Something horrible happened on Wednesday.
We were sitting at our usual table in the cafeteria when Jessica Ashford joined us, sitting next to Santiago. Suddenly my fries went from tasting bland to tasting rancid.
"Hi guys," she said this while taking one of Santi's fries and eating it slowly, as if she weren't used to fried stuff. Which was my guess, when I glanced at her tray and saw a salad that seemed to consist only of lettuce, tomato and one cucumber slice. One. Or maybe she'd been trying to be seductive, I didn't know. "What are you chatting about?"
We all exchanged glances. This was a first for everybody on this table, and it was clearly only possible because of whatever was going on between Santi and her. Chris caught his eye and Santi just shrugged. Ellen poked my thigh and I ignored her.
Anthony replied to her question with, "We were just talking about how much more grueling practice has got ever since Peyton joined the team."
She gasped and looked at me, her eyes shining. "You joined the team, Pey? I always thought you were like one of the boys but didn't know the school saw it that way too." Santiago looked at her in a weird way, but she'd gone back to eating her garden.
I licked my lips, just so my tongue could get busy with something other than insulting her back. I'd always been one of the boys and that never had bothered me until she came along.
"Only my friends can call me Pey, Jess," I said instead.
"Great! I'll call you Pey because we'll become best friends, right?"
She grabbed Santi's hand. In front of my face.
"I have a great idea," Ellen cut in. The boys zoomed in on her because they weren't stupid and they knew shit was getting awkward. I felt a sense of gloating when Santiago freed his hand and picked up his burger instead. "This weekend is the last one we have before we start the baseball season. Why don't we go to the beach together?"
"That'd be great," Chris said, and I nearly got infected by Ellen's smile.
"Booyah, I'm in." Anthony smacked the table. "One last chance at getting properly tanned before only my arms and face get chocolate brown."
"Narcissist," I muttered, rolling my eyes.
Santiago looked at me, and as he munched he asked, "Don't you have pee wee league on Saturdays?"
Jessica clicked her tongue. "Aw, that's too bad. It'd be fun if you could go."
"Oh, I'll go," I said, chewing on fries with my mouth open just to gross her out. I could tell it worked when her expression turned all sour. "I'll find a substitute for one day." And I just knew exactly who it'd be. My dad owned me my dignity after his Monday speech, and he'd had the decency to not approach me much since. I smiled at her. "It'll be grand."
When the bell rang, I jumped to my feet and tossed everything on my tray into the trash. I all but ran out of the cafeteria, but Ellen caught up with me.
"In my defense, I was planning on proposing that idea anyway. And the mood was just turning stormy and it was the first thing I thought of blurting out to avoid WWIII."
I glanced back at her, quickly being swallowed by the throngs of people. I slowed down for her. "You don't need to defend yourself, I'm not mad at you."
"Really? You looked pretty murderous back there."
"At her smug face, yes."
She grabbed my arm and stopped me, swinging me around to face her with a lot more strength than I thought she had. "You know what this means, right? She's going to wear a super hot bikini and we're going to look like stumps next to her. The boys won't even look at us."
"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!"
The chorus of groans was poetic. They had a future as a church choir if not as a baseball team.
I saw them head like zombies to the bench to grab their gloves and balls, and I longed to join them. But they were twenty even and my dad would never play with me. I sighed and set out to observe their form. I corrected a few of them, mostly the young guys. One of them, stupid and cocky, refused my advice on grounds of me possibly not knowing how to play because I was a girl.
I rolled my eyes. "What's your name?"
"Kevin Dunes."
Dunes, what kind of last name was that. I kept this to myself, though, and snatched his glove. Chris was about forty feet from us and I called his attention.
"What's up?" he asked, starting a jog over. I asked him to stop and just catch my ball. He dropped low, expecting a pitch.
"Kevin," I told the kid. "Stop being an arrogant know it all and watch my feet."
I may not be a genius at playing but I had the basics down pat, because for years that was all I could practice. Swings, wind ups, catches.
I did a perfect wind up. I brought my left knee up, high. I knew my leg was almost parallel with my right as the right held my entire weight. And then I left myself drop forward into a wide stance. The natural twist of my torso brought my arm forward like a whip, and I pitched my fastball. Slow, but straight. A perfect strike.
"Strike!"
I grinned as Chris called it.
I dropped the glove off on the floor without ceremony and looked at the kid. Kevin had his mouth hanging open, and it was possibly the best moment of the entire week. "That's how you do it. With your legs, not with you arms." I blew the whistle in his face. "Keep practicing!"
Chris was chuckling when I reached him. "That was almost cruel."
"I loved it," I told him. Taylor was his partner, and he was crouched as he tied his shoe laces. "Is he taking a strategic break or what?"
"I don't know, but if he is it's a genius move." Chris kept stretching his arms and I looked at him with a bit more detail.
"Does it hurt?" I asked.
He looked almost startled. "Does what hurt?"
I grabbed his left wrist roughly, trying to cause him pain. And his face couldn't hide it.
"Chris..."
He pulled his hand away. "We're going to be playing a game after this, right?" I nodded. He put his glove on again when Taylor signaled that he was ready. "Is it okay if I don't play catcher today, coach?"
He had me and he knew it, the sneaky little bastard. "I'll see what I can do."
I waited until the drills were over and everybody was moving on to their positions in the field to approach my dad. I didn't know exactly how to tell him the Chris was injured and that he needed a sub in today, without telling him that Chris was injured. I still didn't think that he should be playing at all, but I didn't have the guts to actively block him from playing. He was my friend, and I knew he loved baseball.
"Dad?"
He was jotting down some information on a chart. I peeked and saw that he was making a diagram of some plays. "Hmm?"
"I'd like to do an experiment."
"I'm listening," he said as he scribbled.
"Why don't we move Chris to center field and Santiago to catcher?" I shrugged, pretending nonchalance. "I just think it'd give their play more depth, to see what is in each other's position."
He glanced at me from the corner of his eyes. "You want to put the cleanup hitter in the most dangerous defensive position?"
Fuck, I hadn't thought about that. Catchers routinely have to deal with opposing players trying to slide home. Most times they have to block the runners with the bodies, if it means getting an out. But Chris is injured, damn it. It'd be worse if he played catch for every practice and every game.
I looked out on the field and saw Santi. He looked big even though he was so far away.
"Look at him," I told dad, pointing with my index as it made eights in the air. "He's huge. Just that alone will be intimidating to the opponent."
"True..." He snapped the chart closed and gave the order for the boys to change. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Santi would be fine. Not only he'd got jacked during the summer, but he was also a decent catcher. He and Chris were basically the only people who could take Seb's fastball at full speed.
But then I saw that the pitcher was McCann.
"Shit," I said under my breath. Somehow I hadn't factored that in. McCann was the best pitcher of the team, which automatically made him the ace. He and Santi were never friendly. I couldn't see how they'd possibly form a solid battery. That required trust and a deep understanding of each other's skills. They had none of that.
After the first pitch, Santi threw the ball back at McCann and hollered, "You call that a pitch? My grandma throws better."
Dad was being umpire and he just brushed it off and told them to get in positions. I, however, recognized the sneer in McCann's face for what it was. Danger.
He threw a pitch so wild that even though Santi reacted standing up he still missed it. The ball hit the chainlink fence behind them.
"You call that catching?" he asked from the mound, making sure everybody heard. "My dead grandma catches better."
Santiago turned a venomous glare at him. The emphasis did not get lost on me either.
"Boys," dad said in warning. "Less roughhousing and more playing. C'mon."
They shut up for the rest of the inning and it almost seemed like a normal practice game.
I should've known better.
As soon as they walked toward the bench to wait for their turn at bat, shit hit the fan.
I couldn't hear what they said from the bench, but it was bad enough that Santiago shoved McCann. This would've made me happy on another occasion, but not on the field with my dad watching. Not while we were supposed to be building a team.
Of course McCann shoved back but being the petty asshole that he is, he also threw a punch in escalation. Before I knew it I ran over, along with a bunch of the other guys.
"Boys, we're not teaching boxing here!" I heard my dad yell.
I shoved someone aside and shouted, "What the hell do you think you're doing, you idiots?"
That caught Santiago's eye, and of course McCann the asshole took advantage of the moment to land a blow to Santi's stomach. They separated for a moment as Santi doubled over, and my body acted way before my brain could catch up. I wedged myself in between. The problem was that they didn't realize this, blinded by testosterone as they were. They both tried to throw a punch and I scrambled to get out of the way before I was hit. I tripped on my own feet and fell back on my right hip. It was my pained yelp what actually stopped them.
"Oh, shit," someone said.
"Peyton!"
I curled on my side with a groan. I didn't know if I had my eyes open or closed because all I could see was flashes of light, that was how much it hurt. Then I felt for my hip and realized I'd landed on a freaking ball.
My eyes started to clear and my dad's face appeared in front of me. "Are you okay, honey bunny?"
Through gritted teeth I said, "Stop calling me that."
He pursed his lips as he helped me up. I had trouble standing on both legs because my entire right side hurt so much. But I tested my feet and they worked, so nothing could be broken, right?
"You," he said, his voice shaking in anger. I looked up and was surprised to see that both McCann and Santiago looked about ready to throw up. They wouldn't meet my eye. "I'll deal with you morons later, right now I have to take my daughter to the infirmary."
"Coach," Chris said. "I'll look out for the morons in the meantime."
"Thanks," my dad told him. Then he turned to me. "Can you walk?"
The pain was a dull throbbing that almost didn't let me feel the rest of my leg, but it was not buckling under my weight. "I think so."
"Coach, let me help," Santiago said.
I glared at him. "You've done enough." His mouth flapped, but he fell back without another word. Dad took me to the infirmary, where the school nurse announced, bored out of her wits, that nothing seemed broken and that I'd just get the worst bruise of my life. And to take lots of ibuprofen.
When I got out of bed the next morning, I pulled my pajama pants down slowly, hissing because of it hurt to just move, and saw that my entire right hip was almost black.
Forget about getting anybody's attention with my okay body, this was for sure going to catch everybody's eye on the beach. Fuck my life.