Fifty Seconds

My little brother made a kite out of a black trash bag, two sticks from the yard, and all the string in the kitchen drawer. He worked on it for three days. I told him it wasn’t going to fly.

We took it to the ball field behind the elementary school on Grant Avenue. He ran with it. The kite went up about a foot, turned over, and hit the grass.

“Too heavy,” he said, and he cut half the tail off.

He ran again. This time it went up over his head, and then it went straight into the soccer net.

Then the wind changed. He held the kite up, I pulled the string, and the black bag got free of the grass and went up — high, over the fence, over the trees.

“Run, Nisha!” he shouted, and he pushed the string into my hand. “You’re faster than me. Further! Run further!”

So I ran the whole length of that field with my little brother’s trash bag flying behind me, and I hoped nobody from my class was watching.

When I stopped, the kite came down slowly and landed in the grass next to him.

My brother looked at his watch.

“Fifty seconds,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll do a minute.”