Week 6 Theme 2

Using plain, "ten-center" words, predominantly Anglo-Saxon in origin, write a theme about someone or something you love passionately.

3pm, just outside Shanghai. Two boys sit at the window of a Beijing-bound train. The summer heat is just barely too much for the air conditioner, but they don’t care. They’re staring at a board between them covered in grid lines. Flat white and black stones sit where the lines meet. The train bumps over the track, and the stones shudder in matching time. They smell like glass and palm sweat.

The younger boy clicks a black stone against the board. Another slips from his palm and crashes into the careful pattern on the board. The older boy sniffs it before he throws it into the bowl it came from. As he thinks, the younger boy fixes the arrangement.

“Why don’t you go there?” asks a slightly wider boy watching from across the aisle. The older boy puts his white stone elsewhere. “No, that’s a mistake. You should go here.” The wider boy takes the stone. The older boy clicks down another and stands up. “Listen, Fatso, I already thought of that. Give me the piece.” Fatso pulls his arm back. “Come on, think about it.”

The older boy sits down on the other side. “I did. Look, Fatso, if you think you know better, why don’t you take my spot?”

Fatso does, and he grabs a handful of white stones as he scoots into place. The older boy pulls a black stone out of the younger boy’s hand. Moist with sweat, it slips out of his fingers as he puts it down. It clatters into place, but the young one picks it up again. “He’s right. I was feinting.”

The older boy reaches for another stone, but the young one grabs his wrist with clammy hands. “Look, this is my game. If you want to play, take your spot back.” As the older boy ponders whether he wants to watch Fatso lose more than he wants to play, he smells his wrist. It smells like glass and palm sweat.