Heroine(32)
Lana had a pink batting helmet that she dusted off after every practice, a shiny bat that remained that way throughout the season because she never connected it to a ball, and a glove that apparently had a hole in the middle of it even though it was brand-new. She couldn’t stop shit.
To be fair, her parents weren’t the type that insisted she play infield just because she wanted to. They knew her head might get cleaned from her shoulders. Instead, Lana was perfectly happy to hang out in right field, searching for four-leaf clovers and telling the first baseman what her mom had brought for team snack.
Carolina hadn’t come along yet, but the three Bellas, Lydia, and I were enough talent to pull us through the bracket. One by one other teams fell, their names crossed off and the scores recorded on the big sheet tacked on the side of the pop shack. We’d play three games in a day, sweat pouring out, dirt crusted in the corners of our eyes, running on hot dogs, walking tacos, and Mountain Dew. By the end of Saturday, double elimination had taken its toll, and the second team we faced was done. We lined up on the baseline, everyone clapping for them as they got their trophies, Lana too.
“I don’t get it,” she said to me, barely there blond eyebrows coming together, the tight pink skin of her sunburn creasing.
“Get what?”
“They lost,” she said. “But they get a trophy?”
“Yeah,” I told her. “They’re done. So they get their trophies now.”
Lana clapped as the coach from the other team announced the next girl’s name, the dirt on her face smudged with tears as she took hers, trying to smile as her mom snapped a pic.
“But we won,” Lana said. “They get trophies and they get to go home. What do we get?”
“We get to play more,” I told her.
And I meant it. I didn’t play for trophies or ice cream or for the chance to go home. I played because I loved it, and winning meant I got to do the best thing in the world one more time this summer, one more game in this jersey, with this team.
None of that made sense to Lana, who kept clapping for the other girls, even though I saw her kick aside a cup when we went back into the dugout, not pick it up and put it in the trash can like she usually would.
I don’t know for a fact that she missed the fly ball in the seventh inning on purpose, or that she struck out every time she batted in order to get eliminated faster. It’s hard to say because those things probably would have happened anyway. I do know that when the team stopped for ice cream later, Lana was the happiest of any of us. She ordered extra sprinkles on her cone and got selfies with all of us, even though Lydia, the Bellas, and I looked more pissed in them than celebratory, our cones half melted, unwanted third-place trophies in our hands. When she took her picture with our coach she told him he was the best coach in the world.
“And you’re the best little player in the world,” he said.
I threw my cone in the trash and walked away.
I’m thinking about this now because it’s something I’ve never been able to let go, never came close to understanding. But I’ve never been last before, never been the weak link, never been the one people clap for to encourage rather than congratulate.
I get it now. Lana stuck with the adults because they valued her talents—being cute and doing the right thing all the time. She couldn’t stop a ball or hit one for the life of her, so she steered clear of us, some primal instinct aware that if we had a chance we’d tear her to pieces to strengthen the herd.
Today is about conditioning; it’s not a race. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t all keeping track of who was first, middle, and last. It doesn’t mean that it hurts less when Carolina doesn’t wait for me to finish my two miles, heading into the school instead with Nikki, offering her water bottle since the freshman’s is empty. What it means is that the winners are going to go back to the weight room and stay awhile, a stationary victory lap.
The loser gets to go home and take an Oxy.
Chapter Twenty-Three
awkward: wanting dexterity in the use of the hands or of instruments; clumsy; wanting ease, grace, or effectiveness in movement or social situations—or—not easily managed; embarrassing
Ronald Wagner’s pills get me through the first week of conditioning, but I’m not biting the second one in half anymore once Coach Mattix agrees to let me run with everyone else. I don’t have time to go to my car after school, so I risk keeping an 80 in my pocket, once gulping down a ball of lint alongside it when Bella Center surprises me in the locker room and I just want everything out of sight.
I’ve reclaimed my place at the head of the pack, Carolina by my side, but it’s cost me. She didn’t question me when I handed her an earbud on the first day Coach said I could run. We took off together, striding in sync, my playlist powering us both. I made all two miles, the cord between us never tightening because I didn’t fall back. And if Nikki looked a little bummed that she’d lost her running partner, it sure as shit didn’t hurt as bad as my hip.
The ache radiates, swelling outward from the screws like an explosion, the debris primed to reach all the way to my toes. I never let it, stopping the fallout with Ronald Wagner’s assistance, may he rest in peace.
I’ve started checking the obituaries, a new, very morbid habit. Ronald departed this world not long after I lifted his meds, which made me feel better rather than worse since it meant he didn’t need them anymore. I got curious after that, and found Helen Whitmore. She was eighty-five, passed away after a short illness, leaving behind eight children and twenty-five grandchildren.