“Did you play?” I ask.
“Something like that.” His face goes hard.
“They must call you Cryptic Coach Hoffman.” We haven’t taken one step away from home plate.
“I’m never gonna get used to being called coach. Seriously.”
I laugh lightly. “How about a nickname?”
“Such as?” He raises his eyebrows.
I stuff my frozen hands in my armpits. “The Hoff?”
“Isn’t that David Hasselhoff’s nickname?”
“Perhaps.”
“So you’re equating me with that movie star guy who gets trashed and videotapes himself drunk and eating cheeseburgers?”
“Exactly.”
“Back in high school they called me Shooter.”
“Why? Are you a deer hunter or something?”
“Uhhh, you don’t want to know what it means.” The side of his mouth quirks up.
I rock back and forth on my heels. “I like the Hoff way better.”
He smiles at me. “If you’re gonna call me the Hoff, I’m gonna give you a nickname too.”
“Such as…?”
“Trouble. I’ll call you Trouble.”
“Cliché.”
“Touché.”
We start laughing.
“God, this is the silliest conversation I’ve had in ages,” he says with a smile.
Yeah, probably because you’re an adult and I’m a child, and how could an adult possibly have a normal mature conversation with a girl? I gaze down at the red clay beneath my boots, then look up into his brown eyes and sneak a glimpse at the loose curls peeking out from under his hat. Are they soft?
I say, “Fine, you can call me Trouble. And I’m still gonna call you the Hoff.”
His face contorts into this blend of pain and amusement. “Call me Brian,” he says quietly. “I’m not ready to be called coach or mister. I’m not ancient.”
“Brian.” I like the way it sounds coming off my tongue. Full and deep. His mouth slides into a smile, and I catch him quickly scanning my body.
He leads me over to the dugout, picking up a stick along the way. We sit down. He hands me a pencil and the stats book, which looks like a large, floppy sketchpad. Boxes of tiny field grids fill the inside pages. I bring the stats book to my nose and inhale the smoky gray paper.
Brian laughs softly and uses the stick to clean clay out of his cleats. “You must really like baseball. Smelling the stats book and all.”
“Smelling books is a habit Dad got me started on.”
“There are worse habits.” Brian shows me his fingernails. He’s bitten them down to the quick. How personal. It’s not like I openly show people my super-long second toes.
“You ever taken stats before?” he asks. I like his voice. Low, Southern, manly.
“Sort of,” I say, tracing my palm. “Dad is a big Braves fan.” Was a big Braves fan.
“Me too.” He goes back to picking wet clay and grass out of his cleat. “What’s your team?”
“Braves, I guess.” I want to keep talking to him. I can do this. I can talk about baseball again. When my family was still together, we loved heading down to Atlanta on weekends to catch games, especially when they played the Phillies and the Mets.
Mom played softball in high school, and then went on to play shortstop for the University of Tennessee. Before she ditched us, I played softball too. I loved it. But last January, when she left and moved to Knoxville with Theresa, our family was embarrassed to the nth degree. Everyone at church gave us funny looks on Sundays during Coffee Time in the Fellowship Hall, which is a fancy way of saying we eat stale donuts in the church basement. I don’t even know why we kept going to church.
“But why would we want to hang out with those jerks who judge us because of something Mom did?” I had cried to Dad.
“It’s just a phase. They’ll forget about it.”
“But—”
“We are not negotiating this,” he replied, studying the newspaper.
“Are we going to atone for Mom’s sins?” my older brother asked.
“Becoming a lesbian is a sin?” I replied.
“I’m not sure. People at church think so.” Ryan sucked on his bottom lip.
“Does it actually say that in the Bible? Thou shalt not become a lesbian?”
“No,” Dad said with a sigh, his eyes closed.
“Then why are we going to church?” I blurted. Phase or not, how the congregation turned on us didn’t seem forgivable.
“We trust in prayer,” Dad replied. His father believes in prayer. So did his grandfather.
Church means dressing up on Sunday mornings and forgoing French toast at the kitchen table for stale powdered donuts. It means listening to Brother John saying “Your body is a temple” and “True love waits,” and then we all would say we’ll wait until we get married to have sex. Or at least until college.
Some people at church thought I might turn out like my mom. A lesbian. A sinner. I overheard the youth pastor whispering that to the choir director. Brother John told Mrs. James that they would always love me, but he and his wife had to protect their daughter, Laura (my former best friend), from making similarly bad choices. I went home and hid all my pictures of Mom and cried and cried.
But that made me feel worse, because I knew Mom adored me, and no matter how hard she had tried to hide it, we could tell she was depressed. Before she left Dad, sometimes I came home from school and found she’d been crying.
I used to love church, but I turned away from it like they turned on me. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After Tate Gillam’s dad got caught doing his secretary, my own dad told me not to hang around Tate and his sister Rachel anymore.
When I confronted Laura about what her dad had said, that I might turn out like my mom—a lesbian, a sinner—we got into a huge fight because I said her father wasn’t being a good Christian toward me. Laura asked, “What do you know about being a Christian? You knew I liked Jack Hulsey. When you turned him down to the Winter Wonderland formal, you could’ve put in a good word for me. But you only care about yourself and proving you’re better than me.”
So untrue.
Our frustrations had been building up for a long time anyhow, so she didn’t take it well when I called her a jealous bitch. The words popped out and I wanted to take them back, but I couldn’t.
Then Laura spread a rumor around school, saying I’m just like my mom. A butch softball player who probably likes girls.
Apparently “love thy neighbor” changes to “judge thy neighbor” if your family doesn’t follow the church playbook.
Where did you go, God?
That night after Laura spread the rumors, I started dieting. I went from 140 pounds of muscle down to 110 pounds of skin and bone and hotness. I look good. I don’t look butch. All the guys know I look good. They know I want them and that I love kissing and sometimes rounding a couple bases (I never go further than second). But that’s as close as they’re getting. Emotionally or otherwise.
“Hello? Earth to Parker.” Brian snaps his fingers in my face.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“What’re you thinking about?”
I hear a crack: the ball connecting with a bat. Foul ball. Drew stands at second base, pounding a fist into his glove. Corndog mans third, hunched over on his knees, focused on the batter. Brian smacks bubblegum that smells like heaven.
After Mom left, we stopped watching the Braves.
“I’m thinking about baseball,” I whisper.
“Oh yeah?” A grin sneaks on his face. “I love this game.”
•••
Lee Miller pops up to center field. Sam catches the fly, then lobs the ball to shortstop.
Brian asks, “Why�
��d you want to be our manager?”
“Drew wanted me to.” I gesture toward second base, where I can see him standing on tiptoes, trying to see what I’m up to. “He’s my best friend.”
“That’s cool,” he says. “Are you a senior?”
“Yep.”
“Where do you want to go to college?”
“Vanderbilt?” I don’t tell him I’ve already been accepted early decision.
He whistles. “Good school.”
“My brother Ryan goes there. He still lives at home with us, though.” Vanderbilt’s only about 20 minutes away.
“You’re close with your family?” Brian asks.
“Sorta close with my dad and Ryan.” I peek over at him. “How about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
Brian watches a cloud passing overhead. “A little sister. Anna…What about your mom?”
I blush. “Um, she doesn’t live here anymore.”
He finds my eyes, but doesn’t press further. “Anna doesn’t live here anymore either. She moved to Florida.”
“Do you miss her?” Because I miss Mom and the way things were before the divorce so much…all I want is for everyone in my family to be whole again. For us to be whole together.
Brian chews his gum. “It’s a scary thing to wake up and realize the people you need most aren’t nearby anymore…But you keep moving.”
He elbows me, and yeah, he’s much older, but I don’t feel so alone right now. I like that he understands the importance of family. I like that sitting here beside him is so easy.
He tutors me in taking baseball stats, showing me how to draw a thick line from home plate to first base to denote a single. He scratches out the little “1B” next to the thick line. He says that if the ball hits a runner, I have to write BHR across the little field. A double means drawing two dark lines, and if a pitcher hits a batter, I’m supposed to write HBP real big. If a batter hits a homer, I draw four dark lines from base to base to base to home plate, then I denote how many runs get batted in by writing the number of runs and circling it. A bunt is BT.
“I thought BT meant bacon and tomato,” I say, and Brian chuckles softly at my stupid joke. Generous of him. I lean so close to watch as he fills out the scorecard, I can feel his breath, warm against my cheek. This is the first time in a long while that an adult has paid a lot of attention to me. Paid attention, and treated me like an equal.
“So, any questions?” Brian asks, snapping the stats book shut. He grabs a glove from a cubby under the bench.
“Yeah, when are practices?”
“Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, except for when we have games, which are usually on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”
“Darn,” I mumble.
“How come? Are you on yearbook staff or in the play or something?”
“I have WNYG on Wednesdays and I was hoping I could get out of it.”
“WNYG?”
“Wednesday Night Youth Group at church. Brother John thinks calling it WNYG makes it sound sexy.”
Brian snorts. He puts the glove on his left hand and starts breaking it in with his other fist.
I keep blabbering, “Dad makes me go to church, but I can’t stand it anymore.” Why am I being so honest with this guy?
“Where do you go?”
“Forrest Sanctuary.”
He bites at a hangnail. “Huh. That’s where my parents go.”
“Every Sunday?”
“Every Sunday.”
I’ve never seen him there. And over five hundred people are in the congregation, so I have no idea who his parents are. “But you don’t go?”
He stops biting his nail and goes back to pounding his glove. “It’s not really my thing either.”
“What, you mean you don’t love eating stale powdered donuts during Coffee Time in the Fellowship Hall?”
He chuckles.
“Hoffman!” Coach Burns calls from over by third base. “You teaching her the history of baseball or something?”
“We better go,” Brian says, standing and adjusting his beige cap. He gives me a nervous smile. I hope he’ll put out a hand, to help me stand up, but he doesn’t.
Disappointment should be my middle name.
•••
“Disappointment” can’t begin to describe how it felt losing Laura and Allie. Sure, you may have shown me that Laura’s not the best friend I’ve ever had, which is probably better in the long run, but I still feel the loss. No more Saturday nights at the drive-in. No more impromptu fashion shows in Allie’s mom’s walk-in closet. No more roasting marshmallows over a stove burner.
Written after practice on February 13. Burned.
•••
I sit Indian style up against the fence beside the third base line, taking stats. I have to admit I’m enjoying it.
Corndog steps up to the plate and taps his bat on the ground three times before getting into his stance. He watches the first pitch smack into the catcher’s mitt.
“Strike one,” Coach Burns says.
“That was high, Coach!” Corndog yells.
“High my ass!” Sam yells from center field. “I’m a billion feet away and I could tell that was a strike.”
“Shut your face, Henry!” Corndog calls.
“I wonder if they’ll let me retire tomorrow,” Coach Burns replies.
On the next pitch, Corndog sends the ball over the right field wall. He whoops as he rounds the bases. “Yo, Parker! You wrote that down, right?” he calls out as he rounds third. He points at me before crossing home plate, shoving his fists toward the sky, doing the Rocky pose.
Does he have to be so perfect at everything? Everyone’s been saying he applied to big-time schools like Harvard. I mark his homer, filling in the diamond with pencil.
“Parker Shelton? Is that you?”
I glance up to find a clearly pregnant Coach Lynn standing before me.
“It’s me,” I reply, deadpan, turning my focus to stats. Drew is the next batter up; I write down his name.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“She’s our new manager.”
I jerk my head up. Brian’s hovering beside my former softball coach.
“Manager?” Coach Lynn exclaims. “You told me you’d rather burn in hell than have anything to do with softball ever again. You’re willing to manage, but you won’t play for me?” She touches her swollen stomach, looking upset. She must be six months along by now.
Brian furrows his eyebrows at me. He tucks his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt and chomps his gum.
I twirl my pencil.
“Well?” Coach Lynn presses.
I shrug. I’ve got nothing to say to her.
“You threw away your chance to play in college, Parker. You’re about to graduate. I know you love softball.”
“She played for you?” Brian asks.
“She was on my varsity squad her freshman and sophomore years. Could’ve been the best third baseman Hundred Oaks has ever seen.”
“Varsity? As a freshman?” Brian blurts.
I lick my lips and glance at his face, then clear my throat. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to pay attention to practice.” I watch as Drew scoops at a low pitch and misses it. “Stats are very important to Coach Hoffman’s decision-making process.”
“Decision-making process,” Coach Lynn repeats.
“That’s right,” Brian says. The look on his face shocks me. His dark eyes are questioning, pissed. Wary. He crosses his arms and heads out to center field, to talk to Sam.
“I’d love to have you on the team,” Coach Lynn says, rubbing her belly. “Just say the word. You don’t have to manage the boys’ team if you want to be around the game ag
ain.”
I shake my head. “That’s not it.”
I’ve never told Coach Lynn why I quit after the first practice last season. Softball was something Mom and I shared, and simply slipping a glove on my hand reminded me of how she left. It hurt like hell, but I thought I could handle playing again. But after everything went down with Laura, it sent me over the edge, and I quit. Coach Lynn’s tried, unsuccessfully, to get me back. But she doesn’t know how it felt, how my own team made fun of me. What happens in the locker room stays in the locker room.
“Our practice starts right after the boys are done,” Coach Lynn says. “I’d love to see you there.” She waddles off toward the left field equipment shed, where I see my former teammates gathering. That’s when Laura and Allie James pass by the fence. Laura has broad shoulders and blonde hair and is much shorter than me or Allie, who’s a tall, bony first baseman.
“I can’t believe they let her be manager,” Laura says loudly. “It can’t be good for the team’s image.”
“I wish I got to spend time with all those boys,” Allie replies quietly, sounding wistful. They sashay toward the equipment shed.
Laura was the worst after Mom left, after I screamed that her dad was being a jerk and not a very good Christian. She was captain junior year and said, “Don’t stare at the other girls in the locker room. I won’t stand for it.” Why would I want to follow a leader like that?
Some other girls on the team taunted me too, asking questions like, “How do lesbians have sex anyway?” and “You’re not gay, right? ’Cause that would just be weird.”
Allie took a step back and bit her lip. She looked sympathetic, but ultimately kept hanging out with Laura because her mom worried I’d be a bad influence on her daughter. I never bothered to reach out to Allie after that. I mean, why? So my heart could be broken again?
Still, watching my team pull bats and catching equipment and helmets out of the shed nearly brings me to tears. I don’t need them, I tell myself. I’ve got Drew. The person who didn’t judge me.
Brian comes back over, squats beside me, and studies my scorekeeping. “Did you already know how to take stats?”
“Yeah,” I mumble, fumbling with my pencil.
His brow wrinkles. “I don’t appreciate it when people waste my time.”
Stealing Parker (Catching Jordan) Page 2
