𝙨𝙖𝙙 𝙜𝙞𝙧𝙡. ━ rodriguez

[ 2 ]

PREY — The Neighbourhood

My knuckles began to twist around the wooden baseball bat, blotting my hands with stains of white from the pressure of my fingers tightening.

In front of me, Kenny DeNuenz was pitching his worst curveballs in attempts to teach me how to hit them. I groaned loudly as another one vanished past me without even being near the bat hovering in the air.

"Don't worry doll face, you'll get it eventually, curveballs are hard," He said kindly.

"Too bad I can't hit a single one, I bet Benny doesn't struggle with this," I sighed in displeased agony.

It was true; I had begun hanging around the sandlot my first week living here and would often watch the way the game would swallow Benny's every sense. I could almost guarantee that one of Kenny's curve balls would be nothing to him and that he'd manage to smash it out of the park effortlessly.

"Yeah she's right, I probably could." Benny smirked, taking his turn to bat as I stepped off the base to take a break.

"I can't hit a DeNuenz curve ball!" called out Bertram as he attempted to spare my feelings. I felt a slight warmth at the thought of Bertram trying to be kind to me.

"Yeah-yeah neither can I Lina, I can, however, try to catch it in my mouth," Yeah-yeah said from across the field mischievously.

"Shut up Yeah-yeah, you just have a lot of practice catching things in your mouth." Said, Benny, as he took his position to hit the ball.

He dug the heels of his feet into the asphalt, dust slowly pooling at his ankles. His eyes locked on the ball Kenny was spinning in the palm of his hand. The ball was about to be pitched as the dark-skinned boy continued to build the impact of the throw. Benny snickered at the sight of Kenny ultimately attempting to strike him out.

"Make it your worst, DeNuenz," He spoke in a challenging demeanor.

"You got it, Rodriguez." Kenny laughed, releasing the ball, a hard knock of wood pierced the atmosphere as we were all alerted of Benny's bat being swung.

He managed to exile the ball—as I predicted, across the large metal fence blocking Mister Mertles house. I heard faint stories about him from the boys about them meeting his dog last summer, all of them still ranting about how Squints was a drama queen that convinced them that Mister Mertle was some scary old man with a gigantic murderous guard dog.

I never failed to laugh as they would all break into arguments over the topic, everyone sending accusing glares at Squints.

The boys started packing up their belongings as we called it a night once twilight resurfaced. I, however, had decided to find an excuse not to go home.

As Benny, Smalls, and I lived so close to each other, it had been a routine for us to walk home the same way. Ham would walk a few miles with us then turn the corner to his house.

As Benny finished packing his belongings, he waited for me to make my way home with them.

"You coming, Canada?" He asked, waiting for Ham and Smalls.

I shrugged my shoulders in response, "I don't know, I don't want to go home yet."

Benny told the guys to leave and turned back to where I was currently standing; the center of the field.

"Why don't you wanna go home, Elena?" He asked curiously.

"I don't know, I just wanna go meet some new people, explore, be stupid, I don't really have a reason," I explained as his face scrunched in confusion.