Throwing Like a Girl (8 page)

“Why don’t you go over and say something yourself?” Marcie suggests.

“Why don’t we stretch out and start throwing,” she says back.

So we do. In the middle of stretching, Sally arrives. I completely
ignore her. As we start throwing back and forth, I look at the library, and almost wave to Rocky, who might be watching.

Coach, in the meantime, is looking up at the girders along the Peyton Plastics building, where our construction workers will gather after four.

Suddenly she says to us, “Fine. I’ll talk to someone. I’ll go after practice today.”

I glance at Sally. She has no idea what Coach is talking about, and I feel a certain satisfaction in this.

“Why not go now?” Frannie says, happy to instigate. “Take us with you.”

Coach opens her mouth.

“Safety in numbers, right?” Frannie says before Coach can utter a word.

Coach looks around at all of us. “All right. We go over, demand to talk to someone and,”—she glances at her watch—“get back here in ten minutes. Anyone not okay with that?”

When one girl raises her hand, everyone near her slaps it down and tells her to live a little. And that’s that.

In a clump, we do a team run down the school drive to the main road and take a right. We jog inside a row of orange cones and construction vehicles.

Sally’s near the back, but I can still hear her panting, “Where-the-hell-are-we-going?”

“Stay inside the cones,” Coach yells back to us. We follow her through an opening in the fence and slow to a walk as a group of construction workers notices us and one steps forward.

“Can I help you ladies?” He’s got a big old grin on his face and a belly to match.

“I need to talk to someone in charge about a litter problem created by Peyton Plastics, carried out by your construction company, and inflicted upon the Spring Valley campus. Can you help me with that?”

His smile fades, along with the brightness in his eyes. “Right over there.” He points to a white trailer with A
LCHEMY
C
ONSTRUCTION
written on the side. “You go on in, and tell Gloria about your complaint.”

We move like a huge blob to the trailer. It’s strangely exciting to be protesters.

Inside, it’s tight with all of us standing there. Coach pushes up to the front and I can’t even see the lady called Gloria, but she’s got a thick accent. “Good Lord in heaven,” she says, laughing. “I’ll be right with you ladies.”

She says good-bye to whoever she’s talking to and hangs up the phone. “Now, how can I help you?”

“I need to meet with the person who runs this job site,” Coach says.

Oh, that was good. Forceful.

“That would be Mr. Elliot. Let me look at his calendar.”

“This won’t take long at all. I guarantee.”

“And your name?”

“Addie. Lauer. I’m the softball coach at Spring Valley, and we have a bit of a trash problem on our field.”

“Oh, you’re the gals playing right in our armpit, aren’t you?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“And you say you’ve got trash on the field?”

“Every day. And every day I pick it up, and it’s getting worse. Not to mention there would be a great liability for Peyton Plastics
and Alchemy Construction if any of my girls were to get hurt by some stray piece of debris.”

“Or a flying McFlurry cup,” Frannie says, always the comic relief.

Gloria takes this in stride. “Let me see if I can get ahold of Mr. Elliot for you.”

The tiny trailer full of girls is silent as Gloria picks up the phone. And just as she does, the door beside me opens and this totally gorgeous construction guy walks in. He’s dirty and sunburned and completely undaunted by the gaggle of girls, obviously amused by the chaos. He calls out, “Gloria, are you in here somewhere?”

Everyone laughs.

“I’m here, clinging to my desk,” she says. And we laugh again, though I’m not sure how Coach is taking it. “I’m trying to arrange a meeting with Mr. Elliot for some time today. It’s a problem with the Spring Valley softball coach.”

“Not the coach, the field,” Coach corrects quickly. “Our field is getting trashed by your company.”

The cute construction guy works his way to the front of the crowd. There’s a perfect opening for me to see Coach’s face when he says, “I can help with that. I’ll take care of it.”

She doesn’t flinch, not even when he smiles, not even when he takes off his hard hat and reveals this beautiful head of black curly hair.

“Look, that’s really sweet of you,” she says, “but I want to meet with the person in charge. Our athletic director has called every day this week and gotten no response from anyone. I want this Mr. Elliot to come down to our field and see the stuff I throw into our garbage every day.”

“I can arrange that.” He’s so calm.

“Today?”

“Yes. Today.”

Gloria jumps in. “He’ll come to the field in the next hour. You’ve got my word on it.”

“Okay, then. Thank you.” Coach turns, but we’re all watching the action so intently that she can’t budge, and her great exit is foiled by the very people who convinced her to come in the first place. She leans, bites her lip. “Ella, is that you? Could you get everything moving here?”

Someone shoves me toward the door, and I struggle to push it open. I’m yanking and whirling the little door handle. I can feel everyone’s impatience and embarrassment at my inability to open it.

“Just turn it to the right, honey,” Gloria calls. “And then
pull
it.”

Pull. Thanks. Got it.

Back on the field, we’re chatty and laughing but Coach is all biz. “Okay, let’s sit on the bleachers and have a quick talk about tomorrow, next week’s practices, and our first game, which is a week from today.”

We climb onto the bleachers.

“By the way, I think that protest went really well, Coach,” someone says.

“Yeah, especially with the cute guy in the trailer,” another adds.

“Right. Mr. I-can-take-care-of-that.”

“Okay, okay. Enough,” Coach says. “And no foolin’ around when Mr. Elliot comes by. I want this situation to get better, not worse.”

We calm down a little, and she starts to talk about creating a lineup tonight, scrimmaging tomorrow, and working through our strategies next week. I feel a little buzz of adrenaline when she mentions the first game. She has schedules for us to pick up at the end of practice and asks us please to make sure we let her know if we have any conflicts throughout the season. Just as she’s about to explain our first drill, some guy crosses onto the grass from the school driveway. He’s in jeans, no hard hat, and as he gets closer, I can see that he looks remarkably similar to the guy in the trailer. The whole team is watching, except Coach, who has her back to him.

Finally she says, “Hello, is anyone listening to me?”

Mo points. I’m pretty sure we all know he
is
the same guy from the trailer.

He seems to be frowning a little when Coach turns, like he’s not sure how she’s gonna react.

“Oh, what, Mr. Elliot couldn’t make it?”

“Not exactly.”

Coach stands there with her hands on her hips.

“I’m…Mr. Elliot. Mack, actually. Mack Elliot.” He extends his hand. “And I want to apologize for the trash problem—”

“
You
are Mr. Elliot? You’re the one in charge?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You and Gloria were playing a little trick on me.”

“It wasn’t intentional. It kind of evolved.”

“Evolved?”

I hate how she keeps repeating everything he says.

“Please.” His voice sounds really sincere. “Accept my apology for that, too.”

Coach looks down. We’re so quiet that she has to glance back
at us, to check if we’re still there.

Personally, I think it’s kind of romantic.

“Umm…” She laughs and shakes her head. “I’m not sure what to think,” she begins. “I’m a little humiliated in front of my team, that’s for sure. What does this mean about my field getting cleaned?” She looks up at him. “Was that a hoax, too?”

“No. You have my word. It’ll be taken care of.”

“Your word? Great. I’ll be holding my breath. And there’s another thing.” She points to the girder eight floors up. “Those guys.” About ten workers hoist their hard hats at us.

We start waving.

“Stop that,” Coach scolds.

“Don’t worry,” Mack says. “I’ll take care of that, too.”

“But…” Debra Lester, a tenth grader, stands up. “We like that we have fans,” she says.

“Yeah,” a couple of other voices chime in.

Coach is fed up. “Okay, cancel that,” she says with a sigh. “Just the trash.”

“No problem,” he says.

Sensing his departure, we start clapping. I don’t know who started it, probably Frannie, but he stops to turn and bow and then he grins so wickedly behind Coach’s back that we laugh and hoot and whistle until she holds up her clipboard to signal it’s time to get on with practice. After all, our fans are here watching.

That night, after dinner, I help with the dishes. My father fiddles with an old camera at the kitchen table while my mother stares at me suspiciously.

“What’s that look for?” I ask.

She smiles. “You haven’t done dishes since softball started.
That’s all.”

“I would. But you told me since I had practice every day that I could go straight to my room for homework.”

She nods.

“By the way, I met this girl at school. She’s a year older and she has her license. Her name is Rocky.”

“Rocky?”

“She offered to drive me home after practice. She’s in charge of her sister and brothers. Rocky has to drive them, too.”

“She doesn’t mind adding you to the pack?” My mother glances at my father.

“She didn’t say it was a problem.”

“This girl’s doing this out of the goodness of her heart?” my father asks. “Out of left field, as it were?” He chuckles at his pun.

“Dad.” I glance at him impatiently. “She wants to talk about softball. She used to play, but there’s too much else going on at home now.”

There is some kind of over-my-shoulder secret nod of approval between my parents.

“Okay,” my mom says. Simple as that.

By lunch on Friday, Frannie, Mo, and I are unanimous that Coach and Mack Elliot would be a perfect couple, even though we know next to nothing about either of them.

“He’s just the right height,” Mo says.

“He’s got the best name, too. And that curly hair.” Frannie sighs.

“And good hands,” I add.

“Like yours when you were trying to open the trailer door,” Frannie says.

When I reenact my door-opening mishap for the third time, we laugh so hard we almost choke on our tuna melts.

“It was one of those where you can’t tell if it swings in or out,” I say in my defense, making them laugh more.

“What if she already has a boyfriend?” Mo interrupts earnestly.

“What if
so what
?” Frannie says. “He has charisma. You can tell.”

“She didn’t seem too happy about the practical joke,” I note.

“No,” Mo agrees, shaking her head.

“Come on, they’ll laugh about it one day. Y’all are such worry-warts,” Frannie says.

“Speaking of which, are you worried about the lineup Coach
is working on?” I ask.

They look at me as if I’m crazy.

“Ella, it’s not gonna affect us,” Mo says.

My heart sinks. “You mean because we won’t be starting?”

“
You
might be.” Mo always wants to say encouraging things.

“It’s only the first game, Ella,” Frannie says. “And we’re not exactly Rocky O’Haras.”

I look at her. “How do you know about her?”

“How do
you
?” she fires back.

“Well, I know she used to play.”

“Yeah, she used to play. She used to be the best player we ever had,” Frannie says.

“Then why isn’t she on the team anymore?”

Frannie and Mo exchange looks. I raise my eyebrows to alert them that I’m ready for the long story.

“It’s sort of because her mom died,” Mo says. “That was seventh grade. Her aunt helped her dad out, but then the aunt had her own family to take care of.”

“How’d she die?” I whisper.

“Cancer,” Mo whispers back. And then in her normal voice, “So, that year she came to school, but she didn’t play any sports. In eighth grade, though, she tried out and was so good they put her on varsity, which is unheard of, you know. And then again in ninth grade. But by the spring of tenth grade—that was last year—Rocky got her license, and that was the end of her softball career. The aunt went back to her life, and Rocky gave up her own.”

“Which was especially unfair because she has this older brother,” Frannie says, “who graduated last year.”

“Why doesn’t he help out?” I ask.

“Anthony is a phenomenal football player,” Frannie explains.
“Spring Valley recruited him when he was in eighth grade. They got all the kids, the whole family, into the school on scholarships because of him. Nobody was going to ask
him
to quit football or rearrange his schedule.”

“So, how do
you
know about her?” Mo asks, and I must have a blank look on my face because she asks again.

“Oh, I met her over by the lower school.”