Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this.
A/N: Using the wild card square in my cotton candy bingo (characters as children).
Warnings: Racist remarks (in keeping with playground language...kids are not very kind to each other at times).
Juan sniffed and wiped the snot from his nose with the back of his hand. He blinked away the rest of his tears, not wanting to cry in front of the older boys. Everyone was watching, and Juan's lower lip was starting to tremble, because his head hurt and he hadn't wanted to come to school in the first place.
Miss Stahl, his first grade teacher, hated him. She was always giving him time outs and taking away toys when he was playing with them, or giving him mean looks. And today, his mom had forgotten to pack him a lunch. His day had just gone from bad to worse during recess when Ethan and his friends started to pick on him, calling him names like, 'bastard,' 'Spic,' 'retard,' and his most hated name of all, 'baby'.
"I ain't a baby," he said, sniffling.
He rubbed at the back of his head and winced. There was a large lump forming from when he'd hit his head against the pavement when Ethan had shoved him.
"Then how come y're cryin' like one?" one of Ethan's friends asked, and he loomed over Juan, and pushed him.
Juan tried to hold his ground, but the other boy was bigger, and he ended up falling on his ass and scraping the palms of his hands on the asphalt. He balled his hands into fists, and shook with anger.
Before he could stand up and go after Ethan and his friend, a dark shadow blocked the sun, and the view he had of his tormentors. Juan's eyes grew wide as he looked up and saw that it was one of the big boys. Clarence Morrow, known to everyone, even teachers, as Clay.
Juan's heart thundered in his chest, and he tried to scramble backward, out of the big kid's way. Clay was in the fifth grade, and nobody, not even Ethan and his buddies messed with him.
"Hey, kid," Clay said, and he held a hand out for Juan to take.
Juan stared at the hand, not sure if he could trust that Clay wasn't just playing a trick on him. It was a big hand - a hand that could cause a lot of damage if it wanted to. Clay's knuckles were scraped and bruised in places.
"I ain't gonna hurt you," he said, and then he crouched down low, so that he was directly in Juan's line of vision.
Juan could feel everyone's eyes on him. He could hear them snickering. Could hear them talking about what a baby he was, and his eyes felt hot. He blinked the tears of anger and humiliation away, and glared at Clay.
"I am not a baby," Juan said, enunciating each word very clearly.
The last thing he needed right now was for everyone to make fun of his lisp. He went to a special class every Thursday morning, and did nothing but pronounce the letter s and soft c's, and other letters that gave him difficulty.
"I know you're not," Clay said. "You gonna sit on the ground all day long, or would you like a hand up?"
There wasn't any anger in Clay's voice. No indication that he was mad at Juan, or thought he was being stupid, or a baby.
When Juan didn't move, Clay sat down beside him, like it was the most natural thing in the world for a fifth grader to sit down next to a first grader. Juan glared straight ahead, too afraid that he was making this up in his head.
Mrs. Winston, his speech therapist, said he had a very vivid 'magination, because he was always telling her wild stories about what his real father did, and why he wasn't around. He liked to think that his real father was an astronaut, or that he was a spy with the CIA, or that he was someone really important, like the president.
In reality, his father was a deadbeat. Or, at least that's what his mama always said when she talked about him, which wasn't very often, except for when she was high, or when one of the guys she'd been dating left her. Juan didn't mind when her latest boyfriend, Michael, left, because he was mean to both of them, always hitting him or his ma for no reason.
"So, you like sitting here?" Clay asked, and Juan, jarred out of his thoughts, jumped a little. Clay put a hand on his shoulder, and Juan tensed.
Juan shook his head. He didn't like sitting in the middle of the playground. Didn't like all of the eyes that were still on him and Clay. What he really wanted to do was swing, or maybe go on the merry-go-round and spin around and around, clinging onto one of the bars letting his legs fly out behind him. He was real good at it, too. He could hang onto the bars no matter how fast the merry-go-round was spun. He was better at it than anyone in his class, better'n even Jackson, who was in the second grade.
"Then why don't we get up, and go play some basketball, or..."
Juan turned and looked at Clay as though the older boy had lost his mind. He didn't play basketball. He was short, and tripped a lot, and no one had ever asked him to play basketball before. He found himself nodding, even though he didn't know why.
Before he knew what was happening, Clay was helping him to his feet, and he was trailing after the older boy, right to the basketball courts where other big kids were waiting.
"Who's the shrimp?" one of them, a boy with tight curly hair and eyes the color of the sky on a sunny day, asked.
Juan stood to his full height and stuck his chest out. He wasn't a shrimp. Clay wrapped an arm around his shoulders. It made him feel important, and special.
"This here's Juan Carlos," Clay announced. "He's going to play basketball with us."
Juan swallowed and looked up at Clay, wondering how on earth the big kid knew his full name. There was a crooked smile on Clay's face, and he squeezed Juan's shoulders.
"Hell, Clay," one of the other boys said. He gave Juan a rather disgusted look. "The ball's bigger'n him. How's he gonna play ball with us?"
"Yeah," the first boy, the one with the bright eyes, said. "If I toss the ball to him, he'll be flattened, like a pancake."
Both boys laughed, and Juan felt his temper rising. It was the one thing, if his mother could be trusted, that he'd inherited from his father. He saw red, and would have launched himself at the two boys, bigger or not, had Clay's hand not been on his shoulder, holding him back.
"Easy, kid," Clay said. "Alex and Filip are just trying to get under your skin. Ease up, guys."
Alex rolled his eyes, and Filip shrugged his shoulders, but both boys made room for him, and Alex tossed him the ball. Juan caught with both hands, grunting with the effort. But, he didn't want to look like a baby, so he eyed up the basket and concentrated real hard on it. He held his breath, stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and tossed the ball up in the air, toward the hoop. It was short, and his shoulders sagged.
"Hey, that wasn't half bad," Filip said, tossing an arm around Juan's shoulders.
"Yeah, you practice some, you'll be making baskets in no time at all," Alex said, tossing him the ball again.
Juan got so caught up in listening to Filip and Alex's tips for how to play ball that he didn't notice when Clay walked away, leaving him with the other boys until the bell rang and it was time to go in. He looked around the playground, spotting the older boy with a girl who had long, dark hair and a pretty smile. Clay met his eye and gave him a smile and a wave. Juan returned the wave and then ran to class, feeling like maybe things were going to start looking up for him.
Let me know if you liked this, please review. Thanks. :-)