The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(81)

He squinted against the summer haze. The sky was drawn in pastel crayon. Bugs like tiny tangles of fishing line dangled in the air, flickering against the bare skin of elbows and temples and ears. He swiped the sweat from the back of his neck as Dave Chu—his teammate during the regular season—emerged from the dugout and strode toward home plate. Of course they were putting up Dave, a top-of-the-lineup kid, who could be counted on for a base hit or a walk, setting the table for better players to come up after him and drive him home.

Now Dave stepped into the batter’s box and stared directly into Ryan’s eyes, furrowing his eyebrows. He backed up and knocked the red dust from his cleats, then took a practice swing and stepped back into the box. Something was different about him. It had been there since he’d hooked up with Elisabeth Avarine after the function—a feat that had amazed them all.

Across the field, three girls scaled the silver bleachers and settled down to watch them. New girls, always new girls, eighth graders who’d be freshmen in the fall. They already knew who he was. They’d already made up their minds. Touching temples and giggling into their palms as they looked him up and down. He might fuck one or all of them next year, at some party, and then never speak to them again. That was what they expected of him, and maybe what they wanted.

Beyond the outfield was the road, and beyond the road the marsh, through which a bike path wound southward toward Sausalito and San Francisco.

This was the path, they said, that Tristan Bloch had taken to the bridge. The kid had been weird. The kid had made everyone twitchy. There’d been the fight at the swimming pool (which, no one seemed to remember, Tristan, not Ryan, had started). And then he had written that note. Cally Broderick herself had delivered the note to Ryan, begging him to do something—anything—gazing up at him with that Save me look, extending her palm, the note tucked inside like a bomb to disarm—and Ryan had taken it. Had done what she wanted him to do. At first the note had merely shocked him, made him laugh out loud. Then he had reread the note and seen it for what it was: an act of aggression. Tristan Bloch, grade eight, had made an open declaration of love—love!—with no euphemism, no qualifiers, no self-protective irony, no restraint, no regard for the laws of modern courtship or middle school.

Afterward, Ryan had been suspended and grounded, and his parents had made him shut down his Facebook account. He’d set up a new account days later, using a fake name until he felt it was safe, and waited out his punishment (three weeks only—his parents were sick of it before he was) and went into high school and stopped talking to Cally Broderick and rarely thought of Tristan Bloch again.

And when he found himself awake in the middle of a night too hot to sleep, Ryan would roll from his bed and open his closet, kneel down and scrape the shoebox of baseball cards along the floor, lift the lid and sift the cards to find the square of binder paper underneath, and unfold it, the paper worn soft at the creases, the handwriting faded, pale blue ink—Dear Cally Calista Broderick. You might not think I watch you but I do. Only on these rare occasions did Ryan allow himself to ask why Tristan Bloch had written this. To wonder, briefly: How was it possible to go through life so blind, so unafraid?

On the pitcher’s mound, Ryan set and glared at Dave Chu, holding his grip on the ball.

Dave Chu didn’t flinch.

Ryan tugged his cap over his forehead. He imagined himself from the outside: a knife blade of shadow shielding his eyes. Hair burnished gold beneath the cap. Body tall and trembling with potential energy, muscles tight, developed and defined, strong jaw raised as he scanned the diamond. The ball nested in his glove. He brought his fists to his chest, as if in prayer, and tried to appear not only desirable but formidable to Dave, who waited, bat cocked, at the plate.

Ryan turned his head and spat. Tobacco tingled in his lower gums—he’d told Coach Gifford it was Big League Chew and Coach Gifford had been happy to look the other way. Now, behind the first-base line, Coach was showing Grayson Paul, a scrawny sophomore, how to hold a bat. Where to place his fingers, whether to choke up, something so instinctive to Ryan that he had never needed to learn it—in T-ball someone had handed him a bat and he had imitated the players on TV, and the bat had instantly belonged to him.

Mill Valley sports ran on an unspoken rule: Don’t favor the kids who are talented, because this will make the untalented kids feel bad. Despite this bid for equality, this enthusiasm for mediocrity, the untalented kids always knew who they were. The whole thing was pointless, maddening. Infuriating that Ryan should fight for attention with the likes of Grayson Paul—that Coach should focus on this kid who was clearly on the express train to accountant-ville, while Ryan, who had the potential for actual greatness, stood neglected on the mound.

Ryan slapped the ball into his glove. Cracked his neck once, twice. Dave Chu waited. Behind him, the catcher, Jonas Everett, crouched and started flashing signals between his legs. Curveball. Slider.

Ryan shook his head. Split-finger fastball was what he wanted, his specialty. He wanted to hurl the ball down the center of the plate, to rip a gash in, tear the fibers of, that perfect summer day. Jonas finally gave the signal for the splitter. Ryan nodded.

Ryan wound up and lunged forward, energy flowing from the muscles of his legs and back to the arched tips of his fingers as he released the ball and it spun straight toward the plate and dropped abruptly before finding the catcher’s mitt. It was a perfect pitch. Had it been slower, even a girl could have hit it. But it was fast, and Dave Chu, for all his newfound confidence, was not its match—he flailed at it, too high and too late.