Collation

<r>On Monday afternoon, Scotty was walking home from school with a friend. They were</r><a>Monday morning, the boy was walking to school. He was in the company of another boy, the two boys </a> passing a bag of potato chips back and forth <a>between them. The birthday boy was trying to trick the other boy into telling what he was going to give in the way of a present.</a><r>and Scotty was trying to find out what his friend was giving him for his birthday that afternoon.</r><a>At an intersection, without looking, the birthday boy stepped off the curb, and was promptly</a> <r>Without looking, he stepped off the curb at an intersection and was immediately</r> knocked down by a car. He fell on his side<r> with</r><a>,</a> his head in the gutter<r> and</r><a>,</a> his legs <r>out</r> in the road<r>. His eyes were closed, but his legs began to move back and forth</r> <a>moving</a> as if he were <r>trying to climb over something.</r><a>climbing a wall.</a><r>His friend dropped the potato chips and started to cry. The car had gone a hundred feet or so and stopped in the middle of the road. A man in the driver's seat looked back over his shoulder. He waited until the boy got unsteadily to his feet. The boy wobbled a little. He looked dazed, but okay. The driver put the car into gear and drove away.</r><a>The other boy stood holding the potato chips. He was wondering if he should finish the rest or continue on to school.</a>

<r>Scotty didn’t cry, but he didn’t have anything to say about anything, either. He wouldn’t answer when his friend asked him</r><a>The birthday boy did not cry. But neither did he wish to talk anymore. He would not answer when the other boy asked</a> what it felt like to be hit by a car. <r>He walked straight to his front door, where his friend left him and ran home. But after Scotty went inside and was telling his mother about it, she sitting beside him on the sofa, holding </r><a>The birthday boy told his mother what had happened. They sat together on the sofa. She held </a>his hands in her lap<a>.</a> <r>and saying, “Scotty, honey, are you sure you feel all right, baby?” and thinking she would call the doctor anyway, he suddenly lay back on the sofa, closed his eyes, and went limp. When she couldn’t wake him up, she hurried to the telephone and called her husband at work. Howard told her to remain calm, remain calm, and then he called an ambulance for Scotty and left for the hospital himself.</r><a>This is what she was doing when the boy pulled his hands away and lay down on his back.</a>