” he says. 
“Hi,” she says. It sounds funny, “Hi” coming 
from such an old person. He has the impression 
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he could teach her to speak, like a talking bird. 
She reminds him of a bird, the thin legs sticking 
out from the bathrobe. School mornings must be 
the time of bathrobes. 
“Come on in,” she says. As if she knows he 
needs to be someplace. She doesn’t say, “What 
are you doing here, it’s a school day.” She doesn’t 
say, “What’s going on?” or “Where’s your bike?” 
She just says, “Come on in,” as if this happens all 
the time. 
He goes in.