JASON BELL'S LESSON
by Max Reif

continued from page 1



       "Wait a minute," I announced to everyone on the field as I finally stood up. "You all think I'm Edward, and he's Jason. But I'm not really Edward,  I'm him." And I pointed at Jason in front of me.    
      "Huh?" Jason taunted further. "Have you gone crazy now , too?"       Everybody laughed. They laughed at me! Nobody had ever laughed at me before.      
      Then the bell rang and we all had to go back to class. I went "home" to Edward's house after school that day, and I knew that "Edward" went to my house.    
      Don't ask me  how I knew where Edward lived. I didn't know. But my feetsomehow, they did.
      Why did I follow them? Well, for one thing, I wanted my dinner, and I had
nowhere else to go! Mom and Dad weren't going to believe that Edward and I had switched bodies. Nobody would believe that!      

     Edward's house was in the poor part of town, down across Olive Street , where the old tenements were. I found myself treading up the walkway of an unkempt, one-story frame house that stood between two ancient, crumbling apartment buildings . Wild grass and weeds grew in clumps here and there in an otherwise dirt-bare front yard.    
      An old, white-haired woman was standing on the front porch.
     "Edward, where you been?" she asked in a thick accent as I came up the walk. "Grandma's been worried!"    
      So Edward lived here with his grandma. What happened to his parents, I wondered? It must be hard being taken care of by someone so old, and who wasn't even used to being in this country herself . She couldn’t show you how to do stuff you needed  to learn. Could she take you to the ball game? The video arcade?    
      Entering the house, I had a big surprise! It wasn’t the nice, wooden table in the dining room, or the neatness of the simple living room with its sofa and breakfront displaying vases and fancy dishes. Nothing like that. Those were little surprises . The big one was that as I walked through that front doorway into the house, for a minute—I cared! I forgot to think of Edward—oops, I mean of myself—as a geek! It was a nice, soft feeling. It caught me by surprise. After a minute, though, I recovered my usual attitude.    
      The house smelled good. Dinner was on the table: a big bowl of soup with fresh vegetables and meat, and big hunks of homemade bread. Grandma wasn't much in the landscaping or house repair departments, but she sure could cook!    
      After dinner I did my homework at the dining room table with a laptop computer. Now, I don't exactly know how to say this. Myself, I'm an ok student. I might be better if I wasn't waiting all day every day at school to get out to the playing field.
      But when I started to do Edward's homework, I found that there were, like, extra rooms in my mind—nice, bright ones! The math homework was not just easier. I could almost do it in my sleep!  And when I finished it, I found myself playing number games he had on his computer, ones far more advanced than I'd ever seen, just for the fun of it! Fun and numbers? Those two things had definitely not gone together for Jason Bell!    
      I read a story from our story book, because we were supposed to answer a page of questions.  The story was about a boy in Africa going on a hunt with his  father to save his village from starving.
      When I started to  read, right away I started seeing the story, like I was the boy. In my mind I lived through the whole thing in full color—trekking through the parched land; waiting in the bushes with my father for days; and finally, watching Father lunge at the zebra with his spear.
      I helped Father cut up the meat. We carried it back to our village together on a kind of sled.
      Wait a minute,
I suddenly thought. I don’t read, except to get finished! Jason Bell doesn’t see stories like he’s living them. That must be part of Edward’s mind!    
      Could it be that Edward’s really more than a geek? Why, becoming that story was as good as a trip around the bases with a winning run!    
      I went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and had some milk and cookies. Grandma had gone to sleep. I sat there alone for a long time, the refrigerator humming in the background. I was thinking about the fact that this fat jerk I’d become seemed to have as rich a life as me— the former me . I mean, as the best athlete in the school!  That was something to think about!       But then an even bigger surprise came. I went into Edward's room to get ready for bed. Turning the light on, I jumped! Hanging from the ceiling were big models of each planet in the solar system. Rocket ships were flying between them. Big dragons and other space monsters lurked in the deeper reaches of space. On every shelf and the dressing-table were little clay , painted models of circus animals and acrobats and clowns !    
      Edward made these things? I felt practically like I was in a museum! If it’d been my room—I mean if I really had made all this stuff with my ownhands—I’d feel proud!      
      Well, I thought about the whole thing some more, lying there in Edward's bed. The last thought I remember is imagining myself landing on his big model of Jupiter. Then I fell asleep and dreamed about an Interplanetary Baseball League where Edward and Jason Peter and the other kids at school joined together and beat a team of 3-headed fire-breathing lizards from a distant star, who were going to gobble up the earth if team lost .