“I don’t think it’s safe, Lump,” he said for the millionth time. He was shielding his eyes and squinting up at the sky. “Look at the sun coming down right on the ice. I think we should wait another day. I got a bad feeling about this.” 

“What?” I said incredulously. “Now I can’t play just because you’ve got some weird voodoo feeling? Uh-huh, no way. You’re not making me sit out just because you left your bat at home.” 

I was the league leader in Wapps (that’s what we called goals) and I wasn’t going to let Tyler King, who was three Wapps behind me, get ahead just because I was afraid of the sun. 

I rode down the hill to the lake and yelled over my shoulder that I’d see Bones at school the next day, unless he was going to be a complete fluffoon and stay and watch. When I got to the edge of the lake and looked back up the hill, Bones was gone. 

Toward the end of the game, I looked back up at the hill and Bones was back, just standing there next to the Basket Barge. I remember thinking that the big doofus didn’t have anything better to do than watch a Wappa Ball game—and why in the world did he have a rolled-up hose in one of the Barge’s baskets? I shrugged it off. Bones was always doing weird stuff like that.

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