Summary

While watching the Tigers play on TV, the anonymous first-person narrator spots a blonde girl, her assumed boyfriend, and his family in the stands. The girl, sporting a “Big Ten” (125) sweatshirt, is texting.

The narrator knows his son “texts his life away” (126), but “writes him letters” (126). The narrator envisages the girl’s conversation with her “BFF” (126), whom he names Marcie. She plans to dump him as soon as she gets to school, the narrator imagines, adding, “She doesn’t type the obvious: how pretty she is, how doors just seem to open, how she’ll have a million friends and guys calling her, texting her, how she’ll go to parties and not remember him, how she’ll forget all of this” (126). The boyfriend, according to the narrator’s story, suspects nothing. “He still thinks she likes baseball. She doesn’t...