Plunked (16 page)

“You sure your wrist is OK for this?” Dad says as he drops me off for practice on Tuesday. He doesn't usually drop me off, but he is working from home again. His office calls them flex days, and they're to save on commuting costs because a lot of people drive a long way to get there. I wish we had flex days at school.

“What?” I say.

I remember, and I'm about to start digging myself out of the hole I just fell into, but when I look over, he has a half smile on his face.

“Yeah,” I say. I can't help but smile, too. I want to ask him how long he's known, if he bought my story for even a second. But I don't. This is one of those things you don't talk about. He knows, and I know he knows. That's enough. I still lied to my parents. Boy, did I. Best to let a thing like that drop.

“Fit as a fiddle,” I say as I open the door. I know he likes that one, so it's like my way of saying thanks.

And then I make my way across the field, and all I have to deal with is the team I let down on Saturday. I feel nervous and kind of weirdly shy. I need a baseball, like, now.

“Toss it here,” I say.

“Who? What? Me?” says Morgan.

“No, your mother,” I say, and OK, maybe it's cheating to warm up with a fifth grader instead of Dustin, who's right behind him. I'm just not up to the team captain today, and Andy's not here yet.

Morgan throws me the ball, and we spread out for some long toss. He doesn't talk much, which is fine with me. I keep an eye on Coach the whole time. As I do, I see other eyes watching me.

Finally, Coach finishes taping up Tim's ankle. Tim is a big believer in the power of tape, and he must've gotten dinged up in the game.

Coach stands up and heads toward the field. His eyes lock on me right away.

“Hold it,” I say, tossing the ball to Morgan. I swallow some spit and head toward my death. I'm trying to figure out what to say, or at least how to start: “Listen, Coach” or “OK, so the thing is…” But I don't even get the chance.

When he's still six feet away from me, he says, “You ready, Mogens?”

“Yeah,” I manage.

“Good,” he says, and keeps walking.

That's it? It doesn't make any sense. I just got a free pass from my dad and my coach, not ten minutes apart. And then I realize: He knows, too. Not about the tape and the excuses and all that, but he knows I skipped the game, and he knows why.

I remember the last thing he said to me: “It's been a pretty rough stretch for you; better catch a breather.” I just thought he was talking about starting the game on the bench. That's what everyone thought. But now, I mean, it's almost like he knew.

I start to turn around. Some breather, I'm thinking. And that's when Andy punches me in the arm again. “Hey, dingus,” he says.

“Aaaaaa,” I say. “Same spot.”

“Got a ball?” he says.

I point to Morgan, who's standing there watching us.

Andy gives me a look, like: Why are you warming up with this kid?

I give him a shrug, like: Whatever, he's cool.

Then Andy holds up his glove. “Throw me the ball, little dingus,” he calls to Morgan.

A few minutes later, practice starts. Practice starts, and I'm still on the team. I'm not a starter anymore, but I mean, that's what I'm here for, right? “Three of you thrown out on the bases, two at the plate,” Coach is saying. “I have never been so sick in my entire life. Never
before has the game of baseball filled me with such a powerful urge to puke my guts out. To puke my
considerable
guts out.”

It's hard not to smile when Coach says things like that, but he would go ballistic if any of us smiled right now, so we bite our lips and do our best.

“I have no idea how we won that game,” he continues. “But we won't win another one with base-running like that. What we need is a dictionary. Does anyone have a dictionary so we can look up the word
slide
?”

I know what's coming. I have never, in all my time on a baseball field — in all my
considerable
time on a baseball field — been so happy to do the lawsuit drill.

I'm going to have to bat today. I know that. I'm just glad I don't have to start with it. I sprint over to get near the front of the line. I'm right behind Katie. I swear it's a coincidence, mostly. I pull my hat down low so no one can see where my eyes are. There are all kinds of reasons to be glad I'm still on the team.

Then I reach down and button the back pocket of my practice pants. I'm going to be sliding, and I wouldn't want the card to come out, even if it is junk.

So, to give you an idea of how I'm doing, I'm trying to make myself feel better by thinking about that recurring nightmare. At least you can move your feet this time, I tell myself. Then I look up and see Coach going into his windup.

I take a deep breath, but that's all the preparation I get done before the pitch is on the way. For a second, I think I'm freaking out again, just being paranoid and overreacting. But I'm not: Coach really is pitching me inside.

I manage not to dive backward or anything like that, and I take the pitch. I tell myself that it was a ball, but that's stupid because this is batting practice. The emphasis is on the first word.

I take another breath. Of course he's pitching me inside. Because that's what I need to hit. That's what
I need to show him. I step back in. Fine, I think, pitch me inside. I'll stick out my butt, and you can hit a former major leaguer in a protective practice sleeve. Chuck “The Wagon” Wagner isn't mint condition anymore, anyway.

That loosens me up a bit. The next pitch comes in, inside half, and I put a swing on it. I'm a little late and foul it down the first-base line. But it feels good, just that contact, the force of the bat hitting the ball going through my hands and up my arms. You can get so caught up with the idea of the ball hitting you that you forget that you're supposed to hit it. I think that's a little funny, too.

I step out. I can see that Coach is ready to start that little mini windup that he uses to deliver his lollipop pitches, and I know I'll probably get yelled at for this, but I hold up my hand.

Coach looks at the stop sign, and I guess maybe he doesn't know what to make of it. He doesn't go into his windup, though. That's important, because there's something I have to do.

First, I sort of dig my front foot in. I twist my toes into the dirt a few times, then I settle my weight onto my back foot. They always say: Sit down on the back leg. So that's what I do. Next, I take four swings, two fast and two slow.

“All right, Garciaparra!” Coach shouts. “Let's go!”

I intend to. I'm sick of this.

The pitch comes in. I'm not surprised when it's on the inside half of the plate. In fact, I'm counting on it. I start my swing early.

My mind is screaming to get away from the ball, and I'm still thinking of that nightmare. But I don't care. This is a meatball pitch on the inside half, and I know it's coming. I turn on it like I've always turned on pitches like this.

I feel the contact. The vibration shoots up my arms and goes right down to my feet. It's not that bad, stinging contact, either. It's the sweet, clean kind. I send a screamer down the third-base line that nearly takes Andy's head off.

“There you go!” shouts Coach. “Base hit!”

Andy is looking in his glove to see if he has it, but he doesn't.

I dig in for the next pitch. I'd like to say it's a homer, but it isn't. It's on the outside corner, and I get under it and lift a can of corn to right. I manage a few more liners before my turn is over, though. It's just BP, but it's something.

Coach calls Geoff in for his turn at the plate, and I grab my glove and head out to left. I don't read too much into it. Left field is still Geoff's. A few line drives aren't going to change that. It's a start, though.

“Tryin' to kill me?” Andy says as I run past him.

He's talking about the line drive. I can't think of anything clever to say, so I just smile. It's a full smile, teeth and everything. It's the first one in a long time, and it feels good.

After school on Wednesday, Andy and I are riding our sixth-grade cars downtown. My sixth-grade car is a Huffy, and his is a Schwinn.

“Wanna jump it?” Andy says, nodding toward a lump of dark brown dirt.

We're riding along the stretch of pavement behind the supermarket. It's somewhere between a driveway, an alley, and an actual road. It's where the delivery trucks pull up, but there are none here now. The market sells potted plants, and it looks like maybe someone dumped some out or ran some over or something.

“OK,” I say. I start pumping harder and stand up in my seat to get more power. I sit down right before I hit the lump and lift up on the handlebars to help with the jump.

It doesn't matter. The dirt isn't hard enough, and my wheels just cut ruts in it as they roll over. I fishtail a little at the end, but I don't go down.

“Lame,” says Andy.

“Lame,” I say, and we pedal on into the parking lot.

Andy dodges a car as it backs out of a parking space.

“Jerk!” he yells. Then he turns to me: “They didn't even signal.”

You don't have to signal when you back up. I mean, there is no backup signal on a car. “Jerk,” I say, anyway, because it's not worth pointing that out.

I feel like a dork with this helmet on, and I bet Andy does, too. But we have to wear them here. (A) It's the dumb law, and (B) there are too many people downtown we know, and they'd tell our folks. So it's like we're legally obligated to look like dorks. All we can do about it is call people jerks and attempt to jump over anything in our way.

We hop the curb onto the sidewalk and pedal on, looking for the next thing. Then we spend another half hour or so just tooling around downtown before we start hitting the same roads and alleys and sidewalks for the second and third time.

Behold downtown Tall Pines! There's just not that much to it.

“Pharmacy?” I say.

“Yeah, OK,” says Andy.

We coast to a slow, thumping stop in the bike rack in front of the Tall Pines Family Pharmacy. Then we get off, take off our dorky helmets, and fasten our dorky bike locks.

“Your hair is deeply disturbing,” I say to Andy.

“You got a little helmet head going on yourself,” he says.

I smooth mine down, and he pushes his up into a faux hawk.

“Are you going in like that?” I say as we push through the door.

“Why not?” he says, but when I look back I see him smashing it back down onto his head.

We walk over to the magazine rack to check out the comic books and stuff. I realize I'm a little nervous, and it's not because this month's comics are in. I still haven't really told Andy about, you know, everything. It's something I have to do. He covered for me, and, I mean, I think he sort of knows anyway. Not telling him would make me a jerk, a real one, so I've got to bite the bullet and do it. If I don't do it soon, he'll go ahead and ask. And just him having to ask will make me at least half a jerk.

He holds up
Maxim
magazine so I can see the woman on the cover.

“So…” he says. “You heard anything about Campbeltown?”

That's who we're playing next. Campbeltown is a section of Tall Pines, and definitely not the main section, either. They have their own little school and their own team, though. You'd think they wouldn't be that good, because there aren't as many kids. The ones they have are big, though, like big farm kids.

“I don't know,” I say. “They kind of took it to us last year.”

“Yeah, but J.P. wasn't pitching,” says Andy.

“Yep, and I don't know if those two really big kids are still on the team.”

“At least one of them must be too old by now,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, “the bigger one.”

“Can't argue with that logic,” he says.

“Hopefully they're both gone.”

“Yep. Why weren't you at the game Saturday?” he says.

I carefully put back the magazine I'm holding. I don't say anything right away, and neither does he.

“Because I'm a jerk.”

“True,” he says. “Still doesn't explain it.”

“Well,” I say. “You remember the week before?”

“Yep,” he says.

We aren't looking at each other. We just keep picking up magazines and comic books and putting them back.

“When I got hit in the head?”

“Not like it's a vital organ for you, but yeah.”

“And then I got drilled by jerk-butt?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I had enough of getting beat up with the stupid ball.”

“I played four innings,” he says. “No one hit me.”

“Yeah, well, thing is,” I say.

“Yeah, what's the thing?” he says.

“I was scared. Like seriously scared. Like I've been having nightmares.”

And now I've said it and I'm embarrassed and relieved and worried about what he's going to say and whether he's going to tell anyone. He doesn't say anything right away, which doesn't help. He picks up another magazine and flips it open. He looks at one picture, then closes it and puts it back.

“Everyone's a little scared of the ball sometimes,” he says. This time, he looks over.

I look over, too. “Yeah, but I was, like, a lot afraid of the ball, all the time.”

He looks back at the magazines and raises his hand to the rack. But then he reconsiders and drops it.

“Well, get over it,” he says, at last.

I just look at him.

“What do you think I've been trying to do?” I say.

“Don't give me that,” he says, and now Andy is looking me right in the eyes, daring me to disagree.

“What?” I say. “It's true.”

“You weren't trying to get over it on Saturday,” he says.

I start to say something, but I stop. He's right. He's just standing there, staring at me.

“I was trying to get
away
from it,” I say.

“Exactly,” he says. That's check and mate, but Andy doesn't even want to win this one. “Just … I don't know…” he says. “GET OVER IT.”

The cashier cranes his neck to look over at us.

I want to say something. I want to say: Well, I'm trying now. But he knows that. At least I hope he does. I was at practice. I took my cuts. We're both quiet for a little while. The cashier looks away.

“Sour Patch?” Andy says. He is physically addicted to Sour Patch Kids.

“Yeah,” I say. I want to say something else, something smart or funny, but I don't. The kind of comeback I need can't be made in a pharmacy.