“Come on,” says Andy, drawing a line from Tim to me with his finger. “You know these two can’t help it.”
“Chuhhh,” says Tim. “You, like, aspire to be ignorant.”
Andy makes a far-off expression with his face and goes, “Someday…”
We laugh, and then we start talking about the team, our team. That’s always going to happen when the four of us are together.
It’s Monday night and my parents are going to an Awesome Eighties concert at the Atheneum. It’s a forty-five-minute or thirty-year drive from here, depending on how you look at it. The show features not one, not two, but three bands I know nothing about. The funniest thing about it is seeing my parents getting all dressed up. My mom has one ancient can of hair spray that she pretty much only uses for things like this.
FFFshhhhhFFFFFshhhh! I hear through the partially open bathroom door.
Mom emerges from the bathroom with a hair cliff above her forehead and a faded T-shirt that says “The Go-Go’s” on it. Her sneakers could not be any pinker.
“Lookin’ good, Mom,” I say, giving her a weak thumbs-up.
“Thanks,” she says. “I’ve got the beat!”
It’s doubtful, but I don’t say so. Then I turn the corner and see Dad in a polo shirt the color of pistachio ice cream — or the insides of that one kind of squashed caterpillar. He has the tip of each side of his collar pinched between the thumb and first finger of his hands. “What do you think,” he says, “up or down?”
“Oh, Dad,” I say, shaking my head.
A moment later, Mom comes around the corner.
“Up or down?” he repeats.
“Pop it!” she says.
He raises the collar up so that it’s like the top of a squashed-caterpillar-green cape.
“I’ll be in the car,” I say.
I’m not going to the show. I mean, can you imagine? They’re dropping me off at Andy’s. We’re going to “do homework” while they listen to “rock and roll.” When we get there, Andy’s mom makes a big fuss about their outfits.
“It’s so dramatic!” she says, reaching out and lightly touching Mom’s hair cliff.
“Thanks, Siobhan,” says Mom. “It’s more dramatic now. I forgot and had the window down for a few blocks.”
“Still,” says Andy’s mom. She turns to Dad. “And who’s this young buck?”
Andy appears behind her, just inside the door.
“Excuse me,” I say, and duck past.
“What took you so long?” I say once we’re inside. “I almost died out there!”
“Sorry,” he says. “I was preparing myself. You know, mentally.”
As we head for the living room we pass Andy’s dad heading toward the door.
“Hi, Mr. Rossiter,” I say.
“Hi-Jack!” he says. It’s his standard joke for me. When he holds up both hands for the pretend hijacking, I can see that he’s wearing his Kings of Country tour T-shirt. I’m pretty sure that’s not a coincidence.
“Guess I’d better go be neighborly,” he says, even though we’re not really neighbors.
“It’s not pretty,” I say.
“The eighties weren’t,” he says.
By the time Andy and I hear my parents drive away, we’re settled in at the living room table. We have our books open and look just like we would if we were doing homework. His parents duck their heads in and look just like they would if they believed us.
“We’ll leave you two scholars alone,” says his mom.
“Don’t pull a brain muscle,” says the King of Country.
Then they go upstairs, and we set up the Xbox Kinect. If you don’t have one (I don’t either), it’s one of those video game systems that watches what you do and then has your character do the same thing in the game.
We decide to play soccer on it, so Andy takes the big square of carpet out of the closet and unrolls it right in front of the game’s weird robot eyes. That way we can jump and kick without making too much noise.
We’re both quiet for a second, and we can hear the TV coming through the ceiling from upstairs. It must be a dancing or singing show because first there’s music, then there’s applause. Those shows are pretty loud, so we figure we can have a pretty good game of soccer.
We both get carried away, but Andy’s the one who brings his foot too far back on a penalty kick and clips the corner of the coffee table. We moved it back a little to put the carpet down, but I guess we didn’t move it enough.
I turn around in time to see the whole table bump to a landing. Magazines shift sideways and drink coasters bounce. Right in the center of the table, a fancy-looking glass bottle wobbles twice on its little silver tray and falls over. I can see a few inches of brown liquid sloshing around inside of it.
“Nononono!” says Andy, looking over his shoulder.
He lurches back and grabs for the fancy bottle, but his body is all twisted around, and he falls and hits the table hard. Everything jumps again, higher this time. Behind him, his soccer player is basically going crazy. In front of him, the bottle skips off the edge of the table, brown liquid and all, and shatters on the floor.
“Uh-oh,” he says, getting up onto his knees. His face looks shocked and pale.
We both freeze and listen. There’s no sound coming from above us now, no music, and definitely no applause.
“What was that?” I whisper. “Was it, like, expensive?”
“My mom’s Waterford crystal,” he whispers.
“Her What-er-ferd what?” I say.
“Waterford crystal,” he says. “They don’t even make them anymore. Not in Ireland, anyway.”
As soon as I hear the word Ireland, I know this is bad. Andy’s mom doesn’t just happen to be Irish, she’s seriously into being Irish. She’s a member of some society for it, and Andy just barely escaped Irish step-dancing lessons. Someone who would do that to her own son … Well, you can see how serious it is.
“What’s that smell?” I say.
“Whiskey,” he says. “Irish whiskey.”
That’s when we hear the footsteps coming down the stairs. They’re coming fast. I’m actually hoping it’s his dad, but it’s not. Andy barely has time to get to his feet before his mom bursts into the room.
“What was th—” she starts, but she’s already seen it. Her eyes are on the floor, and her jaw isn’t too far away.
“My Waterford,” she says.
She peels her eyes away just long enough to register the rest of the room: the soccer game on the TV and Andy and me standing there looking as sorry as we possibly can.
“I just…” she says. “I don’t even…”
And then she disappears and comes back with a roll of paper towels and a dustpan. She goes over and cleans up the mess. When she stands up again, I can see the remains of the thing in the dustpan. It broke into a few big pieces, and it seems like there should be some way to fix it. But I know there isn’t.
“How?” she says, looking straight at Andy.
She looks like she’s about to start crying or maybe screaming.
“I…” says Andy. He’s in an enormous amount of trouble. “I just…”
“He just turned on the game,” I say.
Andy looks at me. His eyes are wide open, and he’s shaking his head slowly: No.
“I broke the bottle, Mrs. Rossiter,” I say. “I’m very sorry about the bottle.”
“It’s a decanter,” she says. “It was.”
Her eyes slowly leave her son and land on me. They are so intense that I blink a few times and then look down.
“It was very nice,” I say. “I’m sorry I broke it.”
“It was very old,” she says.
We’re all quiet for a moment. The game makes a noise, trying to get our attention.
“Turn that off,” says Andy’s mom. “You won’t be playing it again for a long time.”
Andy walks over and turns the game off.
“Stay here,” says his mom, like we have anywhe
re else to go. Then she leaves the room, and we hear her heading back upstairs to get his dad.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” Andy says in a hissy whisper. “She is going to kill you!”
“She can’t kill me,” I say. “She can only kill you!”
“OK, that’s true,” he says. “But you’re going to get in a ton of trouble — a ton!”
“But I’ll get in less than you would,” I say. “It’s just smarter this way.”
“It’s incredibly stupid!”
Now we hear them both starting down the stairs.
“Just don’t say anything,” I say. “We’ll both get in trouble if you say something now. You for doing it, and me for saying I did it.”
“I can’t let you do this,” he says.
His parents are almost at the bottom of the stairs, and our whispers are getting lower and lower. I try to think of some convincing way to end this.
“It was my penalty!” I say.
“What?”
“You know, the penalty kick,” I say. “The one where it happened.”
“So?”
“I fouled you,” I say. “My fault. I got a yellow card.”
“What does that even —”
And then his parents appear, and we shut up. Andy’s mom gives us both a speech about taking responsibility for our actions, while his dad stands there and looks serious, sad, and sometimes a little bored.
“I’m very sorry,” I say for the fourteenth time.
“Me, too,” says Andy.
They keep looking at him, waiting to see if he’s going to say anything else. I do, too, but he doesn’t say another word until after they leave. We’re sitting at the table, really doing our homework this time.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Ehh,” I say, waving him off. “You’d do the same for me.”
And he would’ve. He has.
We’re done with our homework by the time my parents return from the Awesome Eighties. Andy and I are both worried about what his mom is going to say to them. We’re all standing there under the light on the little front porch, except for Andy’s dad. He starts work early and is already in bed.
“How was he?” asks my dad. He’s smiling, and his green collar is still mostly “popped.”
Mrs. Rossiter looks at me. All she has to do is say a few words, and I’ll be handing over my allowance to her forever. “A total hooligan,” she says, but she says it like it’s a joke. “As usual.”
“That sounds like him, all right,” says Dad with a little laugh.
“Oh, yeah?” says my mom. Her voice is more suspicious. They could be communicating on a secret mom wavelength.
“Yep,” she says. “Mayhem, destruction. But it’s nothing the insurance won’t cover.”
My mom and dad both laugh.
“Well, thanks,” says my mom. “We got you this.”
It’s an Awesome Eighties concert T-shirt. Yeah, that should cover it. But amazingly, it does. I forget sometimes, our parents are friends, too.
“What do you think?” Mrs. Rossiter says to Andy, holding the shirt up in front of her.
“Dad’ll love it,” he says.
I thank Mrs. Rossiter again as I leave, but Andy and I don’t say anything to each other. We bump fists and nod. That’s what teammates do.
I’m camped under a lazy fly ball in shallow left. It’s totally routine, but really high. Jackson took a big cut and just got under it. It feels like I wait three minutes for it to come down, and I realize I’m nervous. Nervous for this can of corn! I don’t think I’ve missed one of these since I was eight. That’s how I know that the stakes are high.
It’s the second half of practice on Tuesday, and we’re having a little three-inning mini game. There’s nothing unusual about that, except that our first game is Saturday. Coach is either setting the starting lineup or he already has. Obvious starters, like Manny, are playing for both teams.
I’m in left for one team, and Geoff is in left for the other. Everyone already knows one of us will start out here. When Jackson’s pop-up smacks into the webbing of my glove for the third out, I cover it with my other hand. This isn’t the time to take chances.
It isn’t the time to pop out weakly to shallow left, either, but Jackson is safe as the starter at first. I smile a little on my way in for the top of the second inning. It has to be the first time in baseball history that someone is safe at first after popping out!
Anyway, I’m due up second, since Malfoy sat us down one, two, three in the first inning. I toss my glove to the ground, pick up the bat I like, and go straight to the on-deck circle. I take a few warm-up cuts.
It would be so sweet to get a big hit here, so sweet on so many levels. First of all, it would be off Malfoy, that smug-faced jerk-butt. Second, and a lot more important, it might give me a leg up on Geoff. He hasn’t batted yet either. Coach has him batting fifth for his team, too. No one on their team has even sniffed a hit against our ace pitcher, J.P., but Geoff will get his chance in the bottom of the inning.
Dustin steps into the box. He’s our catcher, and he has some pop, so he’s batting cleanup. Malfoy fires in a first-pitch strike and pumps his fist as he waits to get the ball back. What a jerk: It’s just one strike. I need to focus, though. In one more pitch, I could be up.
I start trying to time Malfoy’s fastball. He has a pretty good one. Dustin works the count even at two balls and two strikes. On the fifth pitch, he laces one into left.
It’s heading for Geoff but sinking fast. For a second, I think Geoff might run in and make some crazy diving catch, which would be great for him, or a diving miss, which would be great for me. But he does the smart thing and plays it on one hop to hold Dustin to a single.
And just like that, I’m up with a runner on. Dustin isn’t fast at all, so I have to worry about hitting into a double play. As I step into the batter’s box, I can see that Malfoy is really upset on the mound. It was just a single, but he’s stomping around and swearing under his breath. He’s the only person on the team who doesn’t realize how much better a pitcher J.P. is, so he probably still thinks he has a shot at being our ace.
I go through my routine, digging my foot in, taking my four quick mini swings. Malfoy is ready before I am. As soon as my bat goes back, he fires in his best heater. That’s another sign of how mad he is: The pitch is definitely faster than any of the ones to Dustin.
I take a huge cut. I mean, remember, the last time I had a bat in my hands was in a batting cage. I can still feel the sensation of all of the solid, scorched liners I’d been hitting.
Basically, I’m swinging for the fences.
I’m too late on the fastball, of course, but I hit a long foul ball well to the right of right field. I think that makes Malfoy even madder, going up there and swinging out of my shoes like that. But what can he do? He’s already shown me his best heater.
He can come inside. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that! The pitch cuts in toward me, chest high. It’s one of those pitches where you can just tell right away you’re in trouble. The ball just seems to follow you. I lean back as far and as fast as I can, but it isn’t going to be enough. I fall backward into the dirt just as the ball hisses past me and clangs against the backstop.
That snake!
I stay down for a second to straighten out my legs and make sure everything is still in working order. The sun disappears, and I look up to see Coach standing above me. He’s behind the plate as the umpire.
“You OK?” he says.
“Yep,” I say, getting up. I’m not hurt, but my head is buzzing. There’s something going on in my stomach, too. Butterflies, nerves, whatever you want to call it. Malfoy is a nasty dude with a nasty fastball, and man, that would’ve hurt. Now I have to get back in there.
“One and one,” Coach calls out, squatting back down. “Watch it out there, Meacham!”
“He was crowding the plate!” Malfoy’s dad shouts. That’s the kind of thing you’d expect a p
arent to yell from the stands, not a coach from third base. Tim’s dad is an assistant coach, too, but if anything, he’s harder on his son. So it’s not like it’s impossible to be fair. And anyway, there’s no way I was crowding the plate. I have my routine. I’m always the right distance from the plate.
I try to glare out at Malfoy, but he’s already glaring in twice as hard. It’s like I’d thrown at him or something. Jerk-butt.
But here’s the thing: It really was a good pitch. It was a good pitch because I’m completely spooked on the next pitch and can only manage a weak hack at it. Suddenly, I’m down 1–2 and still a little shaken up.
I ask for time from Coach. He gives it to me, and I pretend there’s something wrong with my shoe. When I get back into the box, I still don’t feel that comfortable. I think about bunting. It’s stupid to bunt with two strikes. I’m as likely to foul out as advance the runner. Plus I’m afraid Malfoy will drill me in the teeth if I square around.
I just take the next pitch. I think it’s a strike, but Coach calls it a ball. It’s probably punishment for the brushback pitch.
“Come on, Edgar!” Malfoy’s dad yells at Coach.
“Shut up, Sam,” Coach whispers behind the plate. But it’s way too quiet for “Sam” to hear.
I sort of feel like I’m batting against Malfoy and his dad now, and I’m pretty sure Coach won’t give me another charity call.
It’s the fifth pitch of the at-bat, the same one Dustin lined to left. I should have the pitcher timed by now; I should be working the count. Instead, Malfoy is working me.
He drops in a slow changeup. Sneaky. After all of those fastballs, I’m about eight years ahead on the swing.
Strike three, take a seat, you suck.
We strand Dustin at third. The only good thing is that Geoff has to face J.P. in his half of the inning and goes down swinging.
“Chin music,” Chester says to me as we’re waiting to get picked up after practice.
“I’m tone-deaf, anyway,” I say, but it’s wishful thinking. I can still hear that pitch whizzing by me, clanging into the backstop. I can’t quite get it out of my head.
I barely say anything on the ride home. Dad asks me if I want to get takeout from somewhere, and I just say, “Nah.”
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