Heroine(66)

“Take a nap,” she says, as if she’s prescribing me something. I obey, nodding off immediately and not waking up until she shakes me forty-five minutes later. Nikki follows me out into the hallway, staying tight to my left side.

“You want a Red Bull?” she asks.

I make a face. Lydia sometimes downs a can before a game if she’s not feeling any energy. I’ve never been a fan. But I’ve never tried to play high either.

“Sure,” I say, following Nikki to her locker.

There’s still enough heroin in me that I feel it, an effervescent warmth radiating from my center. It’s an intense calm, one that won’t let me worry too much about the game, or even if people notice that I’m off. Every time I check up on myself in the bathroom it’s more of an assessment than anything, data for my arsenal of cover-my-ass moves as I determine whether the Benadryl did its job.

It did. My pupils look fine, but everything is in slow motion, and I misjudge the distance from my hand to my water bottle at lunch.

“Shit, Catalan,” Bella Right says, jumping up as the spill cascades over the edge of the table, just missing her lap.

“Sorry,” I say as Lydia runs to get paper towels.

“What’s with that?” Carolina asks when I’m on the floor, cleaning up my mess.

“People spill things,” I snap.

“No, that,” she says, tilting her head toward the Red Bull waiting for me next to my lunch tray.

“Took some cold medicine. Need something to get me moving,” I tell her.

“’Kay,” she says. “But that stuff can eff you up. Don’t wait until right before the game to slam it.”

She’s not kidding.

I down it after sixth period, and ten minutes later I’m a twitchy mess. My right eyelid won’t stop and I feel like my skin is going to shake right off my body. I’m tapping my pen so much in English that Mr. Duncaphel takes it away from me, so I start moving my legs instead, hitting one knee with the other and then bringing it back again. But the energy doesn’t go to my core. There, I’m still a little slow, very meditative. The caffeine is all surface, waking up my body but not my mind.

I change in the bathroom stall in the locker room, checking my arm before I decide whether to wear long sleeves under my jersey. My injection sites are mostly healed and the bruises are pretty much gone, but the one on my bicep extends just a touch below the edge of my sleeve. I leave it, taking the risk in order to parade the inside of my arm and hope that alleviates any lingering doubts my teammates might have.

The Red Bull has worn off slightly by the time the Baldwin Union bus shows up, and our bleachers are filling. Nikki still has to help me hook the line of clasps on my shin guards because my hands are shaky.

“You’ve got this, Catalan,” she says, slapping the top of my catcher’s helmet. The sound reverberates inside my head, and I can still hear it as I make my way to the plate. I’m moving slow, which happens when you’re wearing gear, but Carolina spots the difference in my gait. There’s a tiny frown on her face as I warm her up, the ball moving fast again, her arm in a better place.

“On fire,” I call to her when I toss the ball back, but she doesn’t answer, only wings another one at me like she’s trying to send a message. Maybe she is. Maybe she knows the threat of being hit in the face by one of Carolina Galarza’s fastballs is more of an incentive to perk the fuck up than Red Bull.

The caffeine did its job, but I’m crashing by the third inning and I keep zoning out on weird things. An oddly colored stone amid all the white gravel surrounding the dugout. The little pile of chalk resting beside third base where Coach dumped too much when she was lining the field. A little kid on the other team’s side, stacking his blocks as high as he can until they fall.

I still had enough jolt in me to get a double my first time at bat, but when the lineup comes back around I’m a mess. I strike out, my swing so far behind the pitch that Mattix raises her hands in the air from where she’s coaching third, like what the hell?

“You’re all right, Mickey,” a familiar voice calls from the stands and my stomach bottoms out.

Dad is here, seriously?

I don’t look back as I head into the dugout, tearing off my batting helmet and ignoring the commiserating slaps on the back from my teammates. People strike out, it happens. Even great hitters go down against a good pitcher, and Baldwin Union’s isn’t exactly throwing cookies.

I put my shin guards on and have pulled the chest protector over my head when I notice that the kid from Baldwin Union has the biggest tower yet going, nearly as tall as he is. He’s balancing on tiptoes, reaching up to cap it all off with a red wooden triangle when Bella Left shoves me in the back. “You taking the field or what?”

“Shit,” I mutter, seeing that somehow we ended an inning and started the next one without me noticing.

“Get it together, Catalan,” Coach says under her breath as I jog past, face guard dangling from my fingers.

Carolina and I get through the first two batters easily. One goes down looking, the next grounding out. I’ve settled into my crouch, the embarrassment of Coach reprimanding me fading, like it doesn’t really matter. Usually Coach looks at me sideways and I mull over it for three days, wondering what I did wrong. Right now, I know exactly what I’m doing wrong, but I can’t dig up the energy to care.