MARBLE SEASON A SHORT STORY by SCRIBBLER OF THE YEAR DEAN HUGHES I guess Spring will always be marble season to me. I'm almost nineteen and I'm a college student now, but somehow, I still feel exactly the same as I did when I used to hang around after school and shoot marbles with the gang. I always thought that college guys should be real mature and adult, but to tell the truth, I still feel like a little kid. What I mean is, I don't feel at all different. In fact, I have the feeling that when I'm eighty, the first day that Spring starts, I'll want to get my marbles out. With me, Spring isn't connected with marbles-Spring is marble season. Well, it's still February, but the other day it got real warm and the sky got the Spring color where it's not that real summer blue, but more of a light gray blue. And everything started to get real muddy, and birds started acting like they knew it was Spring, and people started to smile and say what a nice day it was, and my little brother came home from school and got his marbles out and started counting them. He didn't go out and play because it was still too muddy, but he just knew it was time to get ready, just like I always knew. I wanted more than anything to help him count those marbles. But the end of the quarter was coming up soon with a lot of finals and a term paper to write, so I figured that I'd better study. It's a hard thing to do though. It's hard to tell yourself that you're a college student now, and that you can't play marbles any-more-especially if you still feel like a kid. I sat there for about two hours trying to cram a chapter of Physics into my head, but I wasn't retaining a thing. First, I could heard the marbles rolling around and my little brother counting out loud, and then when he got through, this sparrow started chirping outside. Marble season- 22 that's all I could think of. Well, finally I decided to go outside for just a little while before it got dark. I put on my high school letter jacket. I guess I could have worn my new coat, but it just seemed like the kind or day to wear a jacket, I stepped out of the door and just breathed in that air. I always do that, to tell the truth. It was just one of those days where you just want to breathe real deep and then say "ahhh." The sun was just a little ways above the low mountains down to the West and it kind of made everything look that soft color especially the sky-boy, it looked great. The air was still cold, sort of, but it really felt warm compared to the way the weather had been, and the snow was mostly melted away, and the leaves were all rotty looking and pushed up against the hedge. You know what I felt like doing? I don't want to sound corny or anything, but what I really felt like doing, was going dancing down the street and jumping around and stuff, like they always do in musical movies. What I did, though, I went for one of my walks over to the store. I have to go to some special place, when I go for a walk. I can't just take off and go anywhere. If I did, I'd probably just stand in one place and look a-round at things for a couple of hours. I decided to take the short cut through the old grade-school yard, though I guess it sounds stupid to take a short cut when I'm on a walk, but I love to cut through there. It made me feel this one way. It's kind of a hard thing to explain. See, that's where I went to school when I was a kid and it just seems funny to walk through there now. I look at the old cement part of the playground where they have these hop-scotch lines painted on, but mostly worn away, and I look ot the old back stairway where we used to line up when Mrs. Johnson would ring her bell for us to come in, and I look at these old past things where we used to pound erasers after school, and I look at the bike racks where we used to leave our bikes with a lock through the spokes, and I look at this big crack in the bricks that is all patched up on one side of the building, and then just feel that one certain way. If you've ever gone to a carnival and watched some kid standing by his mother eating cotton candy like mad, but holding on with the other hand and dancing around because he has to go to the bathroom, then you probably know the feeling I'm talking about. Well, as soon as I came through the opening of the big wire fence that we used to try to kick-ball over. I saw this little girl playing hop-scotch She had on these cut-off jeans and a blue shirt, and her blonde hair would bounce when she hopped. She looked real nice out there. I kind of walked close by as I walked through and I said, "Hello, little girl." She gave me one of those little girl disgusted looks and she said. "Don't call me 'little girl', please." I liked her right when she said that: I mean she didn't sound real smart like most kids act, but she didn't sound corny either. I thought I'd kid with her a little, so I said, "All right, girl." She looked at me real funny and her nose did one of those quivers, then she said, "Girl?" "Sure," I said, "You're not a big girl, and you say you're not a little girl, so you must be just a plain girl." "You're silly," She said, and then she threw this little rubber heel that was all worn off at one end, into number five. Gosh, I wish you could have seen this girl. You know how people are 23