I don't know how it happened, but I fell in love with a sixth grader at St. Charles who play basketball every recess and lunch.  I never paid much attention to her before 'cause the basketball court was over in the little kid's playground and mostly I went over to the dirt field where most of the big kids played so I could fight.  But somehow one day I found myself on the sidelines watching a bunch of big girls play basketball and I fell in love.  And I knew it was love, too, 'cause it was the same way I felt about Sister Mary Christopholous, my fourth grade teacher that year.

  I knew I was in love with her the day I saw her skip over the plywood boards Meg had laid down between the convent where the Sister's live and the classrooms.  It was all dirt field between the convent and the school, and it'd been raining hard for days; the field was all mud.  So Meg laid down the boards for the Sisters to walk across the mud to school, but Sister Mary Christopholous didn't walk but skipped merrily all the way across just like a kid.  I'd liked her a lot since the first day she'd been my teacher, but after seeing her be a kid just like me, I was in love.  But what do you do when you're in love with a Nun except be quiet about it and maybe daydream a little about her adopting you and taking you to live with her in the convent?  So I was really kind of glad when I fell in love with this big kid 'cause at least I could maybe do something about it.

  Mostly what I did was stand around during recess and lunch and watch her play basketball.  She was good.  I asked once, one of the other girls, if I could play too but she said I was too little, too young, and too short.  That made me kind of mad but I didn't fight with her.  I didn't want to bring attention on myself and have HER know I was watching her all the time.  So mostly I just stood out of the way watching and daydreaming about us being friends.

  In my daydreams we'd go to movies together and for walks and she'd make the other kids let me play basketball with them.  And of course in my daydreams I was the best player out there next to her.  But that was all just in my dreams; in real life I was getting nowhere fast and more frustrated every day.  I mean, she was just another kid like me, not a Sister or anything, even if she was older, and I felt really chicken 'cause I wasn't doing anything to get her attention.

  So one day I wrote her a note.  It was a stupid note 'cause I didn't know what to say.  I couldn't just come out and say I loved her.  I didn't know any of the words for what I was feeling, but I knew what it was wasn't quite right and that I shouldn't let anybody know about it, not even her, 'cause in a vague way I knew the feelings maybe had something to do with the way Meg was, dressing like a man all week and wearing a dress only when she went to Mass on Sunday.  But I had to say something!  So I said stupid stuff that made her and all the other girls laugh when she shared the note with them.

  Pretty much what I said was that my Mama was busy all the time with working and taking care of my mean stepfather - I only felt a little bad about that lie - and I really would like to be friends with her 'cause I thought she'd be a neat friend.  Then it took me days to get up the courage to give her the note.  Finally one day I just did it.  She'd run out of the sidelines to get a loose ball and I grabbed the note out of my blouse pocket where I'd been carrying it forever and just held it out to her.

  "Here," I said, "this is for you.  Don't show it to anybody else, please."

  As soon as she took the note from my hand I ran away to the nearest classroom building and around the corner out of sight.  Then I turned back to the corner and peeked around.  She was still standing there looking at the note, shaking her head and looking kind of puzzled.  Finally one of the other girls hollered at her to hurry up with the ball and she turned, waving the note in her hand as if to explain why she was taking so long.  So then, seeing the note waving in the air, all the girls came running over to her to see what was going on.  I watched as she read the note out loud to them, then passed it around so everybody could look at it.  She was the tallest girl there and I could see her looking over in the direction I had run.

  She saw me too on account of I was slow ducking back.  For just a brief second as we looked at each other straight on, and I tried my best to tell her with my eyes how much she had just betrayed and hurt me.  Even at that distance I saw, I thought, a faint flicker of regret in her eyes, but then she turned back to her friends and was laughing with them as they finally returned to their basketball game.

  I went straight to the dirt field and got in a fight.  I remember that one.  It was with Billy, the kid who'd broken his leg way back in first grade.  He was one of the meanest kids in school and he beat me up bad that time.  But not until he'd caught his breath from the head butt I'd launched to start the fight.  And while we were fighting I vowed to never fall in love again.

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