The Long Way Home

For eight school days in a row, Sam Becker walked home the long way. Instead of turning left on Fourth Street, he cut behind the car wash, crossed the soccer fields and followed the creek until it curved back toward his house. The detour added twenty minutes to his walk and a layer of mud to his sneakers. But it kept him far from the corner of Fourth and Birch, where Lena Ortiz sat on a low brick wall every afternoon.

Two weeks earlier, Lena had tripped in the cafeteria and dropped her tray, splashing chocolate milk all over her shoes. The whole table had laughed, and Sam had laughed the loudest, until Lena looked straight at him and her face went stiff and still. Sam had felt miserable about it ever since, but every time he pictured apologizing, his throat closed up. He decided she must be waiting on that wall to tell him off, so he stayed away.

On the ninth afternoon, rain poured down so hard that the creek path turned into a river of brown water. Sam hesitated at the edge of the school parking lot with his hood dripping, and then he turned left onto Fourth Street. Lena was standing under the bus shelter with a purple umbrella. When she noticed him, she dug into her backpack and pulled out a blue notebook with his name on the cover. "You dropped this in the cafeteria that day," she said. "I've been trying to return it all week, but you never come this way anymore."

Sam stared at the notebook and asked, "So that's why you wait here every day?" "No, I wait for my little brother," Lena said, "because the elementary school gets out at three-thirty." Sam looked down at his soaked sneakers, took a breath and made himself say it. "I'm sorry I laughed at you. It was mean." Lena was quiet for a moment before she answered, "Yeah, it was, but thanks for saying it." When her brother came splashing up the sidewalk, Sam walked the rest of the way with them. The short way, it turned out, was not so hard after all.