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Beneath us. The big black kid whose game Josh lost, is not letting up. Josh knows his name to be Saleem, and also knows that he is about to be decked.

“Get up! Get up! We’re fighting!” Saleem shouts. To which Josh shoots to his feet, and bolts straight out of the school yard, as everyone laughs.

Eventually he winds up in a school bathroom, sitting atop the toilet, so no one can see his feet underneath the locked stall. Now you’re probably thinking Josh is pretty pathetic. And I’ll tell you you’re right, since pathetic is another one of those labels that’s more about how things seem than anything else. Sure. Josh is pathetic. He was even crying for a bit. Lori and Beth and I are giving him his space right now, but we still know what’s what. But I’d say all in all Josh gets over the whole thing a damn sight faster than you or maybe anyone else in the world would, and soon enough he drifts back into the pondering of how to rescue the rabbit from the fox. And what comes next after that.

What comes next indeed.