Ellen's article came out the next day, bright and early. She texted me about it before school, but I was having serious trouble getting out of bed and facing the world. Especially after it had given me everything I wanted and then took it away. She was texting me about it non stop, but I couldn't face reading it. She'd probably painted me like some Boudica of Baseball, but now my hopes and dreams were dashed.
There was a knock on my door, probably from mom. I seriously doubted it was my dad. We hadn't talked since he'd walked Santi and I aside and told us that the rules were the rules, and unfortunately I'd have to leave the team. The shitty part wasn't just that, but that he'd also ruined any desire for celebration we had. We'd just accomplished something huge, and just like that, he'd doused the flames of victory. I'd tasted it for too short a moment, and then it was gone.
I put my pillow over my head and screamed in the best phlegmy voice I could make, "Go away, I'm sick."
"Stop your pity party, we have school."
I jumped as I heard Santi. He was standing right outside my bedroom door. Meanwhile my face was crusty from a night of crying and drooling in my sleep, my hair was a mess and I was wearing only underwear and a ratty Minnie Mouse t-shirt. I ran out of bed and locked the door, breathless.
"What are you doing here?"
He tried to open it and sighed when he realized what I'd done.
"This isn't fair, you barge into my room in the middle of the night and I can't return the favor?"
"It's not the same, I'm a girl."
He made a pause and then said, "Yeah, I know."
I got goosebumps at the way he said it. Like he couldn't stop being aware about it.
I leaned my forehead on the cool door with a sigh. "I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I don't really want to go to school right now."
"Who ever wants to go to school?" He snorted a short laugh. "But tough shit, you got to. I can't just walk into school feeling like the king of the world without my queen, you know."
I groaned, feeling heat spread all over my chest. "Stop, you can't say things like that or-"
"Or what?" he cut off. "People will find out? Guess what, the whole school knows."
"Santi..." I trailed off his name. "I'm sorry."
"What for?"
"I don't want you to think that it was your fault, I knew better than to do something as stupid as kiss you in front of my dad."
"Damn right, it was your fault. I was so shocked that you'd do something like that." He didn't see my glare at where I guessed was his face. "I'm being sarcastic, by the way. I knew better too, and yet I kissed you too. And guess what?"
"What?"
I heard him get closer to the door. "I really enjoyed it." My knees trembled. He sighed. "Well, up to the part where your dad kicked you off the team. That's why you need to come to school today."
"I'm not following the logic."
He sighed like I was a petulant, ignorant child. Maybe I was. "We won't get you back on the team if all you do is stay in bed."
My mind went blank. I had no idea what those strings of words were supposed to mean to me. It was final, the Principal and dad had set the rules and that was that. There was no way to fight the system.
"Let's pretend this is even remotely possible," I said, folding my arms. "How do you propose we do that?"
"First of all you shower and get dressed," he said. "Or you open the door and let me see you do all that."
I gasped. "Oh my God, Santi! What if my parents hear?"
"They were on their way out when I came in."
And he thought to share that piece of information just now? I might have opened the door sooner and have my wicked way with him! Okay, who was I kidding, I looked like a rag doll dragged by its hair through the mud. Or so I felt like.
"Anyway," he continued, "second, we go to school and you let our friends help. We have a plan."
He refused to share this plan until I was presentable. He even refused to say a peep as we got on my car and I drove to school, saying it'd be self explanatory.
I parked my car and we got out. As soon as we walked into school he grabbed my hand and for a moment that distracted me from noticing that their plan really was self explanatory.
There were posters with my face papering the halls. They read: First Female Alligators Coach Unjustly Expelled From Team. It was a very long catch phrase, in my opinion. A few kids turned their heads toward us once they spotted me come in. Someone came over and shook my hand. A few started clapping, and then the entire freaking hall was doing a standing ovation. Santi gave me a raised eyebrow and a smirk, almost as if to say, do you like it?
I pretended to be horrified, but I secretly did.
Ellen ran to us. "You haven't read the article, have you?"
"I, uh, sorry, it's been-"
She nodded. "I get it, but you should really read it." She cleared her throat. "I just submitted it to the local news and they seemed interested."
But she'd come prepared with a printed copy of it for me to read. She slapped it on my hand and told Santiago to make sure I read it. I could somewhat deal with one of them being annoying, but not both, so I started reading it.
A League of Her Own
By Ellen Young
Metropolitan High School can boast about its brand new record, an intense district championship win. It couldn't have done it without its first ever female assistant coach, one of its own students: Peyton O'Hare.
Now she has been punished with expulsion from the team for loving her childhood friend and fellow team mate, Santiago Miranda.
"Oh my God!" I screamed. "You told the whole school that I love Santiago?"
She had the decency to cringe a little. "Well, okay. It was for added impact. But it's not like it's a lie!"
"Not that the whole school needed to know!" And then I blanched. "Or local news, even."
Santiago put his hands in his pockets. "I have no problem with the entire world knowing."
Ellen's eyes shone and she cooed.
"No." I stomped my foot on the floor. Some random kid walked by offering me a fist bump and I ignored him. "This is so embarrassing, why did you do this?"
"Keep reading the damn article, woman," Ellen said, shoving it in my face.
I did. I thought the piece was well written, if it were about something other than me. She'd talked about our past, Sebastian, and all the reasons why I was obsessed with baseball and deserved to be on the team. I had to admit I really did like that she'd talked about the unfairness of being excluded from the sport, just for identifying as female, as we'd chatted about one time that she was interviewing me. She talked about how the rules were different for us, the door non existent. And yet there I was, trying to crash into the house by carving out an opening in the wall if I had to.
I closed my eyes for a second. The first period bell went off.
"Okay," I said to both of them. "What do you want me to do with this? Go tell my dad what a great article this is and whether he has any shame for being the villain in my life?"
Santiago rubbed his nape. "I kinda did that already." We turned to him. "This morning. I asked him how come he only punished you and not me as well."
Ellen prodded, "And? What did he say?"
Santi shrugged. "He said the rules are the rules." And tacitly, that those rules didn't apply to Santi. Only to me.
I stood on my tip toes to kiss his cheek. "Thank you for trying to stick up for me. But now I need to go find my dad."
Ellen nodded. "Atta girl."
I turned toward the teachers' lounge and realized they were following me. I pressed on the brakes. "What are you doing?"
They exchanged a glance and Ellen replied. "Isn't it obvious? We're coming with you."
"No, you're not-"
I was interrupted as people started coming out of the woodwork. Chris came in and laced his arm around Ellen's waist. Anthony joined us, and then a bunch of guys from the team. Even McCann and Jessica with her cheerleaders. I just flapped my mouth open like a fish out of the water.
Ellen stood at the front of the crowd and raised her hand to silence them. "Ahem, thank you everybody for joining this protest today."
"This, what?" I asked. Santi gave me a wink.
A wink.
I was floored by this unexpected turn in events. And that was even without considering that my friends and others were trying to organize a protest in school. For me. I tried to wrap my mind around all of this and failed.
Ellen continued, "Our plan is to march to the Principal and demand the immediate reinstatement of Peyton O'Hare to the baseball team, under the premises of no unfair treatment and recognition to her contributions for the team."
My jaw hung as Anthony screamed in affirmation. He didn't seem to care a whit that people just stared at him.
"The local news will be here any minute, so let's make this count," Ellen said. She swiveled around, looking for something or someone. "Where are the signs?"
"Here," someone said behind me. I turned to see Gigi and another of the cheerleaders, their arms loaded with protest signs. "We worked on these all night but I think they came out quite well."
Gigi proved, once again, to be all about anarchy.
"I, uh," I just fumbled for words but couldn't arrange them in a coherent sentence.
Santi nudged me with his elbow. "Just say thank you."
I looked at as many of them in the eye as I could. "Thank you." Then I turned to him. "Did you do this?"
He shrugged. "I just had the idea, the execution was all Ellen's."
I walked up to my best friend and gave her the tightest hug. I could have sworn that Anthony aw'ed.
I was given a poster with my face as the whole group marched to the Principal's office. I'd never seen Mr. Jones more shocked in his life. Miss Perry, his assistant, scrambled trying to keep us at bay, but we were a group of some 40 people strong, and she couldn't hold us back from invading his office and demanding an audience. Ellen gave him the same speech she'd given us a second ago, adding the threat that the local news would be here any moment, and what a shame it'd be for the school to get that kind of publicity.
He turned his frown to me. It wrinkled his entire forehead. "Miss O'Hare, what do you have to say for yourself?"
I lifted my chin. I'd wonder later if the courage was within me all along, or if it'd been because Santiago and my friends had my back , but I looked him dead in the eye and I told him, "I think you're wrong. We're not here because I changed my mind and don't want to follow what I signed up for, but because I've grown to realize that your rule of not dating within the team forces me to choose between a world where I am expected to give up the things I want to cater to your outdated notions of what my gender should do or not, or between a world where I have to fight harder and with more obstacles to only get partially what I want."
I took a step forward. "Well, I refuse. I refuse to play by your rules because I'm very capable of making my own. This is the 21st century and I can do what I damn well please. So I'll date the boy I want, who just so happens to be in the team, and I'll pursue my career in baseball. What's wrong with that?"
The whole room burst into applause. Mr. Jones broke into a sweat. He pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his bald head. I looked back at my friends and how all of them were cheering. Santi was smiling and he said, only for me to hear, "I'm so proud of you."
And it was that, precisely, what gave me the confidence to fight this.
That night I was interviewed by a local newspaper and a TV channel. Dinner was very awkward because when my mom realized what was going on, she tuned into the channel and saw my interview as we ate. She kept looking at dad, who had a solid poker face.
"That was so powerful," mom told me. "I'm proud that you've stepped up for yourself and I wish your dad would have joined your side."
Dad's composure started to crack there. A touch of red came to his cheeks. "I was just trying to look out for my daughter. With all those boys around her, I was worried that..."
"That what?" I asked as I scooped up some mashed potatoes. "Were you worried that I didn't know how to make my own choices?"
He shook his head, looking me dead in the eye. "No, I trust you. It's them I didn't trust. I didn't want them to jeopardize your reputation or your future."
I set the fork with mashed potatoes down and pushed my chair away from the table. "You just didn't realize that by actually kicking me out of the team you were the one jeopardizing my future — my career, huh?" I stood up and looked at mom. "May I be excused?"
She nodded, unfazed by the whole thing. "Yes."
I heard them speak in hushed tones as I went up to my room and closed the door behind me. Tomorrow we were planning a sit in outside the Principal's. I was frankly surprised that we hadn't got suspended for our shenanigans. Maybe he really was at a loss on what to do.
There was a knock. This time I had a feeling it was my dad. I didn't say anything because this was his house, he could come and go as he wanted. But still he asked for permission, as he'd always done since I was 12, and so I let him in with a sigh.
I sat on the edge of my bed. "What do you want?"
He grabbed my chair from the desk and sat in front of me. "Honey bunny." He pursed his lips. "Peyton, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for all of this to happen the way it did. I hope you know that I support you in all you want to do, but I'm your dad and I also have to protect you."
I shook my head slight. "Yeah, but from what? Santiago?" He didn't know what to say to that. "He's probably the best guy a girl could conjure up in her dreams. Why should I be punished for being happy?"
"You're not. I was just trying to be fair." He grabbed my hands. "I didn't want anyone to think I was being lax on you."
I released my hands. "Well, you weren't. You weren't lax or supportive, even. Are you satisfied now? I'm out of the team, so you don't have to worry about boys touching or even looking at me, and you don't have to worry about people thinking you were giving me favors. It's over."
Dad cringed. He looked down and rubbed his face. "It may be over for now, and I'll be forever sorry for playing a part in this mess. But it's not over for you, Pey. Because I know you, and you'll keep fighting for what you want. And you'll get it." He stood up to kiss the top of my head. "I love you and I'm proud of you. I hope you know that as antiquated and misguided as I may seem, all I ever do is for your sake."
My eyes had welled up but I refused to keep crying. I jerked a nod. "I know."
He gave me a wan smile. "I'll see you at school tomorrow."
He shut the door behind him and I felt like that was the most accurate metaphor in my life.
life's like this sometimes. these moments suck.
believe it or not, this chapter is pretty much the reason this whole story exists. this is peyton's growth/struggle. did it resonate with you?
also, three more chapters to the end 😲