Cricket

“It was kind of my fault,” I said. “A lot of it happened when I was in middle school.”

“That’s still a kid,” my friend Bill said. “Nothing you do before eighteen even counts.”

I looked at my lap.

I didn’t feel any better.

“You know,” Bill said, “my high school girlfriend was a Munchausen victim. I’ll tell you the story if you can beat me at darts.”

“I think you’re going to tell me the story anyway.”

Bill was a foot taller than me, so he gave himself a handicap. He had to hit three times in Cricket; I only had to hit once.

He sipped his drink between turns while my shirt rode up as I tried to reach the board. By the tenth round, he was slightly behind. I aimed for the twenty and watched it land true.

I jumped up and down. “I won! I won!”

Bill’s face was split in a grin.

“You said you’d tell me the story.”

We sat down. Bill turned his body away from me.

“I couldn’t handle it.”

“What?” I said. “That story sucks.”

“Look, I was living out of a van at the time.”

“Sure.”

“I’m not a bad guy,” he said. “Right?”

My friend wasn’t looking at me.

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t believe in bad people. I believed people did good and bad things, and once you had done it, there was nothing you could do about it. This moment was the only one that mattered.

“No,” I said. “You’re not a bad guy.”

He still wasn’t looking at me.

He didn’t feel any better.

Bill didn’t talk to me much after that.