A Thousand Paper Cranes
By Reiko Anne Nguyen
Original Publish Date: October 14, 2005

Summary: Benny never thought he'd find another adventure quite like pickling the beast. Little did he know that freshman year would prove to be anything but ordinary. Varsity hazing trials, dead bodies, and town secrets are bound to be revealed.

Chapter 3: The Girl Next Door
"He thought back on the day he first met Jane Reynolds,
and wondered what would have happened had he not
met the girl who introduced him to baseball—the game
his life revolved around."

In his anticipation, Benny ran towards the front porch of the Reynolds' residence which, unlike his own home, was well-maintained and had been improved throughout the years to include extra rooms for the growing family. The only flaw the structure had, however, was that it had been built much too close to Benny's house, making it very easy to not only converse between windows, but to also see and hear what should not be witnessed. Needless to say, the Rodriguez and Reynolds families did not have many secrets to hide from each other.

"Goodness, look at you!" The oriental face of Sue Reynolds illuminated as she opened the front door and enclosed Benny into her arms. "You must have grown at least half a foot since I last saw you!"

Benny returned the petite Japanese woman's warm embrace. "How was Hawaii?"

"Wonderful, of course," she chirped as she gently pulled away from him and sighed. "Janie made first place in the Youth Ballet Competition, you know?"

"She told me."

"Did she now?" Sue mused. "Then why you haven't told her about your summer incident with…oh, what was it called? The Fat Animal?"

"The Beast," Benny chuckled. "You heard about that already?"

"From the prodigy's own mother," Sue said in mock seriousness as she raised her right hand up.

She then laughed before dropping her hand to pat Benny's shoulder, knowing it was time to end their conversation. "You can go ahead and see her upstairs," she said. "I'd escort you myself, but I absolutely have to see that scatterbrained mother of yours. She still has my blender, you know."

And then Mrs. Reynolds closed the door behind Benny, leaving him to enter the house and be greeted by the pleasant smell of pine and soap.

Unlike his own home, which was sparsely cluttered with old decaying furniture, the Reynolds' house was always brightly lit, well furnished, and impeccably clean. Benny removed his shoes in the doorway—a custom the Reynolds family enforced, and then walked down the hallway with an idiotic grin on his face. He laughed silently, realizing how much the valley felt more like home now that his best friend of ten years was back.

"What's with the smile, Rodriguez?" A cheerful voice suddenly chirped.

Startled, Benny snapped his head up to the top of the staircase where a slim figure stood watching him, and then he smiled a little more. Janie.

The young girl stood with her hands behind her back, and her soft, dark brown hair tied in a messy bun. She looked just as awkward as always with her solid white dress hugging her thin form and her stainless steel braces plastered on her smile.

"Hey you," she greeted excitedly before hopping onto the rails and sliding down the staircase.

Benny's eyes widened as he watched her accelerate towards him, and before he could even register to move, Janie had crashed onto his chest and enveloped him in a chock-hold hug.

"I missed you so much!" She squealed as she pulled away and vigorously ruffled his already-disheveled hair, completely unfazed by the dust and dirt that floated all around.

"Jesus, Janie! Way to make a guy feel missed. I think you broke one of my ribs," Benny said as he nursed the side of his torso.

"Yeah, I've gotten pretty strong. Take a look at my squirt guns!" Benny chuckled as she pulled up her nonexistent sleeves and flexed her thin arm. "That's the work of three ballet programs a week. Go me!"

"Impressive," Benny mused. "But not as impressive as this," he added as he pulled his shirt up to reveal the ripples of his abdomen. "This is the work of a hundred push-ups and crunches a day, plus seventy hours of baseball a week. No classes necessary."

"Impressive," Janie retorted as she raised one of her naturally curved eye brows. "You're not a stick anymore. Good for you! I never would have thought that my tall, scrawny friend would grow to have a nice set of abs and some man boobies."

"They're called pecs, Janie."

"They're bigger than mine!"

Benny dropped his shirt down and burst into genuine laughter. "Really? Why don't you stand next to me so we can compare pec sizes then?"

Janie squealed in alarm as Benny lunged towards her and tickled her knees—pretending to lift up her cotton white dress.

"Come on, Janie. It's nothing I've never seen before."

"Playing doctor when we were seven does not count," Janie said in-between fits of laughter before shoving herself away from Benny. "And is that really all you can say after I've been gone for two months? Couldn't you have said something like, I missed you too, Janie, or I was so bored without you!" Then she paused. "Or…maybe you were just too busy being the center of neighborhood gossip to really care, huh?"

"What? You know about that?" Benny questioned her with a hint of disappointment. "I was saving that story for when you got here."

"And let you do the exaggerating? Please."

Benny chuckled at her playfulness. "Alright, Janie. Alright. Sit down and let me tell you about my summer before you have another hissy fit."

Benny found himself describing the events of the summer with details his last English teacher would have been proud of. As he told his story, Janie continued to smile and laugh, apparently in good spirit. But then again, it was always her nature to smile. The girl was a complete optimist, or so she tried to be. "I hate school," she'd say. "But I like learning."

As a child, Janie grew up to be extremely versatile. Her father, who was once a trouble-maker in his younger days, encouraged his daughters to take up activities fitted for boys. In fact, when asked by his mother (an immigrant from England) what kind of intellectual knowledge he had passed onto his children, he answered with "the art and skills of poker, Madame."

Finding no amusement in her son's way of upbringing his children, Diana Laidley Reynolds often visited in an effort to "make proper ladies" of her granddaughters. In time, Janie became skilled in not only baseball and cheap card tricks, but also ballet and the piano forte. Her French, however, proved to be a disgrace.

Sue Reynolds, although kind and soft-spoken, also kept an iron hand when it came to raising her daughters. She was a devout Christian, a strict mother, and a traditional thinker who brought her children to mass every Sunday mornings, ensured that they accomplished all their chores, and never accepted an academic grade lower than an A. Needless to say, Janie and her sisters were instilled with the values of right and wrong, commitment to God and family, and the importance of educational brilliance.

One would think such children would feel trapped and overworked, but that was not the case for Janie, especially when absorbing information was so natural to her.

To the world, Janie was the goody-goody two shoe they wanted to avoid. But to Benny, she was one of the most passionate people he had ever met. Despite being academically intelligent, Benny knew Janie could be absent-minded when dealing with mediocre things. He knew she was a heavy daydreamer who put fantasy before logic, and frequently tried to see "the sunny side of the street." That was a quality Benny admired about his best friend, but it was also a quality that made him protective over her. She was naïve—a child who never let it cross her mind that people could easily screw her over.

Like their own mothers, Benny and Janie were as different as night and day. No one could understand how these two dissimilar individuals, much less a boy and a girl, could become best friends.

But Benny understood it.

He thought back on the day he first met Jane Reynolds, and wondered what would have happened had he not met the girl who introduced him to baseball—the game his life revolved around.

The year was 1952, and it was a Saturday morning when four-year old Benny sat on the steps of his own home—as usual. None of the other children ever asked him to play, nor did he have the courage to join them himself. It always disappointed him when he spent his afternoons sitting on the front porch, waiting to be approached, only to watch the other children return home without ever looking his way.

Then, one morning, Benny was invited him to play a game of hide-and-go-seek with a group of boys. No one would fully understand the elation that swelled in this little boy's heart. No one, that is, except for the strange little girl who lived next door…

Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds were proud to say that they had the love and adoration of three little Einsteins, thank you very much. At the moment, their middle daughter, Janie Reynolds, stood on the porch with her granddad, who sat on the rocking chair with a book on his lap.

"And then, Prince Charming swept Cinderella away…on his Tritone Cadillac Speedboat Five-Thousand. The end." The old man shut the book pensively before turning his attention to his granddaughter, who only continued to give him a blank stare. He chuckled, knowing full well that she couldn't understand much of what he was saying.

"Nap, Janie?"

That, the little girl did understand, and she scrunched her nose in distaste before jumping off the porch, intent on staying awake. She began to run up and down the lawn when the sounds of laughter caught her attention.

"What an idiot!" Benny heard a boy jeer from outside the trash bin he had hid in. It was locked, and he was trapped inside.

"Open the door! Open it! Open it! Help!"

Despite Benny's pleads, the taunts continued, and he felt the trash bin tilt back and forth until it fell on its side with a loud thud. Benny cried in pain as his chin slammed against the interior of the empty trash bin. He then held the aching pain in his jaw as tears fell freely from his eyes, but the rocking did not stop. And just when it seemed as if Benny was going to vomit from the constant motion, he heard a high-pitched voice shriek from across the yard.

"Stop!"

"What are you gonna do about it, little girl?"

Benny tried to cease his crying, wanting to decipher what was going on outside. All he could hear, however, was the sound of another child squealing in distress as his bullies turned his attention towards her.

"You better shut it, or I'll break your doll."

Benny may not have been able to see what was going on, but he feared for the girl.

Suddenly, a solid pow echoed through the air, shortly followed by a whimper, and then gradual crying. What confused Benny, however, was that it was not the crying of the expected little girl.

"She hit him!" Benny heard the boys say with disbelief. "Run! Run before her Jap mom comes out."

Footsteps faded into the distance, leaving behind a calm silence. Not long afterwards, the door opened, releasing the odor and allowing Benny to breathe fully.

He crawled out and found himself facing up to a little girl. His savior. Her hair was slightly messy as curly strands of very dark brown hair escaped from her braided pigtails. She was short and chubby, and she looked down on him in the same way his mother would when Susan and Adam would ostracize him from their games. She stood holding a strange looking doll with shiny black hair and eyes that very much resembled the little girl's. They were small, brown, and almond shaped. They were foreign eyes to Benny, who had never seen an Asian child before.

"Herro. Watashi wa Jein desu. Namae wa?" Benny gave her a strange look as tears stopped falling from his face. A little embarrassed that he was rescued by this strange, alien girl, Benny stood up and pushed her down.

"I don't understand this taka-waka thing you're saying!"

And with that, he ran home with as much pride as he could carry, but not before trampling the hina doll the other boys unsuccessfully broke.

One year later, five-year old Benny stepped out of his house and found himself face to face with his neighbor and enemy, Jane Reynolds. After exchanging a couple of juvenile insults, Benny inquired her about the bat she held in her hand.

"It's a baseball bat," she said knowingly before striking a haughty expression. "Here. Let me show you how it's done."

Benny had been too curious to let his pride reject her demonstration. He watched as she held a white ball in her hand, tossed it in the air, and flawlessly hit it with her wooden bat.

Of course, Benny stubbornly told her that baseball didn't seem as hard as it looked, and she earnestly wanted to prove him wrong. She handed Benny her baseball bat and, sad to say, Benny was sent to the hospital with a concussion.

"Look at the bright side," Janie had said before the paramedics had taken him away. "You hit the ball!"

A week later, Janie presented Benny paper cranes as an apology gift. It was what sparked their friendship to begin with.

She claimed that a thousand of them would grant him one wish, and so a thousand paper cranes is what her tiny hands mustered. She had every intention of making Benny wish himself back to health, as was the norm, but Benny didn't think anything of it. Even as a five year old boy, Benny wasn't much of believer, especially with an older brother and sister who found pleasure in disproving the existence of Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. No, Benny was more of a skeptic, and he didn't believe folded paper could grant wishes.

Disclaimer: "The Sandlot" was written and directed by David M. Evans. I do not own anything related to the movie other than this fan written fiction and the original characters I have created through my own imagination. I assure you that this piece of work does not make any profits, nor will it be published in the future. Copyright infringement is not intended.