Play The Field.

Once we got back into school, September seemed to fly by, with almost nothing note-worthy happening. Even my birthday seemed like a fairly normal day; all we did was have cake and presents with some of the family... and Frank of course. Even with the additions of a few new students to our class, neither of us made any attempt to get to know them. We were perfectly fine just having... each other.

Our teacher this year was Mr. Simpson, who'd been teaching at the school for at least twenty years. I thought he resembled Santa Clause a bit, what with his rotund figure and gray beard. He was a very nice man to all of us, much more so than Ms. Kresin had been and he didn't seem to find it odd at all that Frank and I were constantly joined at the hip.

It was around the middle of October that things started to get a bit different. I started to notice that Frank didn't learn as fast as I did, and while I often spent half of the class having free time, he would sometimes be working almost until recess. I assumed that he just took his time, but it wasn't until the day I decided to actually try and help him that I realized just how much trouble Frank had been having.

The sheet we had been doing was on basic adding and subtraction, which I whizzed through. After reading at my desk for almost ten minutes I glanced over at Frank, who was sitting two desks over from me, only to see that he had stopped doing his work. Tears were running down his face and I could hear him sniffling quietly. Mr. Simpson was on the phone with someone from the office so I decided to get up and help Frank myself.

"Frankie, what's wrong?" I asked, pulling my chair over to him. He looked up at me and wiped his eyes, which were puffy around the edges.

"Why am I so stupid?" he whispered, barely coherent over the murmur of our classroom. "Why can't I be smart like you?"

"Frank, you aren't stupid," I said, reaching over to give him an awkward one armed hug. "What do you need help on?" He sniffed and slowly slid his arms off the table, revealing the sheet we'd been given. It was smudged nearly gray with eraser marks but it was plain to see the numerous answers that had been jotted down and then wrote over.

"I don't get it," he murmured, refusing to look up at me as I went over the worksheet. "I just don't get it and I feel so stupid!" I could see why Frank might be having a bit of trouble; from what I had determined, he was a visual learner, or someone who learns better by having things shown to them. Our teacher had given us some basic lessons on the board but not by using any real life examples, which is what I was going to try to see if that helped Frank.

"Let's look at this one," I said, pointing to the first question, which was three plus two. "Let's say that I have three apples and you have two apples." I drew two stick figures on his page, one being me and the other being him. Underneath I drew circles to represent the amount of apples we had. "If you gave me your two apples, how many would I have?" I handed him back his pencil and after pondering over the drawing for a moment, he actually looked up at me.

"...Five?" he asked uncertainly, smiling sheepishly at me.

"Good job Frank," I said, giving him a quick hug. "What about this one?" This question was even simpler, seeing as it was one plus one. He looked at it for a moment, his head tilted thoughtfully to the side.

"Well... I'm one person. And you're another person. So, that makes us two people. Two?" I only smiled and hugged him tighter.

Within ten minutes, Frank had completely finished his sheet and joined me over near where the wooden blocks were kept. It made me feel... proud, of myself, that I was able to help my best friend do something.

At that point, things still were pretty well the same between us. We were clearly best friends, and Frank still had his affectionate streak. If anything, it had seemed to get a bit bigger.

However, it was around that time that I had my final soccer game of the year, and at said game, I felt the first stirrings of a feeling I would come to know as jealousy.

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This game wasn't going to count towards our final rank in the league; it was pretty well just for fun, seeing as we'd had our final tournament the previous weekend. In a way, I suppose that's what I'll always miss about playing sports when I was far younger. The older you get, the more it seems that your team is focused on competition than just going out there and having fun.

At the time though, I knew nothing of how crippling defeat could be, nor did I know just how satisfying a single victory could be. I just knew that soccer was fun and my parents thought I was good at it. It also helped burn off energy, which I had a surprising amount of.

After the game, our coach gave each of us a small medallion with our names engraved on the back of it and a foot kicking a soccer ball on the front of it. We also got Popsicles like usual and it was when we were eating those that the incident occurred.

There was a little girl who played on my team by the name of Tiffany. I never bothered to learn her last name before the incident and afterwards, I certainly did not want to know it. I suppose she was a cute girl; round face, a gap between her front teeth, light brown hair that was always tied back in pigtails. She was the kind of the girl that would grow to be rather plain looking, yet still have guys hanging off her arms.

And she was the one who kissed Frank.

Him and I had been sitting on the bench, talking about what movie we were going to watch when he stayed over that night, when she just plunked herself down on the other side of him, holding a dripping pink Popsicle in her grubby hands.

"Hi Frankie!" she said enthusiastically, not to mention a bit loudly.

"Hello," he murmured, gazing down at his shoes. Even after almost a month and a half of first grade, Frank still hadn't gotten close to anyone but me. To be truthful, neither had I. I just didn't see the need of having other friends when I had one as good as Frank. As far as I could remember, neither of us had ever spoken to Tiffany, so her coming over to us was pretty random.

If I thought that was random though, you can only imagine my reaction when she simply leaned over and planted a sloppy, sticky kiss on Frank's cheek. He immediately sprang away from her, nearly landing in my lap in the process.

"Eww!" he squealed, wiping furiously at his cheek. Tiffany merely giggled and scampered off again, going over to sit with her friends on the grass. Frank continued muttering under his breath and scrubbing at his skin, while I could do nothing but sit there, my stomach doing back flips. I didn't know why I felt like that, but I did know that I never wanted to see that happen again.

Even that young, a part of me was already scared that if Frank liked Tiffany back, he might want to start hanging out with her more than me. I didn't want that to happen, for obvious reasons. I hadn't even learned what the proper name for it was and I already knew what it was like to be jealous of someone.

Later that night though, my very own green-eyed monster was tamed by Frank himself, as we sat under a blanket fort on my bed, using flashlights for illumination.

"Mikey, I really didn't like her doing that," he said, referring to the kiss of course. "It was all sticky and wet and..." He trailed off and shuddered, which brought a smile back to my face.

"So, you don't wanna kiss her back?" I asked, biting my lip gently and looking down at my Superman sheets.

"Eww, no," he replied, scrunching his nose up. "That's just icky. I don't like her and you don't kiss people you don't like." My grin only grew wider and I looked up to see that his smile almost mirrored my own. Only seconds later though, he quickly leaned over and kissed me once on the cheek before assuming his former position. I could feel my face heat up as I blushed dark crimson and he giggled, that adorable laugh that would stay with him his entire life.

"What was that for?" I finally asked, after getting my voice back.

"Well, you're my best friend and I'd much rather kiss you than her any day." At the time, I merely thought that this would be a one time incident and that Frank would forget about the kiss by the next day.

Boy, was I ever wrong.