Biggie

by Derek E. Sullivan

  “Whatever,” I say, knowing I’m right. “Laser hates me. Or at the very least thinks I’m a fat loser. He’s just like those jocks at school who think sports make the world spin. Well, sports don’t. Governments do, so I’m just going to sit here and learn about the executive branch. If Laser wants to do something with me, why can’t he come into my world? Why can’t we work on school stuff together? Oh wait. That’s right. To him, sports are everything and school is a nuisance, which is probably why Maddux has never been in a school.”

  “Stop it,” Mom commands. “If you want to be homeschooled too, that’s fine. Just ask. Nobody said you couldn’t get a tutor like Maddux.”

  “I don’t need a tutor. I go to school and I get straights As,” I yell loudly even though Mom is a couple of feet away. “I’m sorry for yelling. I’m fine, Mom, really. Just writing an outline.”

  “Henry Abbott.”

  My mom never calls me Henry Abbott, so the full name grabs my attention. It’s quickly apparent that she hasn’t accepted my apology. Henry isn’t even my real name, or at least original name. When I was born, Mom, who had just turned seventeen, named me Aaron after my father, who was also seventeen. Both were one month away from starting their senior years of high school. Sixteen months later when my dad’s parents presented Mom with papers renouncing his rights to me, Mom changed my name to Henry after my grandfather.

  So why is my last name Abbott, even after my biological dad put in writing that he wants nothing to do with me? Well, because Laser has never adopted me. I guess in some ways I don’t have a father. I have two contenders, but one left me legally and the other doesn’t want me.

  When I hear my full name, I quit debating her, throw out the empty bag of chips, and close my government book. I would do anything for Mom.

  The indoor diamond sits next to our house but feels so far away from everything I know. It’s like our home has two worlds: the baseball world and the Biggie world. Guess where I live? The walk takes me five minutes and Mom follows me the entire way. There’s no turning back. I open the door and find Laser at second base placing baseballs into a white bucket.

  “Jim!” Mom yells. “Henry wants to play baseball with you.”

  Laser pulls a baseball out of a bucket and tosses it at me. I rapidly pull on my glove and catch the ball.

  “Do you wanna play baseball?” he asks.

  “I’m sorry for embarrassing you,” I say.

  “That’s not what I asked,” he says.

  I’m so nervous, standing in his world, five long minutes from mine, that I forget to throw the ball back and instead let it fall to the ground next to my feet.

  “Do you wanna play baseball?” he asks again and fires another ball to me, this time a little harder and sort of sidearm.

  I flinch a little but catch the ball. “It’s okay,” I say.

  Laser drops his arms limply. “Jesus Christ, Biggie, could you just answer the question?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize, just answer the question.”

  “I did!” I shout. Then I whisper, “But I don’t anymore.”

  “Why did you think you could pitch? You haven’t played a single inning of baseball since you were six years old, and you quit T-ball after three games.” Laser loves to bring up my short T-ball career.

  “I threw a perfect game of Wiffle ball in gym, and Maddux taught me a knuckleball so I could also throw a perfect game in baseball,” I quickly mumble, slurring words together. If Laser and I were in a chat room and I had some time to construct an answer and repeat it in a clear voice, I don’t know what I would say. I can’t honestly answer the question because I don’t really know. Would throwing another perfect game be cool? Yes. Would I love to feel the rush of stepping on the mound? Yes. Do I want to give up a home run or turn my head over and over again as the other team racks up hits? Hell no. I don’t know what to say.

  Laser drops a ball into the bucket. For a second, I think, this is over. He’s going to tell me to leave and his interest in me will end before it really starts. But it isn’t over. He lifts the bucket, walks over, and drops it next to my left foot.

  Although his eyes are peering right into mine, I can still see Mom over his shoulder. I think about her and Maddux and how happy they would be if I played for the Yellow Jackets. I also think about Annabelle and Jet talking about my magic curveball after gym class.

  “Look at me.” Laser places a baseball in my hand and uses his fingers to bend my arm to a sixty-degree angle. He lifts my left hand behind my ear and brings it forward. “When you throw a baseball properly, you want the ball to almost touch your ear. Okay?”

  I must be blankly staring at him because then he says, “Biggie, I need you to say something or at least nod.”

  I choose to nod, keeping eye contact.

  He reaches down and puts his hand behind my right knee and lifts my leg up, pulls it forward half a foot, and places it back down. “Perfectly straight. You need to lift your leg as high as comfortable and step forward out, perfectly straight, and as far as you can. You want your leg to hit the ground at the same time your hand with the ball reaches the side of your head. Plant and release the baseball. The power comes from your legs—which right now feel like a hundred pounds of pudding, but we’re going to turn them into tree trunks—and then you’ll get your velocity from the muscles in your legs.”

  I nod a couple more times and begin to sweat. I don’t know if it’s because I’m nervous or from lifting my leg.

  “Stand straight up,” he continues. “Feet parallel to your shoulders.” He grabs my wrist and spins it, like an evil school nurse taking your pulse. “Place your fingers comfortably tight across the seams. Lift your leg and slowly pull the ball back behind your ear, drop your leg, bring the ball past your ear, and fire. Keep straight and the ball will go straight.”

  I nod again.

  He walks away and I stand there by the bucket of baseballs. He keeps walking and walking. Soon, he’s a lot farther away than Maddux or Kyle ever stood when I pitched. He picks up his glove. “Close your eyes tight and go through what I just taught you.”

  That doesn’t make sense. “Close my eyes?” I ask.

  “Tight,” he shouts. “You’ll throw straighter if you think about the steps and not worry about where you’re throwing.”

  That makes no sense, but what have I got to lose? With my eyes closed, I imagine the smile on my mother’s face to keep myself calm. After a long, deep breath, I repeat the six steps in my head.

  1. Place your fingers comfortably tight across the seams. I remember the step, but I really don’t know what “comfortably tight” means, so I just grip it hard.

  2. Stand with feet parallel to shoulders. I can’t see if they are parallel, but it feels right.

  3. Lift my leg and step forward as straight as possible.

  4. Bend my elbow and pull it behind my head.

  5. Drop my leg and rocket my arm forward at the same time.

  6. Release the ball as soon as I plant my foot.

  With my eyes closed, I can’t see where the ball goes, but I hear the rubber hit off the diamond. I open my eyes and watch the ball bounce past Laser.

  “You have to throw a lot harder. C’mon, you weigh three hundred pounds. Show me what you got.”

  I grab another baseball from the bucket.

  “Close your eyes!” he shouts.

  I run through the six steps again, and this time I throw it as hard as I can. I open my eyes and the ball bounces to Laser—at least not past him this time.

  “Not fast. Don’t throw it fast. Throw it hard. Pretend like you’re throwing it as far as you can, but remember the steps to throw it straight.”

  With my eyes shut once again, I grab another baseball from the bucket and run through the six steps again, squeezing the ball tightly and grinding my teet
h. This time I try to throw it over Laser’s head and hit the back wall. Before I can open my eyes, I hear the ball pop into his glove.

  “That’s great, Henry,” Mom says, clapping.

  “Again,” Laser says.

  I pick up a ball and close my eyes. This time, I throw it even harder.

  Pop. “Woo-hoo,” Mom calls, clapping even louder.

  “Again,” Laser shouts.

  I close my eyes and throw as hard as I can. Now I’m trying to throw the ball through the back wall.

  Pop. I love that sound even more than Mom’s clapping.

  Laser walks up to me. “I thought I saw it last night. Under all of this”—he does an hourglass silhouette with his hands to remind me that I’m obese—“is that concrete block of a boy your father was. The fact that you can pitch like it’s no big deal means you got some of his genes. Now we just need to find that concrete block. Not just drop pounds, but replace them with muscle. The good news is that it’s only September and high school baseball here in Iowa doesn’t start until late May. We will need every one of those days to make you a real ballplayer.”

  “Coach said—”

  Laser interrupts me. “You live in a Kaczor house and you’re the only local offspring of Aaron Abbott. Trust me, you’ll get another tryout, and when that day comes—and it’s month and months and months away—you’ll wear gold. If you eat right and work out with me every morning at five a.m., you will wear Finch gold.”

  I turn my lips up a little to let him know I’ll do it.

  “Good. See you tomorrow morning at five.”

  As Laser walks toward Mom, I want to ask him so many questions.

  Do you really think I can make it? How much weight loss are we talking about? How long until I can throw fast? Why do you care now? Where were you the past ten years? Why doesn’t school matter? Why do you only care about baseball?

  All of the questions bounce around in my head, but when I open my mouth, “I don’t want to be a failure” comes out.

  Laser turns around, and he and Mom stare back at me.

  I don’t know what I’m saying. The words just come out like there’s a man inside of me working my vocal cords. Maybe that’s why I’m so fat; someone is living inside me.

  Then I realize why I said it and continue, “I want to be the best, not a failure. I want to be great, you know. Can you promise me that?”

  “That you’ll be great?”

  “That I won’t be a failure.”

  “Son, all I can promise you is this: when everything is said and done, you will feel something so wonderful and so addictive that you’ll wonder why you waited so long to feel it.”

  Chapter 9

  This Ends Now

  I hate my alarm clock. Its beating and pulsing sounds give me a headache as soon as my eyes open. Lifting my arm and pounding the snooze button takes all the energy I can muster at 4:45 a.m. I need the seven minutes between the beeps to wake up. On top of the alarm clock, Mom taps on my door. “Sweetie, Jim’s waiting,” she says.

  This isn’t a dream. I’m an athlete now. I climb out of bed and lurch into the bathroom. I fill a Dixie cup full of sink water and take a drink. I repeat this six times. I’m thirsty all the time lately, especially in the morning.

  My eyes get only a sliver of space between my eyelids to find Mom and Laser sitting in the living room. He’s putting his tennis shoes on and Mom’s holding a glass of orange juice, no pulp. She thinks pulp is bad for you. Even after the water, I empty the glass.

  “Biggie.” Laser hands me a shoe box. “I got you some shoes to work out in. Your mom said your old shoes were worn out.”

  I open the box and see a pair of Nike shoes: black with one gold swoosh through the middle. They feel so firm and tight, even with the laces untied.

  “What do you say?” Mom chirps.

  “Thanks, Jim,” I say with my eyes now wide open and staring at the shoes. They are kind of cool, but my size fifteen feet can barely squeeze into the size fourteen-and-a-half shoes.

  “You want workout shoes to be tight to help keep your feet pointed forward,” Laser says. “I thought we would walk a mile. Are you up for it?”

  I release a wake-up deep breath and nod optimistically, but I have zero idea how far I can walk.

  The walk starts with complete silence. I try to make out how fast I’m walking, so I can then figure out how long the walk will last. My best guess is that a block is approximately one hundred meters. A mile is roughly 1,600 meters. I walk the first block in 127 seconds. I have no idea what Laser’s thinking, but I’m counting. I’m doing math. That’s a little over two minutes. If I can keep this pace, this walk will last 2,032 seconds or thirty-five minutes. Thirty-five minutes is way too long for him to keep quiet.

  Thirty-five minutes is also a pipe dream. The second block seems shorter, yet it takes me 143 seconds to walk it and even that pace is hard for me to keep up with. Soon walking a block is going to take me almost three minutes. Soon I’m going to need to take a break. I’m starting to fear this walk might take all morning.

  “Biggie.” Laser breaks the silence. “Why did you go out for baseball? And don’t tell me it was to throw a perfect game.”

  Well, Laser lasts all of 277 seconds before asking what the hell I’m up to.

  “Two weeks ago in gym I threw a perfect game in Wiffle ball,” I say. “I told Maddux about it and he said he could teach me to throw a pitch that would be unhittable, allowing me to throw a perfect game. There isn’t more to the story than that.”

  “The knuckleball?”

  I nod and struggle to lift my pudding legs, as Laser calls them. I need to take a break, but I’m terrified to say something to him. “The pitch is not really a knuckleball,” I say instead. “It’s multiple pitches thrown into one. We call it a Wiffle ball.”

  “Do you have other pitches?”

  “A fastball that not really fast,” I say.

  “You’re a big boy with a good pedigree,” he says. “I can teach you to throw some heat.”

  As we cross the three-block mark, I can feel my face turning red and my feet swelling inside the already-too-small shoes. My shoulders must weigh a million pounds.

  “You’re going to love being on a team,” Laser claims. “You’ll help them on your good days. They’ll help you on your bad days. There’s nothing like being on a team.”

  I move my head up and down to let him know I’m listening. My eyes fill with sweat and my tongue turns to sandpaper. I’m so thirsty. If I don’t get something to drink, I’m going to pass out.

  “I know that you haven’t had good luck with coaches, but you can’t let that bother you,” Laser says. “I realize that Coach Phillips seems like a jerk after cutting you yesterday, but he’s a good coach.”

  I start to breathe slower, louder. The grass in front of Mr. and Mrs. Bowen’s house looks so comfortable. I should just fake fainting and take a rest while Laser tries to figure out what to do. No. I can’t do that. Cars are driving by, and in a town of a thousand people, word would get out that I passed out. Instead I try to slow the pace down without Laser knowing. How fast am I going now? I’ve lost count.

  I struggle to keep count in my head. Between the choppy breaths, sweat-filled eyes, and Laser’s questions, my mind can no longer do math. Is this the fourth block or fifth? How far have I walked? My eyes are more closed than open now and the sweat pools distort my vision and I can’t really tell whose house is whose. I don’t know where I am.

  “I wish I could say the same for your T-ball coach.” Laser keeps talking. “Now, he was a straight-up asshole. I never told you this, but I feel really bad for not saying anything.”

  “Can we stop?” I place my hands on my knees. Laser unhooks a water bottle from his belt and hands it to me. How did I not see that earlier? I drink the cold water like I’ve been stranded on a des
ert island for fifty years.

  “Drink slowly, Biggie,” he says. “Getting into playing shape isn’t going to be easy, but if you’re committed, you’ll get there.”

  My breathing returns to normal after the six ounces of water and the five-minute break. “I’m okay now,” I say with little confidence. Laser’s not even sweating. He snaps the bottle back to his belt without as much as a sip.

  “You know, I was so disappointed when you quit T-ball that I didn’t even understand what you were telling me,” he says. “Now that I have Maddux and he’s going to play organized baseball, I realize what a jerk your T-ball coach was. To make two overweight six-year-olds race for everyone’s amusement—that’s horrible. I’m really sorry for not saying anything to him.”

  I don’t accept Laser’s apology. Maybe I would’ve ten years ago when it happened, but he called me a quitter when I, with tears all over my face, said I hated baseball. We had just met and maybe he made a rookie mistake, but I hated him a lot more than my coach that day.

  He’s sorry now. Well, I don’t give a shit.

  I need to start counting again. “How far are we?”

  “We’ve walked four blocks. Twelve to go,” he says.

  I want to die.

  After eating Mom’s tasteless low-fat yogurt and strawberries for breakfast, I hightail it out of my house with my mind on a sausage-and-bacon-combo breakfast sandwich from Molly’s and a twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew to chase down the greasy treat. After walking a mile, I need some protein, caffeine, and carbs to get through the day.

  I pull up to the drive-through, order my usual, and wait for my real breakfast, not that bird food Mom gave me. Shelly, my favorite drive-through lady, hands me the bag. I open the sack and let the smells and steam wash over my face. I’m in heaven.

  I look up and Laser’s black Explorer sits right in front of me. “Pull over,” he mouths through the windshield.

  He followed me. Is he going to play private detective now to make sure I eat only morsels from my mother?

  “You forgot your phone,” I can hear him say as he walks from his truck to mine.