Sunday morning was rainy and I felt pretty good. We'd won the two games of the week, the second one by a hair, but a win was a win none the less. We had to use a combination of Anthony and a sophomore with a good arm, and my feeling was that we won purely by keeping the other team second guessing. McCann was doing well in practice and it looked like he'd be able to start for the next game.
The real MVP had been Santiago. He had a streak of a homer per game. Each time he scored us a few runs off of a single turn at bat, it increased our morale to epic proportions while simultaneously decimating our opponent's spirits. It was beautiful.
I knew dad had asked me to not be biased, but how could I help myself? He was magic and I was helpless. My head had started to fantasize of a future in the MLB again for the first time in almost a year. That dream had seemed to die with Seb.
I came in to the Mirandas house from the backdoor. Barbara was in the kitchen reading something on her iPad and she looked up as I closed my umbrella and set it on the floor.
"Good morning, Peyton," she said. "My, I feel like it's been a while since I last saw you."
I grabbed an old newspaper from the pile and put it on the floor to gather all the water trickling down the umbrella. She set the iPad down and came over to give me a hug.
"You got wet!"
She patted my hair in a more motherly, sweet way than even my own mom did. "That's just from the shower a few minutes ago."
"Do you want me to fix you some food?"
I started to shake my head to say no, I'd had breakfast already, but this was Barbara. In a flash she'd heated up an arepa con queso and given it to me along with a malta. It was this frizzy kind of drink that was dark and tasted sweet and strong. I remembered when Sebastian made me laugh once, as I was having a sip, and the entire thing came out of my nose. It had been the most painful experience of my life.
Plate and drink in hand I tried to ask, "Where's-"
"He's upstairs." She winked at me and I found it very unnecessary. It must have been reflected on my face because she burst out laughing. "Oh shush, let a mama dream."
I couldn't help but feel some trepidation after that, like Barbara had lured me with food and drink to snatch her son. Which wouldn't be a chore to me or any of the Metro High girls. I wondered if she knew the extent of his popularity these days. People would part in the hall when he walked, and not to stare at him in pity like before, but to marvel at having another god of baseball walk the same halls as them. Ellen had caught me a couple of days ago looking at him just like that.
I climbed up the stairs and passed Seb's closed door. Santi's was open, and I could see him sitting on the edge of his bed in t-shirt and shorts. I secretly felt some disappointment at not catching him asleep. I could have jumped on him, which he hated every single time, but gave me endless joy.
"Knock, knock," I said without knocking, because my hands were busy. He turned back to me with sleepy eyes. "I hope you haven't had breakfast yet because I brought food."
"You mean mom gave you food." He sounded like he still wasn't sure if he was awake or dreaming. "Give it to me."
I placed the plate on his outreaching hand and took a sip of the malta before giving it to him. He turned back to the TV. I sat next to him and was about to open my big mouth to ask what he was watching, when I saw.
Pee wee videos. Of us. And Seb.
Santi took a bite of arepa, looking at his brother's smiling face from ten years ago. I snapped my mouth shut with so much strength that the sound resonated around the room. I could feel my chin tremble and the corners of my eyes stung as if I were chopping onions. I wished I were chopping onions, that would hurt a lot less.
"Why are you watching this?" I asked through the lump in my throat. The rain continued to fall, as a reminder that life had gone on. We had gone on.
My face appeared in the video, crying after I'd fallen and scrapped my knee. Seb had been laughing at me. I wondered if he was doing the same right now as he saw us from above even though this was a way bigger booboo.
Santi swallowed down some malta. With a faraway voice he replied, "I had a dream about him last night. That the ball McCann took to the shoulder hit him instead, and I started a fight with Mayfield because how dare they hit my brother. How dare they..."
I bit my lips but I'd already started sobbing. My entire face felt hot and I had to look away from the screen, I couldn't take it. My hands were wringing each other and a teardrop fell on them. He set the food aside and grabbed my hand in his bigger and tan one. His thumb ran over my skin repeatedly, soothing. I felt worse.
"Ever since the accident I've felt very inadequate," I said, looking at the veins in his hand and up his arm. "Like my pain doesn't have a right to compete with yours."
His voice was barely a whisper when he asked, "What are you talking about?"
I looked up at him. He had sad but dry eyes. "Like I don't have a right to cry because I wasn't there."
"I'm glad you weren't," he said, with a sudden strength he hadn't had a few seconds before. "I'm glad you don't see what happened when you close your eyes every night. I'm glad you don't wonder why it was you who lived."
I hugged him.
We stayed like that even as the video played itself to the end. Santi was breathing steady, his heart beat to a solid rhythm. He was warm and smelled like he needed a shower, but he was alive and whole and the only scars left from the accident were one on his head, hidden by his hair, and the big one in his heart. I'd have been just as crushed if he'd been the one to go, but I'd have been destroyed if they both had died.
I was the one crying and he kept trying to comfort me with a caress to my head and murmurs that I was snotting all over him again. But I held fast to him as if someone would snatch him away.
"I'm glad you're alive," I managed to say. "Don't ever question that."
I felt him bury his face in my hair. "Okay."
I pulled away and looked up at his face. His cheeks were wet too, and it almost made me mad to know he'd learned to cry without making a sound. Like maybe he'd practiced crying without attracting attention. I felt like my heart was breaking all over again.
My hands reached up and wiped his face. He closed his eyes, and I wiped the moisture off his thick eyelashes too. His cheeks were rough with patches of stubble before his morning shave. He was a man and I still felt like a little girl. Santi opened his eyes, green like jewels, and they were so close that I could see myself reflected in them. I almost had a heart attack.
My hands fell to my lap and I pulled back. He stayed looking at me for a moment longer before starting a new video. It was recorded from the bleachers, and I could hear Domingo and Barbara speaking in Spanish in the background. I saw myself sitting next to Seb on our team's bench. The only way I could find us in the video was because my hair was such a bright red that even the bad quality camera caught it. The little boy walking up to the plate in a slow, relaxed pace could only be Santiago.
"You were as obnoxious then as you are now," I said, trying to lighten the mood.
He snorted. "The kettle calling the pot black."
From the corner of my eye I saw him wipe his face with his t-shirt. I extended my hand to him and he grabbed it.
A shrill voice startled a jump out of me. It was my little self screaming at Santiago to bring it home. Oh my God! This was the game when he batted the most epic homerun. Sure enough, he did. Little me jumped out of the bench at the clang and screamed at him to bring it home, and then saw in horror as Santi just dropped his bat and left the field.
Seventeen year old me burst out laughing. "What the hell, why did you walk out?"
The muscles in his face trembled, but he couldn't help himself. He started laughing too. "There was a solid reason," he said, letting go of my hand, hitting pause on the video and walking to his closet. He opened the door and kicked a few things out of the way so he could step inside. He stretched up to the top shelf and pulled out a shoe box. Santi turned to me with a small smile I'd almost describe as shy. Which was not a word I'd ever have used to describe him. "Don't laugh, but back then I thought you meant to bring the ball home."
My jaw dropped. "You did not."
"I did too." He opened the box, rummaged for a second and produced the rubber ball we used to play with back then. It was orange with painted on black seams. I remembered it. That game had been around Halloween and the adults had got a kick out of buying a pack of Halloween themed balls. "Dad and Seb helped me find it, it took us like two hours."
I grabbed the ball from him. It still had dried gunk stuck to it. "Please tell me you didn't find it in the trash."
He shrugged. "In the mud under some bushes."
"Fair enough." I turned it over my hand. It fit my palm easily. Back then these balls had seemed huge and scary. "You should've told me, I'd have helped you look."
He took it from me and put it back in the box. "That would have defeated the purpose. I was going to give it to you."
My eyes snapped up at his. I was momentarily speechless.
He went back into the closet and stretched himself to full height to put the box where it belonged, and where I could never get to it without help.
"Well, why didn't you?"
He gave me a look of almost pity. "I had to endure what felt like years of you screaming at me for leaving the game. I didn't feel like giving you the ball anymore after that."
I smacked him. Hard. It made him lose his breath a bit. When he thought he was going to get it back, I smacked him again. And again. He struggled until he grabbed my hands and twisted me around, so that I was locked in his arms again with my back flush against him.
We were panting when I said, "Don't punish me for your own stupidity."
He laughed a little and I felt the rumble of his chest travel down my spine and to my toes. "You make it hard."
Barbara chose precisely that moment to walk in. On one hand it was lucky, because I'd just been about to ask him precisely what I made hard, and the path of that conversation was something I probably wasn't ready for. On the other hand, she caught us in a very suspicious position. And her son didn't let me go, which made this look all the worse.
"Mijo, everything okay? I heard some weird noises." She did not look a whit concerned to me.
"We're fine, ma. Peyton's being difficult."
I elbowed his ribs as best as I could and he finally let me go. "The kettle calling the pot black, huh?"
He rubbed his side with a grimace. "I'm gonna go take a shower."
I wished I had that blasé attitude of his. Instead I turned to his mom with pursed lips vs. her smile. "Whatever you're thinking, stop it."
She giggled and went back downstairs. I sighed and plopped myself on his bed. I hit play on the video. It stopped soon after Santi walked off the pitch, but started back up with Seb's toothy grin on camera. He seemed to be recording himself, considering how sloppy the camera was.
"We spent hours looking for the ball, and here it is." He held it up to the camera. Same gunky, orange ball. Then he shifted the camera to our backyard, where little me was ripping little Santi a new one. Little Santi caught the camera and he just looked on bored. I heard Seb's little voice say, "Guess his plan back fired."
I put my face in my hands, in parts in agony and in parts so amused that I begun laughing. Santiago had tried to do a nice thing for me in the weirdest way, and I just blew it up on his face. I rewinded the video and started watching it again, and then some of the other videos. A few minutes later Santi came back, freshly shaved, with clean clothes and with wet hair.
"You're still here?"
"It's great to see you too." I blew him a mocking kiss. "Check this out, I found this other one." I pointed the remote at the screen to start it again. "Look at how good of a first baseman I was."
He stood next to me to see me make a tough catch for an out, and throw the ball to second base for another one. A pretty neat double play. "Better than a batter, that's for sure."
"Ha, ha," I said. I turned the TV off and gave him a once over. "Okay, you look decent."
His eyebrow went up. "Thanks?"
"Why don't we go visit him? There's a lot we need to catch him up on."
He did a double take, was about to ask who but stopped himself when he realized there was only one person I could possibly mean on this rainy Sunday morning.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Okay."
We made it downstairs and grabbed my umbrella. Santi kissed his mom goodbye. It wasn't raining hard anymore, but I almost smacked him with my umbrella when I realized he hadn't brought one. "What will you do when you don't have me around all the time anymore?" I asked him as we went back inside and grabbed him one. He had no answer to that. We got on my car and put on our seatbelts. As soon as I turned it on, Sitting Ducks by Smile Empty Soul came up. I let it play as I pulled into the road. Even though we caught more traffic, I avoided going through University Boulevard where the accident happened.
Santi was tense next to me and I flicked his ear at a red light. "What's up?"
He pursed his lips as he rubbed his ear. "What's up is that I'd probably end in jail if I gave you half of the crap you give me."
I rolled my eyes. "You look tense. Are you nervous?"
"Yes."
I recoiled. "Okay, I admit I wasn't ready for that answer. Why?"
He ran his hand over the seatbelt. "I don't know. I do. It's a lot."
I squeezed his hand before the light turned green and I set the car in motion again. The music, the trickling rain, were all tugging at my heartstrings a little much.
"I miss him," I said, admitting something I'd felt for a year, but I refused to voice every time I felt it. I didn't think I'd be fun to be around if I were telling people every three seconds that I missed my dead best friend. When training the pee wees, having family dinner, or even doing homework. When I'd glance at my phone with the ghost of an expectation for a text from him. "Probably not half as much as you do."
He looked out the window and for a while said nothing. When we were entering the cemetery parking lot he said, "I miss him every time I play ball."
I parked the car and turned to him slowly. "Is that why you didn't want to play?"
He opened the door, unbuckled himself and got out. I followed him out and saw him looking up at the grey clouds. An occasional drop would fall on his face like someone up there was crying for him.
"Yeah," he finally said. "I didn't know how I could think of filling his void with a stupid game."
I closed the door and locked the car. I walked around to grab his hand and pull him to the cemetery.
"We'll never fill the void he left," I told him. I glanced back over my shoulder. "We can only do our best at something we can, and hope our lives are not a waste. Seb would be pretty pissed if they were, I think."
He smiled with his lips but not with his eyes. "I figured. That's mostly why I'm playing again."
"Mostly?"
He rolled his eyes. "That and you just won't leave me alone."
I looked back ahead. "Damn right, I won't."
We walked through rows of headstones on a field of green grass, flower vases and flags. Occasionally we'd see a soggy teddy bear and I tried not to focus on it. Then we found him. All that was left of him.
Sebastian Miranda
Beloved Son, Brother, Friend
Gone Too Soon
1999-2016
I felt like Santi and I squeezed each other's hands with more force.
"Hi, Seb." I started. "We have a lot to tell you."
And so I narrated. I started by the moment we bid our farewell to Santi at the airport before he traveled down to his grandparents. He told Seb a little about Caracas, about how people used to call it the Branch of Heaven, but how now it was more like a Franchise of Hell. I told him about Santi coming back and how he played hard to get before joining the team again.
"Don't worry," I told him. "McCann still doesn't hold a candle to you."
"More like we should worry precisely for that reason," Santi added. "I don't even know how we'll finish the district tournament with him."
I side eyed him. "We will, and we'll win district."
Santi froze while looking at me. "Tell me you didn't just drive us all the way here under the influence of something funny."
I rolled my eyes. "No, I'm just making a promise to Seb. That we'll win district." He blinked at me. "Like he almost did for us last year."
"Ah..." He looked back down at the headstone, eyes running through the letters and probably not seeing words anymore. "One more game and we'd have won it."
"We can do it. With you." I got in between the headstone and him, so his eyes would find mine again. "I believe in you."
His gaze bore through mine, straight to the bottom of my heart. "You put way too much confidence in me."
"And you put too little." I looked back at the headstone. "Don't you agree, Seb?"
There was a rumble of thunder up in the sky and I smiled, taking that as a definite yes.
a special THANK YOU to all of you lovely people who, chapter by chapter, vote and drop me a note with your feels. you're all my favorites.
this chapter was really tough to write, i kept ugly crying as i typed. hope you liked it! 😭