Playing Nice with God's Bowling Ball
By N.K. Jemisin
A 7 year boy disappears and his best friend confesses to his murder. The police begin an investigation that leads them down a mysterious path.
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Plot Summary
Jeffy, a 7 year old boy, goes to the police station to confess to the murder of his friend Timmy after the latter mysteriously disappears. Jeffy begins his confession to Grace, the police officer that is handling Timmy’s case. He tells her that he and Timmy go to buy Monster Fusion King cards every week when they walk home together. Jeffy says that one day he ends up buying a special card that Timmy really wants from him. They made a deal and Timmy trades Jeffy 3 cards in exchange for his special one. Later, Jeffy finds out from his classmate that the card he traded is worth $300. That same night, Jeffy’s mom is crying because her car broke down. She says that she needs $300 to fix it or she’ll have to take money from their rent and then they won’t have a place to stay. Jeffy calls Timmy to get his card back. Timmy told him that it’s not his fault that Jeffy didn’t know how much the card was worth and he wants to keep it because the value might double. Jeffy offers him all of his cards and everything else he owns, but Timmy says Jeffy will never be able to trade him anything cool because he’s poor. Timmy jokes that Jeffy would have to trade him a black hole or the moon. Jeffy takes this seriously and makes an actual black hole. He tells Grace that he told Timmy how to take care of it and he didn’t know Timmy would get hurt. Grace thinks this confession may be some sort of cry for attention and she doesn’t take it seriously. She later visits Timmy’s home and sees a huge hole in the middle of his bedroom that looks like “someone dropped God’s bowling ball”. As the investigation continues, the police lose faith in their leads and think Timmy may have just been playing with explosives and ran away from home when he damaged his parents’ house. Upon further research and talks with Jeffy’s mom, Grace begins to believe his confession. She meets him after school one day and he tells her that he went to stop that black hole from spreading to the center of the earth and swallowing everyone. He’s been containing the black hole in a coffee container because he doesn’t know how to safely destroy it or hide it yet. Grace takes the coffee container from him in exchange for another rare Monster King Fusion card and tells him she’ll keep it safe.