Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  While Mr. Vince huddles up in the infield with his team, Ms. Rothhammer and Miss Pitt holler at us to take a long lap and then circle up out in left field. Miss Pitt is a student teacher this year, which means she’s practicing to be a teacher. Some days she just sits and watches Ms. Rothhammer, but lately she’s been running the class more and more and Ms. Rothhammer’s been watching her.

  Anyhow, when we’re circled up, Miss Pitt calls, “Count ’em out! Loud!” so we all start yelling, “One … two … three … hey! Two … two … three … hey!” as we do our jumping jacks.

  And while our team’s busy yelling numbers at each other, Mr. Vince is huddled up with his team, probably going over strategy and last-minute signal changes.

  Mr. Vince always does real complicated signals. He’ll slap himself all over really fast—first one arm, then the other, then a leg, then his head and his neck and his thigh—and while he’s busy playing himself like a bongo drum, you’re supposed to remember that it’s the signal after he slaps, say, his stomach that counts.

  He also does really gross signals. He’ll stand in the coach’s box with his finger up his nose—or scratch his butt or hock a loogie—and that’s supposed to mean something. Trouble is, Mr. Vince is always picking his nose or scratching his butt or hocking loogies, so half the time his team doesn’t pick up the signals, and then everyone gets to watch him yell his head off and dance around the coach’s box like a bug on a barbecue.

  Anyhow, Ms. Rothhammer goes off to do the toss while we finish stretching, and when she comes back she says, “We’re in the field, girls.” She hugs her clipboard and says, “Remember, back each other up, and visualize winning. Forget about the crowd, forget about looking good. If you play good, you’ll look good, and the only way that’s going to happen is if you concentrate on the game, not the people watching you.” She bites the inside of her cheek a minute. “I know you can knock the socks off Mr. Vince’s team, and ladies … nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

  We all look at each other sideways, because Ms. Rothhammer’s always even-tempered and in control, and you can tell—she’s a little hot under the jersey about one eighth-grade history teacher.

  So while we’re busy pulling faces at each other, Miss Pitt puts her hand out and says, “C’mon, girls, show ’em who’s number one!”

  We all pile our hands on top of hers and yell, “Go! Fight! Win!” and then race off to the bench to get our gear.

  For everyone else “gear” is a glove and maybe a ball to warm up with. For me it’s a mountain of padding and a mask. I’ve got to put on a chest protector and shin protectors, and by the time I’ve wrestled into my mask I look more like a porky potato bug than a girl.

  After I’m dressed, I always go off by myself for a minute and, well, kind of talk to my mitt. It’s not like I say, Hiya, Mitt! How’s it going? It’s more like I go over the signals out loud or tell myself I’m going to have a good game. And when I’m all done talking, I count the loops in the laces and tug on the knots, and just spend a minute with my mitt.

  And my dad.

  Anyhow, I’m in the middle of counting loops when I hear Marissa call, “Sammy! Warm me up! C’mon, it’s time!” and sure enough, everyone’s in position but me.

  So I crouch down behind the plate and hold out my glove, and after a few practice pitches Mr. Caan signals Mr. Troxell to take his position umpiring in the field.

  Mr. Troxell’s the boys’ P.E. teacher. He’s big and boxy and really tan, and his hair’s buzzed right down to his scalp. When he’s in position, Mr. Caan steps behind me, flips down his umpire’s mask, and calls, “Batter up!”

  From all the whistling that’s going on I can tell without looking that it’s Julie Jaffers stepping up to bat. She’s tall and blond, and she’s got curves that could show through a catcher’s shell.

  She doesn’t catch, she plays first base, and she’s good. Actually, she’s great. She’s left-handed, which means she catches with her right hand, and with her being so tall she can snag a ball miles away from first without ever leaving the bag. The last thing you want to do if Julie Jaffers is on first is slap a ball down the first-base line. She’ll snap it up like a frog snags a fly, and you’ll be out before you can say, Rats!

  Anyway, I check the fielders, and everyone seems ready, so I crouch, flash Marissa the signal for a curve, and put up my mitt. Marissa presents the ball, then squints and windmills the first pitch. It comes sailing in like it’s going to nail Julie in the stomach, and then curves right over the plate.

  I throw the ball back to Marissa while Mr. Caan yells, “Steeerike one!” and jams a finger up in the air.

  Julie slaps the plate with her bat and then holds it real still, high in the air by her left ear and waits.

  I signal Marissa for another curve, put up her target, and whoosh, there it comes, straight for Julie’s stomach and then over the plate.

  “Steeerike two!” yells Mr. Caan and jams two fingers in the air.

  You can hear people yelling, “C’mon, Julie!” and you can tell from the way she’s slapping the plate that she’s not about to get suckered by another curve. I set up my mitt low and inside, and when Julie swings at the pitch she does it like she’s expecting it to curve out. She connects with the ball all right, only she does it way down the handle of the bat and all the ball does is dribble straight out to Marissa. Julie doesn’t even run to first. She takes three steps and then shakes her head and goes back to the bench while Marissa scoops up the bail and tosses it to Xandi Chapan.

  Miss Pitt is going a little crazy jumping up and down, yipping, “Way to go, girls! One up, one down! Keep it up, keep it up!”

  Then Gisa Kranz comes up to bat. Gisa is a foreign-exchange student from Germany. And even though she speaks pretty good English, when she gets excited or mad—which is pretty often—her words come out in German. And even when she’s not excited or mad, “yes” comes out ja, and “that” comes out das. You can always tell when someone’s been talking to Gisa ’cause they’ll say ja and das for a few sentences instead of yes and that. I guess it’s kind of contagious.

  Anyhow, Gisa plays third, and when she’s in the field you can hear her yelling, “Ja!” or, “Is mine!” or just yelling at the ump. If there’s one thing I know about Gisa Kranz, it’s that she’s definitely not shy.

  I also know that when she’s at bat, she’ll swing at the first pitch. Every time.

  So when she whacks the bat against the plate, digs in real good, and calls out to Marissa, “Ja, let’s have it, girl—I’m ready!” I signal Marissa to throw a riser and then set up her target.

  And sure enough, Gisa swings and pops a fly ball right out to Dawn Wilson at shortstop. Dawn catches it for an easy out and halfway to first Gisa starts sputtering in German. Nobody could tell you exactly what she was saying, but let me tell you, the meaning was loud and clear.

  So while Gisa heads back to the bench, Miss Pitt goes into hyper-hop, yelling, “Way to go girls! Two up, two down. One more time!”

  Now usually you’re not lucky enough to have three up and three down. One of the first three batters usually slips by. But we had two up and two down, and that put Heather in danger of being the third out, which is worse than you might think. See, if you’re the first out, or even the second, well, you’ll remember you made an out, but chances are other people won’t. What they will remember is that So-and-So made the third out. It’s almost like if you make the third out, you’re responsible for all of them. It’s not fair, and people would tell you it’s not even true, but trust me—I’ve been the third out lots of times and that’s the way it works.

  So here’s Heather, a seventh grader up after two eighth graders have just gone down, and what’s she thinking? That there’s no way she’s going to shoulder the third out. She slaps the plate, gives me the Evil Eye, then waves her bat in the air like she’s going to lasso a cow.

  When I give the signal for a curveball, Marissa just stands firm on the mound and shakes
me off. Now, this has only happened a couple of times before, and both times what she wanted was to pitch a fastball, straight down the middle. So I set up her target, but very slowly Marissa leans her head back—she wants the target higher.

  Up goes my mitt a tad, and in comes the pitch. Heather swings all right, only she just gets a piece of it. The ball pops up and back, so I flip off my mask and dive to catch it. When I dig myself out of the dirt, there’s the ball, smiling up at me from my mitt, and there’s Heather, glaring down at me like she’s going to kill me.

  I just dust off and try to ignore her. Mr. Caan steps over and says, “Move along, Heather,” because he knows that Heather’s on the verge of slicing and dicing.

  So I yank off my armor and join the rest of the team at the bench, and when Miss Pitt gets done dancing around telling us what a great job we did, Ms. Rothhammer looks at her clipboard and says, “Okay, you know the batting order: Dot, Sammy, Xandi, then Becky, Marissa, Kris, Dawn, Cindy, and Jennifer. Remember, whether you’re on the bench or warming up, focus on the game. Try to pick up Mr. Vince’s signals, look for weaknesses … stay sharp. What you pick up while you’re waiting for your turn at bat can be as valuable as a good play in the field. Keep your eyes open!”

  While the rest of the team lines up on the bench, Dot and I pick through the bats until we each find one that feels good. And while I’m on deck loosening up a bit, I hear Babs Filarski say through her catcher’s mask, “Little Dotty’s up to bat. Eeeeeeasy out.”

  Now, that’s just not true. Dot’s a good hitter. Babs is just one of those psych-out catchers. She’ll harass you into swinging, and do stuff like snicker or laugh when you’re about to lean into a pitch. And if the umpire’s standing far enough back she’ll call you things that would make Mr. Vince blush. If you don’t get a decent pitch early on, you stop caring about whacking the ball and start thinking about whacking Babs.

  Anyway, Dot just scowls at her and then Mr. Caan straightens out his face protector and calls, “Batter up!”

  So Dot gets up, taps the plate a few times with the end of her bat, then raises it and waits. And waits and waits some more. And the other team’s pitcher, Emiko Lee, never does present the ball. You can see her out there, flipping it around and around in her glove, and finally she steps off the mound and calls, “I need a new ball.”

  Mr. Caan straightens out and says, “That is a new ball!”

  Emiko just shakes her head. “It’s lopsided!”

  Mr. Caan pushes back his mask and walks out to the mound, but before he’s even halfway there, Mr. Vince is next to Emiko, taking over, inspecting the ball. The three of them stand out there for a while, arguing, and while everyone’s busy waiting, Ms. Rothhammer sneaks over from the third-base coach’s box and says to Dot, “It’s a psych-out, Dot, just relax. Close your eyes and picture yourself slamming that ball right past Gisa clear out to Anita and beyond. You can do it. Just stay cool.”

  Mr. Caan gives Emiko another ball, and after she does a few more warm-up pitches she digs herself a good toehold, presents the ball, and then windmills a pitch right over the plate.

  And Dot whacks the stitches off it. It goes smashing past third and out to left field just like Ms. Rothhammer told her to. She takes off like a firecracker, shooting around first and straight at Monet Jarlsberg on second. And when she sees Anita Arellano hurling the ball to Monet, she pours it on and then slides in, hooking the corner of the bag with her toe.

  When the dust dies down, she’s safe and Babs Filarski is steaming like a teapot. She kicks some imaginary dirt off home plate with her cleats and when she sees me waiting for her to back up, she practically spits, “Uppity seventh graders.” She straightens out her chest protector and it looks like she’s about to shove me, when Mr. Caan calls, “Let’s go, girls. We haven’t got all day.”

  The first pitch Emiko throws is low and outside. Way low. And as it’s coming in Babs says, “Swing!”

  I don’t. I step back and then measure up for the next pitch.

  It comes in low and outside again, and Babs calls, “Swing!” again.

  I almost did. I mean, I want to hit the ball. I’ve got all this adrenaline pumping and I want to run, not walk. So when the third pitch comes, Babs doesn’t have to tell me to swing. I watch the ball sail straight in the strike zone and wham! I whack it with all my might.

  Trouble is, the pitch was a riser, and before my bat even hit the ground I knew I was out. I tore off down the baseline anyway, because Ms. Rothhammer’s always yelling at us to give it the gun even if it looks hopeless, but I wasn’t paying much attention to first base—I was watching the ball take a nice little stroll through the air, straight for shortstop, straight for Heather Acosta.

  Heather lines up right beneath it, all right. Then she looks my way and drops it. That’s right, the giveaway pop-up of the season and she drops it. She scoops it up and fires it to first, but it’s too late. She’s just given me a freebie and let me tell you, I’m taking it. And as Xandi Chapan comes up to bat, there’s Heather across the field, glaring at me like it’s my fault she dropped the ball.

  I blow her a kiss and get ready to lead off. And when the ball leaves Emiko’s hand I move out about ten feet, keeping one eye on Dot and the other on Xandi. When Xandi swings, she misses, so I scoot back to the base and so does Dot.

  We wind up doing that two more times. On the third strike, Xandi throws down the bat, spins on Babs, and yells, “Shut up, would you?”

  Now, even through all her gear you can tell that Babs is smiling. And as Becky Bork steps up to the plate, Babs crouches into position and calls, “One out, force at second or third!” because she’s expecting to pick off two more outs without chipping a nail.

  What she wasn’t expecting was for Becky to bat left-handed. See, Becky’s right-handed, but sometimes she decides to bat the other way. And, right or left, she doesn’t just hit grounders. Ms. Rothhammer’s got her fourth in the lineup because if Becky connects with the ball, it’s gone, and that usually means we’re on the board.

  Trouble is, that’s a big if. Becky’s gone games without connecting, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She just comes back to the bench with, “I’ll get it next time. Wait and see. I will.”

  So Becky picks the heaviest bat available, steps up, and slams the plate a few times like she’s trying to crack it open. Then she tucks in her lower lip and wags the bat in the air.

  Emiko plays with her toehold a bit, then whips a pitch straight through the strike zone.

  Becky keeps on wagging.

  Mr. Caan yells, “Steeerike one!” and Babs tosses the ball back to Emiko.

  Emiko plays with the ball a minute and then whips another one right down the middle.

  Becky keeps right on wagging.

  Now, I’m looking at Dot and Dot’s looking at me, and we’re both getting kind of nervous. I mean, Becky’s up there looking like a crazed robot waving a wooden arm, and we’re both thinking there’s no way she’s going to get a hit, let alone drive us in.

  Then Emiko does something she should never have done. She throws her a change-up. Against any other power hitter a change-up might’ve been a good idea, but against Becky? Mis-take! That’s her pitch.

  The minute Becky sees that ball coming toward her, well, the crazed robot with the wagging wooden arm comes alive. She steps into the pitch and wham! It goes hurling out to right field, and no amount of praying is going to land that ball in Tenille Toolee’s glove.

  So around the bases we go, just kind of dancing across home plate and giving each other high-fives until our hands hurt.

  And when the cheering finally dies down and Dot, Becky, and I are back on the bench, I look out at the field, and I can’t see much but Heather. She’s out there, pacing between third and second like a caged tiger. A hungry caged tiger.

  And I can tell from the way she’s looking at me—I’m her pail of meat.

  We won, 6–1. Mr. Vince’s team did make some good plays, and I hate to admi
t it, but Heather made two terrific outs. But I think they were so thrown by the first inning and we were so charged by it that they kept blowing it, and the mistakes we made just seemed to wash right off.

  For a while we thought we might even shut them out, but then Gisa hit a ball clear over Kris Zilli’s head, and before you know it, Gisa’s dancing up and down on home plate yelling, “Ja! Ja! Ja! I did it! I did it!” and they were on the board.

  After the last out, we tried to go up and shake hands, but they just ignored us. All except Heather and Emiko, that is. Heather gave me the scariest Evil Eye I’ve ever seen, and Emiko went up to Marissa and told her, “Great pitching. You deserved the win.”

  So while their team is getting yelled at by Mr. Vince, Miss Pitt waltzes around giving us hugs, saying how proud she is of us. We’re all keeping half an eye on Ms. Rothhammer, though, because she’s in the enemy camp with her hand out to Mr. Vince.

  At first he stands there like he’s much too busy holding a clipboard to shake her hand, but finally he shuffles things around and gives her a quick shake. And when Ms. Rothhammer jogs back over to us, there’s a smile dying to explode all over her face.

  She stands there for a minute, studying her tennis shoes. Then she looks up and says, “You girls did me proud,” and if I didn’t know her better, I’d swear there were tears in her eyes. “I’ll talk with you individually tomorrow, but right now I want you to go over and shake hands with Mr. Vince’s team.”

  Xandi says, “But we already tried!”

  Becky chimes in with, “Yeah, they snubbed us.”

  Ms. Rothhammer gives us a wise little smile. “I know that. Try again. Try harder.” We stand around looking at each other until she claps her hands and says, “C’mon, girls. Move it!”

  Mr. Vince’s team tries to ignore us again, but Mr. Troxell makes them line up. We come through and shake hands, mumbling, “Good game,” back and forth, and then there I am, cleat to cleat with Heather Acosta. And I’m looking straight in the eyes of someone who’d shove me down the shaft of an outhouse without blinking, but for some reason I’m not feeling scared or mad or spiteful. I’m feeling bad that we’re such enemies. And I find myself wondering why she hates me so much. I mean, sure, I’ve called her Turdface and Eggbreath and I’ve trespassed on her property a time or two, but she hated me way before that. And really, what I’ve done to her is nothing compared to what she’s done to me.