The Baseball Player Next Door

Inning 13 ★ Life Throws a Curve

"You don't have anything to worry about," I said. "Chris is not interested in her. Just make sure he looks at you or your cleavage, whatever."

Her sharp eyes rolled. "I'm not worried about me, I'm worried about you."

"Ouch." I put my hands on my chest, where the wound hurt.

We walked together to class as she said, "You have a great body, Pey. You're fit and athletic and you have way more curves than I do. But you never show it off and if you want Santiago's attention you really need to start flaunting. Pronto."

We walked into class as I rolled my eyes and told her, "That's what you get wrong. I don't want his attention."

Ellen looked almost sad. "I guess if you keep telling yourself that you'll start to believe it."

That stayed with me for the entire day. We'd had that discussion last weekend. She'd interpreted my reaction as oh my gosh, Peyton wants to make babies with Santiago, which was totally not the case. It was just that... thinking about Seb, I always regretted that he'd spent so much time chasing skirts in his last couple of years that he could've spent with us instead, and it made me feel like suddenly Santi was following in his brother's footsteps.

So much for him not wanting to be compared to Sebastian, right?

After last period I went to the girls' locker room and changed into my baseball clothes. I wore the Alligators shirt, red with white letters and a thin green trim, and white pants. I hated the white pants because they were hard to clean and also because they were white and tight. It was the worst possible color for hiding anything. I looked at myself in the mirror, turning this way and that. I could see the curves Ellen spoke of, and everybody else could, too, because of these damn pants. I wore leggings underneath and you could still see pretty much everything.

I put on my cap, red with a white trim and A in the middle, and threaded my pony tail through the hole in the back. The colors brought my freckles to the fore and I wondered how anybody could see me as a girl anyway. I looked like a boy with long hair. If I tried putting on a bikini on Saturday, everybody would just laugh.

I went out into the field and joined my dad as the team trickled in, one by one.

Today we started by drills. Dad and I walked through the lines of players as they ran in place and dropped to burpees. The power of the whistle was addictive, and it was a lot more fun to use it on teenagers than on little kids. I stopped next to McCann for a good few minutes and whistled at him to drop, to stand, drop again and by the third round of that he was giving me death stares. Dad whistled long and hard, signaling a break.

"Hmm." I mused, seeing him collapse on the ground and struggle for breath. "You need to be in better shape if you want the ace position, you know. It takes a lot of stamina to pitch with control for a full game."

He tried to say something, no doubt insulting, but couldn't manage a word out. I moved on and found Taylor on all fours, dry heaving. Next to him Anthony was doing something that sounded similar to sobs. Chris was stretching his arms as though he'd just returned from a leisure stroll. Santiago was behind him, but I turned around before I could decipher what he was doing.

"That's a good start," I told my dad. "Now I know just precisely how bad their condition is after the summer."

He rubbed his face with enough force to set his cap askew. "Their condition is abysmal. I don't even know if some of the starters could play an entire game." He grabbed the whistle, drew in a deep breath and blew. "Alright, little babies. Time to play some catch. Everybody pair up, I want to see each guy at least twenty feet from his partner. C'mon!"