"Are there try-outs? Cuts?"

"Not unless we get an unusually large enrollment, no. But don't worry, after seeing you play I don't think you've got anything to worry about."

"Okay. Thanks!" Liam nods to the teacher and picks up his gym bag. He leaves the school with a smile on his face.

Outside the weather is perfect. The sky is blue, the air is warm and a light breeze blows across the school ground. He looks upward as he walks, eventually stopping altogether so that he can stare into the sky. His gaze moves to the grass, to the gravel beneath his feet, to some houses in the distance. Finally his eyes wander to the small forest that lies on the other side of the nearby playground. He squints a little; he sees Elizabeth sitting against one of the trees, looking up at its branches. He walks toward her.

As he approaches he sees that she's not in a good mood. Her teeth are set tightly together and her hands hold a small branch, which she breaks slowly into pieces. When he walks up beside her she jumps slightly, startled, and he smiles widely. She smirks a little and turns away from him. "What are you doing here?"

"I figured it was my turn to suddenly impose. What's up?"

"Nothing, everything's the same." She looks up at him. "Why do you ask?"

"You don't seem excessively happy. Shouldn't you be dancing around and talking to the trees and stuff?"

She laughs a little. "Is that what you think I'm like?"

"Sure." He kneels down. "You usually seem in pretty good spirits."

"Maybe, but I don't talk to trees. Trees don't talk back."

She's silent for a moment before he says, "So come on. Tell me what's bothering you. I know you must want to, so let's get started."

She smiles. "You know, I don't take well to people telling me what I want."

"But only because they don't really know what you want, right?"

"Yeah, mostly." She breathes in slowly, drawing her resolve, then speaks. "I was talking to one of my teachers today. Just about a small point he'd brought up in class, but the further the conversation went, the more insane he started sounding. Eventually he was disagreeing with me on every fundamental premise that I hold as important, things that I just can't imagine anybody arguing against. Basic human rights, the ability to decide for yourself, just thrown out the window, and eventually I had to ask him, point blank: Do you have any respect for humankind? And he said no. Straight out. How the fuck can somebody say that? I couldn't even talk to him anymore, and as I was leaving he had this crooked little smirk on his face, like he's the one who'd won. The equation got too complicated so he just threw it away, and now he's the one who's got it all figured out. I can't describe how much I just hated him." She looks down at the ground as she clenches her fists. "I wished that for one second, I could just make him feel that hate, to just stab him in the brain with it, to let him understand how I just can't live on a planet with people like him..." She looks back at Liam and sees that he's still smiling. "What are you smiling about?"

"You're talking about having respect for human beings and then saying that you absolutely hate one of them, and that you'd hurt him if you could. Isn't that a little contradictory?"

"I'm talking about having respect for individual potential – the fact that we're limitless, that there's nothing we ultimately can't do. If anything, it makes me more inclined to hate the people who've rejected the idea. Especially people like him, the "scholars", who have all the information I have but don't face up to it. They don't just act confused or stay out of the debate entirely, they insist that there's something wrong with us, that human beings are terribly flawed, that we should all just go away. Do they think that I don't know about the problems of the world? Do they think they know something I don't? I've seen the world, I know about all the horrible things that happen all the time, but I see past them. I don't just fall into the mistakes of the human race and accept them as me, because I'll never be like that. But they know that they're just going to fuck things up worse, so they try to pretend that's how it has to be. Whatever they are, they're not the same as me, and we can't both use the same name for ourselves. So I'm going to be the representative of humanity, and the rest of them can just fuck off."

"You're getting a little heavy on me here." He gestures toward the treetops. "Look at this day: this is no day to be angry about those people. One way or the other they're always going to be around, in our lifetime anyway, so you've just gotta forget about them when you can. After a point, it just doesn't serve a purpose anymore."

"I know." She scrapes a line into the ground with her foot. "I'm tired of complaining. It's kinda fun for awhile, having people agree with you about what's wrong with things, but it doesn't really go anywhere. And sometimes it doesn't seem worth discussing things at all. People either understand or they don't. They're awake or they're dead. It's tough to go halfway."

He sits down, getting comfortable in the dirt. "I knew this one guy from before I moved who I just clicked with like that. We completely took it for granted that we were friends, because it came about so naturally. We rarely talked about world issues, no debating philosophy, we just knew that we were both different from everybody else. We didn't always agree about everything, but we had a real respect for one another. It was like in movies – they touch on it sometimes, the characters who have integrity, who talk straight, who don't fool themselves about how things work. You know, the guys you can count on. Fuck, the good guys. That was us. Other people would be all wrapped up in whatever bullshit they'd constructed for themselves in the world, but we had enough in ourselves that we didn't have to be anything else. Straight as an arrow, like pillars. We weren't technically any stronger when we were together, but we could see our own strength through each other. By yourself it can be easy to lose, but when it's reflected off someone you can always see it. I've been having a hard time getting that feeling back since I moved."

Her eyes have lit up and she's watching him attentively. "Do you know how crazy it is for you to just say that to me? Nobody would do that. The people I know, they have to hide things like that, they can't talk about what's really important to them. Maybe they don't have anything important to them, I don't know." Her gaze leaves him. "But I've felt what you were talking about, except that for me it's always the opposite; I realize my strength by watching it reflect off other people's mental laziness." She looks back. "Do you know how lucky you were to find that guy?"

"It never seemed like luck. We didn't even talk about it. We just knew. Don't you have anybody like that, the one friend who really sticks out above the rest?"

"I really don't. I've got a closer bond with my mom than with most of my friends."

"Maybe you need to join more clubs." He pulls a racket from his bookbag. "I signed up for badminton today!"

She laughs a little. "School sports, huh? That's not really my style."

"Hey, I'm not saying everybody playing's gonna be a genius. But sometimes the halfways are okay. They may not be smart, but they're not always dumb. Haven't you ever heard that what you put into school is what you get out of it?"

"Yeah, and I hate that saying. I put in a refusal to waste my time with useless bullshit, and I come out with nothing."

"So join badminton with me. There's still time to sign up."

She actually considers it for a moment, then shakes her head. "No, it's really not my game. And they've probably got a whole separate team for girls anyway."

He raises an eyebrow. "I guess I'll have to think of a new plan to see you in running shorts then."

She looks back at him with an even glare. "I have a boyfriend, you know."

His body tenses very slightly, but his eyebrow remains raised. She explodes into sudden laughter. "Ahahaha! That's priceless!" He runs a hand uncomfortably through his hair, grinning a little, and eventually her laughter subsides. She says, "Of course I don't have a boyfriend. As if!" and starts laughing again.

He watches her and smiles, glad to see her happy. He never feels fortunate to have moved to a new town, one being about the same as any other, but he starts thinking that maybe this time it will be a little different. This town just might be okay.