Heroine(67)

I’m thinking about that when Carolina throws her next pitch, the curveball I signaled her for. It spins, red stitches still bright against the white leather because not many people have put a bat on it today. It’s a beautiful thing, capturing my attention and drawing me in. I reach for it, conscious once again of the power it has over me, the never-ending draw of this sport.

There’s a crunch and a thud, an exclamation from the crowd.

My glove is lying on the plate, ball nestled neatly inside. I don’t know why it’s not on my hand, or why I’m facedown in the dirt either. The ump is waving his arms above me, calling timeout, and the batter from Baldwin Union is on the ground with me, apologizing.

I have no idea what just happened.

Mattix comes running, as does the Baldwin Union coach, who gathers up her batter and walks her down to first base, telling her it wasn’t her fault.

“That’s interference, Coach,” the ump says to Mattix, and she nods, her mouth a tight line. I’m sitting up now and Carolina has joined the growing crowd at the plate. She yanks the helmet off my head, straight up instead of back, catching my earlobes and pulling hair as it goes.

“What the hell, Mickey?” she asks, voice low and face down in mine.

I meet her eyes, unsure. “What happened?”

“What happened?” she repeats. “You reached for the damn ball, stuck your arm out like you’re a first baseman or something. Batter took a crack at it, got you instead.”

“Oh,” I say.

Coach gets me to my feet, and there’s scattered, confused applause from the bleachers. This is the second time they’ve seen me on the ground this year for no good reason.

“Oh?” Carolina echoes, any concern for me now overridden with irritation. She’s about to say more, but Coach sends her back to the mound.

“Let’s go, Catalan,” she says, keeping an arm around my waist. Coach gets me into the dugout and strips the gear off me wordlessly, handing it over to Nikki. Mattix waits until the inning starts again and no one is paying attention to us and then checks my hand.

It’s swelling, but I don’t think anything is broken. A dark bruise is already starting across the fine bones on the back, but I can move all my fingers and manage not to yelp when Coach gives it a squeeze. She crouches in front of me, somehow intimidating even when she’s the one looking up.

“Mickey,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going on with you.”

I open my mouth to explain about Benadryl and Red Bull, how beautiful a softball can be when you haven’t really looked at one in a while. She doesn’t give me a chance to speak.

“But figure it the fuck out,” she says.

Coach walks away from me. I don’t play the rest of the game. Nikki does well catching for Carolina and the two of them are laughing by the fifth inning, all concern for me evaporated. It’s a close game, and I’m forgotten, everyone else lining the fence and yelling, their voices echoing in the dugout, bouncing off the cinder-block walls.

I don’t join them, instead icing my hand and watching the melt accumulate in a puddle around my feet. Dad comes to talk to me, a definite violation of Coach’s rules about family in the dugout. He’s digging me into deeper shit than I’m already in so I say very little to him, and he walks away looking more worried than he did when he came over.

I don’t let it bother me. Try not to care about the backs of my teammates, their jersey numbers lined up in front of me, missing my own. I don’t think about Nikki doing a more than okay job of filling in for me, the absolute disappointment on Coach’s face, or the concern on Dad’s.

I don’t have to care about these things because I’ve got a trapdoor out of reality, a button I can push that will take me somewhere that none of it matters. As soon as I get home there’s a box under my bed that will take away what everyone thinks and how they all feel about me right now.

Even me.

Especially me.





Chapter Forty-Four


healed: sound or whole; cured of a disease, wound, or other derangement; restored to soundness or health

When you’ve been seriously injured no one lets you forget it. Not your parents, your friends, your coaches, and definitely not receptionists at doctors’ offices. I get a text reminder about my last checkup as we’re unloading equipment from the bus after an away game that I made it through without falling over or getting hit by anything.

“Shit,” I say under my breath, thumbing away the text.

“Booty call cancel?” Carolina asks. She’s in a good mood because she struck out the first nine batters against Franklintown.

“More like I’ve got a definite date with some radiation,” I tell her, hoisting my bag over my shoulder as we cross the parking lot to our cars.

“X-ray?”

“Yeah, last one. I hope,” I say as I throw my stuff in the trunk. The school let us have senior parking spaces, and we could paint them however we wanted if we paid fifteen bucks. Carolina and I bought side-by-side spots and stenciled in our team record from freshman year on, leaving an area blank for this season. That’s in my spot, and we never got around to filling it in, not even the first win. After spending a whole week of the summer on our hands and knees on boiling blacktop, neither one of us has even mentioned it to each other. Right now my bumper hangs over that part, our neglect neatly hidden.