I took the deepest breath my two lungs allowed, retained it for just a second too long to savor the moment, and then blew on the whistle with all my might.
Santiago jumped. Seeing the scene from the outside anyone would guess his bed was a pogo. He landed with a twist that tangled his bed sheets all around his torso and hips, eyes frenetic trying to find the source of torture. He then saw me, spitting the whistle out from between my lips.
"Rise and shine," I said.
It took him a moment to find his vocal chords. When he did he boomed out an F bomb followed by a string of words in Spanish. I swear this was by far louder than my whistle. I jammed two fingers in my ears until he was done relieving his misery.
"Are you done?" I asked.
"Peyton! What do you think you're doing?"
He'd sat up now and was furiously running his hands through his hair and on his face.
"Get up and get dressed, we're going running."
He looked up at me and then the alarm clock by his bed. Who keeps an alarm clock in the age of cell phones? "It's 6am on a Saturday. No one's running anywhere but back to sleep."
I blew the whistle again. Santiago attempted to get out of bed and I thought it was the tangle what held him back, until I realized that the bed sheets were strategically wrapped around him for a reason.
He was buck naked underneath.
My eyebrows went up as I watched him struggle for more coverage, torn between the desire to throttle me and protect what little of his dignity he had left. The compromise was a glacial glare, shot at me as I laughed with zero ounces of mercy to give him.
"I'll give you five minutes to join me downstairs," I said, magnanimously in my opinion. "No more, no less. If you're not fully decked and ready to run, I will split your eardrums."
"Why are you doing this?" from anyone else I would've thought they were at the verge of tears. He did have the shaky voice, but it was rage. It made it all the more worth it.
"You thought I was going to leave you alone? Hah!"
With a sweep of my pony tail, I turned around and marched downstairs. His mom was in the kitchen, getting some arepas ready for later, when we got hungry. I'd planned it all out last night. After that little episode in our backyard, we had dinner together where everybody pretended nothing had happened. Once that was done, Santiago went upstairs and my parents headed home. I stayed back to talk with the Mirandas about my plan. They were ecstatic.
"This is exactly what he needs," Barbara had said, clasping her hands together and looking to the horizon as if it held the holy grail of delight. "A good, swift kick in the butt by someone who loves him."
"Anything you need, mija," Domingo had said, clapping me in the back.
And so his parents and I had got up early. I had to get myself through my morning grouchiness before I was ready to inflict discipline on anyone else. His mom got up early to make breakfast. I had no idea what Domingo was doing.
Barbara looked up from a magazine when I walked into the kitchen. The food was packed and two big glasses of protein shake were sitting on the counter.
"One's for you," she told me. "I got the recipe from Cliff."
I startled. I hadn't realized that my dad had been in on this somehow.
"Thank you." I grabbed my glass and drank it. I'd had breakfast already, but I'd learned in my lifetime that you never say no to Barbara's food. She would cook for a full army and you had to eat the piles of food, or else.
Santiago joined us a little past five minutes, but I'd give him that.
"Mijo, I made you a shake." His mom guided him to sit next to me. He sank into the chair as if ready to fall asleep at any moment. But he drank it all. Meanwhile, I put the food in my backpack along with a couple of large water bottles. "I hope you have fun today with Peyton."
She always pronounced my name the Spanish way, with hard consonants that almost made her sound mad. But she always accompanied my name with a smile.
Green eyes shifted from her to me a couple of times. "Today. With Peyton. As in, the whole day?"
I stood up from the stool and slapped him in the middle of his back. While he smarted I said, "Clearly you're not getting enough blood to your head. Time to start running."
"Mom," he begged. She kissed his cheek and pushed him off his stool. And all the way out the front door. I flashed her two thumbs up behind his back.
"All ready?" Domingo asked us outside. He was holding Santiago's bike upright. "I filled in the tires and greased up the chain. It's ready to roll."
Santiago went to grab it, but I elbowed him out of the way. His dad helped me adjust the bike to my size and I got on it. Its owner didn't move.
"Jesus, do I need to tell you how and when to breathe, too?" I asked him. "Start running!"
He squinted against the morning light. "Where?"
"Follow me, you doofus."
I put on my favorite ball cap, set the bike in motion and drove away. His parents must have encouraged him because a moment later he was right behind me. I set a comfortable pace to start with. For me it felt like I was taking a leisure ride through a park. We went deeper into the residence until we spilled into the fancy area of Winter Park. In a mile or so we'd bike/run right in front of the boarding school, where I planned to drive the bike handless just so I could flip the bird at the building the entire length of it.
I turned back to glance at him a good twenty minutes into the run. He didn't look out of breath. Sweaty, for sure, but not in the throes of aerobic death. So I picked up speed. When he didn't follow, I began the next phase in the plan.
Heckling.
"You're not going to impress any girls like that."
He rolled his eyes but kept jogging at the same pace.
"See that?" I pointed ahead at the Victorian castle-looking school. "A bunch of hot and rich boarding school girls are watching you from their windows, laughing at how slow you are."
"I don't care," he spewed out with a little difficulty.
"Well, maybe you should care." I pretended to think for a second. "I heard my dad on the phone this morning, and the first game of the season is going to be a friendly against the rich mofos."
We both paused in front of the building. I fulfilled my self-promise of giving them the double finger. Santiago put his hands on his hips and gathered big breaths. His tank was soaked in sweat.
"Really?"
"Yes, really."
The rivalry between our schools had been historic. Ten years ago or so there had even been a war of pranks that had escalated into several expulsions from both sides. Migrations from students from one side to the other had never, ever happened.
Except for Jessica Ashford.
Something had happened while she was at Trinity that got her kicked out, and her parents put her in Metro as punishment. She hadn't taken it as punishment, though; as soon as she started in our school she began a large scale operation of taking it over. She'd wrapped the entire cheer squad in her little finger and thus, secured the admiration of all the jocks and half of the drooling population in school. And then she'd set her aim on the top star athlete. Sebastian. Something went down between them, but it had ended and none of the Mirandas ever filled me in on the blanks.
I set the bike in motion again, turning to make a loop around the neighborhood. We passed through my favorite street, full of big mansions with beautiful details. It was the best during Halloween or Christmas, when the owners shelled out the big bucks to try to overcast their neighbors' enthusiasm for the holidays with their own. It was gaudy fun.
Santiago groaned when he realized where we were going. By that point he was exhausted and couldn't hide it.
"I guess you're fit enough to have abs but not enough to run for a full game."
"It's baseball," he told me. "Not soccer. I don't need to run that much. Why are we here?"
Here was the park where the pee wees played. I parked the bike and tied it securely to a post. I didn't really want it to get stolen and then have to jog all the way back with Santiago giving me shit about it.
My kids, their contenders and some of their parents were already in the field. The other coach approached us and extended his hand toward Santiago. He shook it, confused as hell.
"You must be the other coach, I'm Marty. My kid plays catcher and well, seems like none of the other parents wanted to step up to the plate and I ended up being the coach. Haha."
Santiago snorted. "She's the coach."
I beamed at him. Marty was a 40 something, and he could not contain his embarrassment.
"I'm so sorry!"
He shook my hand with way more vigor than was necessary. I introduced myself at the same time as the umpire arrived.
"What up, Bobby?"
The owner of the All Star games and sports center just grunted at me. He offered the same pleasantry to Marty and anyone else who crossed his path. Except Santiago. He shook his hand.
"Bastards," I murmured under my breath.
My kids and I went through the game plan. Jimmy would open the game. Usually I opened with Nicola, but he was out with the stomach flu. I pulled Jimmy's glove out of my backpack and handed it to him with a reprimand. Santiago sat on the dugout devouring his arepas. Once the game begun and he started to cool down, I gave him a not so gentle nudge.
"Drop down and give me twenty." He and the other kids in the bench turned to me. "I am not kidding, Santiago. Give me twenty pushups."
He snorted. "You can't make me."
I glanced past him at all the wide eyed boys. "Kids?"
I got some nods and a couple of salutes. With war screams they launched themselves at Santiago. Tickling him.
He hated tickling.
At that point we had the attention of the entire field, except Bobby's. He called an out, batter out, finishing the inning. The kids rotated, which freed Santiago up enough to breathe and curse at me.
"Not in front of the kids," I said sweetly.
He stared me down for a hot couple of seconds, but then dropped down and gave me the fastest twenty I'd ever seen.
"Twenty jumping jacks," I called when he was done.
I couldn't help it then, I laughed. It required real talent for him to go through the drills and maintain venomous eye contact. I worked mostly his legs and arms. From what I'd seen, his upper body was solid, and by the bulging thighs I'd say his leg definition was pretty good too. My purpose with the entire thing was to make sure the basics were engrained in his every muscle fiber. Believe it or not, the key to batting out and far was not arm strength but legs more solid than oak trunks.
We won the game. I wasn't proud to say that it might have been because the other team was too distracted by the random teenage dude training like a Marine on the sidelines.
When all was said and done and the kids and parents started to trickle out, Bobby approached us— or I should amend, approached Santiago and said, "Tell you what, you worked so hard today that I'll give you one free hour at a batting cage."
I could have kissed his grumpy mug. Santiago's eyes lit up like it had been night all along and someone finally found the bulb's switch.
"Ready?" I asked Santiago.
He sighed. "What now?"
"We're not gonna get to Bobby's by teleportation, you know."
His eyes bulged, but he had resigned himself to his fate. He was mine to do as I damn well pleased.
And so we took off. Almost when we were arriving at All Star, an old red Jeep stopped next to us at a red light and rolled down its window.
"Hey, Chris," Santi and I said in unison.
"Fancy seeing you guys here," he said back. Anthony was next to him in the passenger's seat, and someone else was behind him.
I squinted. "Ellen?"
She scooted to the front in between the guys. "We're on our way to grab some lunch, wanna join us?"
I was intrigued by the arrangement. She normally didn't hang out with these guys outside of school, since usually they were training and she was up to her ears in homework, but I did know she'd had the biggest crush on Chris since forever ago.
The light turned green and I hastily asked, "We're going to All Star, meet you there?"
"Sounds good!" I thought it was Chris who said this before he took off.
I looked back at Santi. "Fantastic, you bat while we eat some burgers and criticize your form. Sounds like a perfect Saturday afternoon."
"You are ruthless, the worst of the worst."
I blew him a kiss. "But you love me that way."
I pedaled on and he followed at a jog. By the time we got to Bobby's Santiago was drenched and parched. I gave him my water bottle, since he'd drank his while watching the pee wees. Our friends had already got a table, but migrated outside easily once I told them the plan. We all bit into our greasy burgers and fries as we watched Santiago wait still for the first two pitches by the machine. It was kind of a jinx. He always waited for a couple of them, even though he already knew exactly where the machine would pitch the ball to. And it was definitely less of a challenge than having a live pitcher throw all sorts of different balls at him.
These two balls slammed into the fence right in front of us with such speed it was a wonder the chain link didn't break. We didn't even bat an eyelash.
"Five bucks he doesn't miss any of the other balls," Anthony said.
"Nah, he's tired." I bit into two long fries and while chewing added, "I should have run his stamina dry by this point."
They gave me weird glances.
"Five bucks he misses between two to ten balls, then," Chris added.
I rolled my eyes. "Fine, five bucks he misses more than ten."
Ellen sipped from her Dr. Pepper. "I'll wisely not join this bet."
One hour later, freaking Anthony had won and Chris had to give us a ride home. Santiago could barely lift his eyelids, but he could not wipe the stupid grin off his face. And neither could I.