Rene leaned on the locker next to Garrick's. "I gotta tell you something. When you said the thing about the Tuesday lunches? Seventh grade? He took my Twinkies, too. Every Thursday. Fourth period. For like a year." He shook his head. "I forgot about that till you said it. Then I remembered and I got so mad I couldn't sleep. Isn't that stupid? Twinkies. Five years ago."
"It's not stupid."
"I never said anything either." Rene looked at the floor. "Nobody did. You know? He's just Shug. He's just like that. It's like weather."
"It's not weather," Garrick said. He was surprised at how sure he sounded. "Weather doesn't know what it's doing."
Rene looked at him for a second. Then he grinned his goose grin. "Man. Who are you? Where's the quiet guy? Did you eat him?"
Garrick almost smiled. "Maybe."
"Well, I like this guy better," Rene said, and banged the locker with his palm, and went off down the hall.
Saturday morning Garrick and Shug ran poles. You run from the foul pole in left field along the warning track to the foul pole in right, and then you walk back, and then you run again, and by the twelfth one your lungs feel like wet paper bags and by the twentieth you stop thinking about anything at all. The sky was low and gray and there was a mist coming off the river that hung in the outfield like smoke. Coach Amundsen sat in the dugout with a thermos of coffee and a copy of the Des Moines Register and counted out loud without looking up.
They ran side by side. They did not talk. Shug was faster, but somewhere around pole fifteen Garrick realized Shug was not pulling ahead. He was matching him. Stride for stride. Garrick did not know if it was an insult or a courtesy and he was too tired to work it out.
On pole twenty-six Shug said, without looking over, between breaths, "You've been using it. All this time."
"Since sophomore year. At school."
"Before that?"
"Basement. Backyard."
They ran. They reached the right-field pole and slapped it and turned and started the long walk back.
"I knew it the first day," Shug said. "Sophomore year. First day of practice. I saw it in the corner and I knew it."
"You never said anything."