Free Ultimate Sports by Donald R. Gallo

off our bikes an’ take us out some Gatorade that was in our backpacks, which it made them heavier an’ you wanted to throw it away back there, but you’re really glad you never did.
    We’re sittin’ there drinkin’ our Gatorade an’ tryin’ to get back to breathin’ regular an’ I go ahead an’ ast him how come.
    He said it was cause he liked me an’ cause I push him.
    An’ I say yeah, but would he keep bein’ my friend after there wasn’t no more triath-a-lon, an’ he don’t wait a minute or blink his eyes or cough or nothin’. He just says yes. So now my stomach’s
really
feelin’ all jumpy an’ I can’t tell why for sure, cause he said the right answer, but I gots to ast him will we always do things all the time, an’ he says not
all
the time, but we’ll do things, which is mostly train.
    So then I ast if we could be
best
friends, cause I always wanted one of those, an’
then
he don’t answer me for a second an’ I’m all ready for him to make up a lie, but hejust says no, probly not best friends. I hang down my head for a minute, an’ just when I’m feelin’ like I should probly wipe my nose with my cape, he puts his hand on me, like on my arm and he says, “But we’ll still be friends, Super-boy, special friends.” He says
triath-a-lon
friends. I starts to pull away my arm from him, cause it feels like not a
real
friend, but he says wait, listen to him. He says, “We’re not the same, Superboy. We like to do differnt things an’ we gots differnt innersts.” He says he’ll probly go to college an’ I’ll go to a differnt kind of school. But he says we’re the same, too. He says he gets mad jus’ like me an’ when he does he usually does somethin’ that gets him in trouble. He says we both like to do triath-a-lons. He says even though my parents—not Ma an’ Pa Kent but the for real ones—was way meaner than his daddy ever was, an’ probly that asshole Redmond, too, he had plenty to be mad about hisself, an’ that was kinda like me. He says we could probably teach each other stuff about that, even though I don’t think I could teach anybody anythin’ cause who would listen?
    Then he said somethin’ I didn’t quite understand, but it sounded like it was true. He said ’stead of worryin’ ’bout what kinda friends we
ain’t
, how ’bout thinkin’ ’bout what kinda friends we
are
, which what he meant by that was that we could always be friends about triath-a-lons an’ parents who pissed us off an’ hurt us, an’ sometimes teachers too. No matter what, he tol’ me, we’ll always be friends about those things, an’ there’s probly some other things that we’ll find out. He said people do triath-a-lons until they’re really old, an’ even if we’re in differnt places, we could train together cause we could think about each other in our head.
    An’ then all of a sudden I don’t feel scared no more,cause I don’t have to worry ’bout him goin’ away from me. I know how I can keep him. I can keep Bo my friend by always trainin’ for triath-a-lons, even though that seems like a long time when I’m tired, an’ by talkin’ to him ’bout things that we don’t like, or that hurt us. Bo says that’s a good way to find friends—you know, find out what’s the same ’bout you, an’ do some concentratin’ an’ talkin’ on that when you’re with ’em.
    So I’m sittin’ here today feelin’ about the best a guy can feel. Soon as I get this cape pinned around my neck, an’ all my stuff in Pa Kent’s car, me an’ Bo are goin’ over to the Coeur d’Alene triath-a-lon an’ pick out some bad guys what gots Kryptonite.
    An’ I’m not gonna tell ’im this, but ’til I find me somebody for a
best
friend, I’m gonna pertend it’s Bo.
Chris Crutcher
    Chris Crutcher is the highly respected author of
Running Loose, Stotan!, The Crazy Horse Electric Game, Chinese Handcuffs
, and
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
. Each of those five sports-oriented