Heroine(25)

“You’ll get an offer, Mickey,” Ed says. “They’re just waiting to see what you can do on that leg.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“Yep,” he says confidently. “You’ll show ’em. Get you back behind the plate, Carolina on the mound, them three Bellas on the grass. You guys will make it this year; I guarantee it. State champs, I’m calling it right now.”

“That’s ballsy, Ed.”

“Nothing to it.” He shakes his head. “I’m not jinxing it to say you’ve got conference champs buttoned up. Sectional tournaments, no problem.”

I can’t really argue with that. We’ve won sectionals since my freshman year.

“District, the only team I see giving you any issue is Calcutta, and they lost that shortstop . . .”

“Vixon,” I supply.

“Yeah, Vixon. She graduated. So I say you’ve got districts.” He starts ticking off his fingers, raising them one at a time. “Regionals—”

“Is where we choke,” I tell him, more bitterly than I intended. “Every time.”

“Maybe,” Ed allows. “But you got hosed on that play at third last year.” He ticks the regional tournament off his fingers like it’s a done deal.

“State,” he says, holding up his index finger. “You’re going to get there this year, and you’re going to win.”

“That’s the plan,” I say. “We’d be the first softball team to make it that far.”

“Check your school history,” Ed corrects me. “You’d be the first ball team, period. Baseball never made it that far.”

“Nice,” I say.

Ed takes a sip of his coffee while he searches for a different topic, and the police scanner disrupts the silence from the back room, though I can’t quite make out the words.

“You hear about the dollar store?” he asks.

“I know they got broke into,” I say, but he waves that away.

“Nah, I mean yesterday. Young mother hits the ground over in the diaper section, and Dolores—you know her, she’s the one with the real short hair—she gets there and this kid, couldn’t be more than two, is tugging on her mom’s arm, trying to get her up, just crying and crying.”

“What was wrong with her?”

“She’s a goddamn idiot, that’s what’s wrong with her,” Ed says. “OD’d, right there in the dollar store with her kid holding her hand.”

“She’s not dead, is she?” I ask.

“Nope.” Ed shakes his head. “Squad Narcan’d her and she’s fine. Fine as someone like that can get, I guess.”

“Mmmmm,” I say, burying my face in my coffee cup. I take a sip, letting it burn all the way down, to meet the heat gathering in my veins from the two 80s I took right before I walked in here.

“Do you know who it was?” I ask. Chances are, if she’s that young, I’ll at least recognize the name.

“Heather Bellinger,” Ed says. “Used to be Heather Donahue; she married one of the Bellinger boys from Left Bank.”

“Shit, Ed,” I say. “She TA’d my gym class, freshman year.”

Heather was pretty cool. Even though she was supposed to check off her clipboard to make sure all the girls showered after class, she’d ignore it if some of us just ran our hair under the sink. There were some heavier girls in that class too, and one skinny girl who was so mortified at the idea of undressing in front of everyone else that Heather made sure anyone who wanted a stall with a curtain got first pick.

“Damn,” I say, sipping my coffee again even though the last swallow scalded my throat.

The scanner goes off again, and this time Ed tilts his head to catch the sound, and I glance up at the clock.

“I gotta get to school,” I tell him. “Have a good week.”

“You too, kiddo,” he says. “Be careful out there. Keep your grades up and you’ll get a scholarship, I know it.”

“See you later” is all I’ve got to say to that.

I make my way to the car, shoulders hunched against the wind, scanning the ground for icy patches as I walk. But I can’t get Heather out of my head, or the image of her unconscious on the tiles of the dollar store, a panicked toddler beside her.

I get behind the wheel and flick on the wipers, scattering the fresh coat of snow that accumulated just while I was talking to Ed. The heat comes on, and I hold my hands up to the vents, hands that were shaking a little before I took the Oxy this morning.

I think of Heather again as I pull out of the parking spot.

But I don’t have a little kid.

So it’s kind of different.





Chapter Nineteen


justification: a sufficient reason why a person behaves or acts as they do Lifting improves my spirits, especially when I get to the weight room before Aaron, and Carolina partners with me instead of him. We’re both careful with our injured limbs, her arm pale and too thin, the scars on my leg a vibrant red against the whiteness of my skin, my strong leg clearly larger than the other. We look like somebody took toddler parts and stuck them on our bodies, the muscular outlines on the rest of us wildly out of proportion.

“You sure?” she asks me, standing by as I lie down on the leg press.