Joshua Malbin307 12

St. Apt. 8Brooklyn NY 112151

The Pebble and the Mustard JarTwo little boys sat on a gravel pile by a construction site, pitching pebbles at an empty mustard jar they'd set on the pavement at the pile's edge. Most of their shots bounced off the side, orbounced off the bottom of the jar and then back out, because the gravel pile was nearly eight feethigh and they hadn't grown out of being clumsy yet. Sometimes one of the bigger stones wouldknock the jar over and one of them would foot-surf down the pile to set it up again, and then climbback to the top by jamming his sneakers into the gravel like it was snow.Finally one boy made a perfect shot with a little reddish pebble: it hit the far side of the jar's lipfirst with a little >clink<, and then ricocheted into the bottom. He slid down the slope for a closerlook. He had to confirm it was still in there for the point to count, and you couldn't see anythingfrom way up top. Before he reached the bottom, though, the other boy threw another stone thatcaught the front lip of the jar and toppled it, spilling the first boy's little red stone.The first boy whipped around. “I still get the point,” he said.“No way,” the second boy said. “What for?”“For that red one.”“You didn't make any red one.”The first boy looked at the ground near the jar, trying to pick out his stone from all the othersscattered on the blacktop that suddenly looked just like it. Had it really been red? He hadn'tlooked at it all that much when it was in his hand. He had only seen it for a second while it was in

Joshua Malbin307 12

St. Apt. 8Brooklyn NY 112152

the air, and then again when it got spilled. There was a red pebble on the ground here, but it lookedredder than he remembered. He picked it up.“See?” he said, holding it up to show his friend.The second boy shook his head. “No way, doesn't prove anything.”There had to be a way to prove it. The first boy rolled the pebble around in his palm. He waspretty sure he had made the shot. “If I didn't make the point, how come you had to knock it over?”he demanded.“I was just still playing. I thought you were leaving to go pee,” the second boy said.The first boy looked around for an adult to back him up, but it was early afternoon and most of the parents in the neighborhood were at work. Nobody was on the street, nobody had seen. Heraised his fist. “Are you saying I'm lying?” he said.“I'm just saying I saw it bounce out,” the second boy said. “You saw it wrong.”The first boy was a little bigger than the second boy, and tougher, and almost always beat himwhen they fought. So if the second boy was sticking to his story, he must be pretty sure. Maybethe pebble really did bounce out of the jar. The first boy had only seen the pebble going into the jarfor a split-second, and now that he thought back on it he couldn't really remember the image of thepebble entering the jar, passing its grooved lip. He could only remember the >clink< it had madeand the now-unprovable knowledge that it

had

made a point by staying in the jar. It bothered hima lot. He felt like there was more at stake than whether he made a point in the game, which theywere only playing anyway because the second boy's mom made them stop playing XBox and gooutside.