by Mike Lupica
“That can happen around here on a daily basis,” Mrs. Milligan said. “And I don’t just mean once a day.”
“Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m feeling,” Cassie said.
“My guess is sympathy, whether you look at it that way or not, Cassie. Only, that’s not what Sarah is looking for. If anything, she’s looking for empathy. Do you know the difference?”
“Not really.”
“Empathy is when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes,” Mrs. Milligan said, “particularly if that someone has Asperger’s, and you’re trying to get close to them.”
“Now I’m totally lost.”
“Sarah’s the one who gets lost sometimes, trying to identify her own feelings, whether they’re about you or softball or the team or something else.” Mrs. Milligan clasped her hands in her lap and leaned forward. “The frustration you’re feeling is something her dad and I feel all the time. As much as Sarah knows how much her dad and I love her, she still pulls back from us all the time. Often she does it by reflex without even understanding why she’s doing it.”
“She says she doesn’t trust me.”
“It’s because she doesn’t. You have no idea how challenging it was for my husband and me to not only gain her trust when she was a little girl, but keep it.”
Cassie said, “I’ve tried really hard.”
“And in her own way, Sarah’s tried too. I believe there’s a part of her, maybe even a big part, that wants to be your friend. She simply doesn’t know how to do it, because she keeps getting in her own way. That’s the thing about Sarah that you need to understand: it’s not you who can’t get through her defenses. It’s Sarah herself.”
“I’ve tried every way I can to tell her she doesn’t need to be suspicious of me.”
“And you could find a hundred more ways. She’s still going to be suspicious. Or maybe ‘wary’ is a better word. It’s like the old joke about not being paranoid, just extremely alert.”
“She wanted to know how come I wanted to be her friend when nobody else on the team did.”
“And you just have to accept that she’s probably never going to be your friend, at least not the kind of friend you’re used to. It has nothing to do with her intelligence. Sarah is a highly intelligent person. It’s why it frustrates her when she realizes that she’s not fitting in. Frustrates her and makes her angry, and even makes her lash out occasionally.”
Mrs. Milligan was smiling again, but it didn’t seem to be a happy smile. “And then she has no idea how to fix things.”
“I thought I could help her fit in, but I was wrong.”
“You can’t look at it that way, in terms of right and wrong. Black and white. That’s the way Sarah looks at things. In her world there is no gray.”
“One thing is black and white for me,” Cassie said. “She shouldn’t quit the team. She’s too good to quit.”
“She’s great, actually,” Mrs. Milligan said, looking almost sad as she did.
“Do you think it will help if I apologize?”
“It can’t hurt.”
They heard Sarah’s voice in the front hall then. Her dad was laughing about something, and Sarah was telling him he was crazy. He said he wished he had a dollar for every time somebody had told him that in his life.
Then Sarah laughed.
Cassie wasn’t sure she’d ever heard Sarah laugh like that. Or at all.
And in that moment Cassie knew exactly what she wanted to say to her. Maybe what she needed to say.
When Sarah came around the corner and saw Cassie sitting there, she stopped. And stopped laughing. “What are you doing here?” she said.
Cassie didn’t know why, but she stood up.
“I figured out something,” she said to Sarah.
“What?”
“I figured out that it’s not you who needs a friend,” she said. “It’s me.”
TWENTY-FIVE
So now you know how I feel,” Sarah said.
“Little bit.”
“What took you so long?” Sarah said.
She was still standing in the doorway to the living room, arms crossed in front of her.
“Sarah, please be nice,” her mom said.
“ ‘Sarah be nice,’ ” Sarah said. “Sarah be this. Sarah be that.” It was like she was reciting. “If I won’t be nice, is she going to tackle me again?”
Cassie just watched. If anybody else, boy or girl, acted the way Sarah was acting right now, even after what Cassie had said about needing a friend, Cassie would have thought she were getting blown off. If Jack or Teddy or Gus tried it, she would have gone right at them and accused them of being rude.
Bottom line?
She wouldn’t have let anybody else she knew get away with it. But Sarah wasn’t somebody else. She was Sarah. All Cassie could think of in the moment was something she told other people all the time: deal. Meaning deal with it, whatever “it” happened to be. Now Cassie was the one who had to deal.
Mrs. Milligan stood up. Mr. Milligan was behind Sarah. Mrs. Milligan reminded Sarah that Cassie had made the effort to come over to talk and said that now she and Sarah’s dad were going to leave them alone to do that.
When they were gone, Sarah said to Cassie, “That’s my chair.”
“Okay,” Cassie said, and moved over to where Mrs. Milligan had been sitting on the couch. They stared at each other for a minute. Sarah still had her arms crossed.
Finally Sarah said, “You shouldn’t have tackled me that way. My mom just said for me to be nice. That wasn’t nice what you did. That was bad. You made me look bad in front of all the other players. That was bad and wrong.”
“I realize that now,” Cassie said. “It’s why I came over to apologize.”
“You keep asking me why I don’t trust you? That’s why. You don’t trust me. Why should I trust you?”
“You’re right,” Cassie said. “It’s why what happened is on me.”
“You thought I was going to do something stupid,” Sarah said. “People always think I’m going to do something stupid. Don’t try to deny it. They do, they do, they do.”
“No,” Cassie said.
“Yes,” Sarah said. She started nodding her head. “Yes, they do. People always say they want me to fit in. But then they don’t let me.”
It was one of those times when it was almost as if Cassie weren’t here and Sarah was talking to herself.
“I did want to do something to that girl. She hit me in the face with her glove. She was the one who did the stupid thing. But I knew better than to hit her. I was just going to tell her she shouldn’t have hit me in the face. But that’s all. You have to be careful how you touch people, even when you’re tagging them out.”
Now she looked up at Cassie, as if remembering she was still there. “I don’t like being touched.”
“I get that.”
“Why couldn’t you trust me just one time?”
“I should have.”
“Now you come here to my house and tell me you want to be my friend,” Sarah said. “But how does that work if you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you?” She gave a quick shake of her head and said, “Who’s friends like that?”
Cassie took a deep breath, let it out. “I never thought you were stupid,” she said. “But I didn’t give you credit for being as smart as you are. Which makes me a little bit stupid.”
“You think I didn’t know you were pitying me?”
And there it was. All Cassie could think of was what Mrs. Milligan had said about sympathy and empathy. Not only was Sarah smart, but she was smart enough to know pity when she saw it.
“Another thing I was stupid about.”
And then Sarah was shouting at her.
“Just let me play my game!”
“Okay,” Cassie said, trying to make her voice as quiet as possible, as a way of bringing Sarah’s down.
“Let me play my game and you play your game and everybody can play their game.”
Cassie smiled. If she was talking about playing her game, it meant she still wanted to play.
“What’s so funny?” Sarah said.
Her voice hadn’t dropped at all.
“Nothing’s funny,” Cassie said. “I was just thinking that you don’t sound like somebody who wants to quit the team.”
“So what if I don’t?”
“So don’t,” Cassie said. “We need you.” She smiled again and said, “And I sort of do too. Before long I’ll only have my dad to talk to.”
“If I do, it doesn’t mean we’re going to be friends.”
“Got it.”
“I just want to be a good team player,” Sarah said.
“I’m just trying to do the same,” Cassie said. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I can tell my dad you’ll be at practice tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Sarah said.
Then she told Cassie she was tired of talking now and that it was time for her to go. Cassie did. As she rode to Highland Park on her bike, taking Sarah’s route again, street by street, she thought to herself:
Might not have been the win I was looking for.
But it sure as heck wasn’t a loss, either.
TWENTY-SIX
Sarah was right.
They weren’t friends, at least not the way Cassie had always thought of friends, even though she thought people were too loose throwing the word around. I’m friends with her, she’d hear. But did that mean they really were friends, that they could count on each other? That was different, the way her relationship with Sarah was different from any other she’d ever had.
But they were still teammates on what had turned into the best team in their league with two weeks left in the regular season. This year’s team wasn’t as good as last year’s team, Cassie knew that. This wasn’t the season she’d expected, or hoped for, wasn’t the season she wanted it to be, for herself or for all her teammates. It was the same way with her dad, who admitted even he wasn’t having as much fun as he’d had coaching Cassie’s teams in the past.
But it was still the season they were playing, and trying to power through. They’d lost their second game of the season, to Greenacres, 1–0, in a game that Sarah had started and pitched really well in. But Kathleen let what should have been a single get past her after Allie had relieved Sarah, and by the time Kathleen ran the ball down, the runner, who’d been on first, had scored the only run of the game. It was a tough way to lose, but they all knew they’d been totally dominated that day by the Greenacres pitcher, a girl named Audrey Gibbons. She gave up two hits, one to Cassie and one to Lizzie, and shut the Red Sox down the rest of the way.
When the game was over, Sarah came over to Cassie and did something she hardly ever did.
She initiated a conversation.
“The girl who pitched for the other team is as good as you,” Sarah said, as if stating the most obvious fact in the world.
“Thanks,” Cassie said.
“You don’t have to thank me. We might have lost today even if you had pitched,” Sarah said.
“Might have,” Cassie said. “Hope we don’t have to face her in the play-offs.”
Greenacres was currently third in the league standings.
“Me too,” Sarah said. “She’s really, really supergood. Maybe even better than you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cassie said.
“Would it bother you if another pitcher in the league was better?”
“All I can do is play my game,” Cassie said.
Sarah seemed to be thinking that over. “Me too,” she said.
She went and collected her gear and left with her parents. Cassie felt herself smiling as she watched them walk through the parking lot near the field at Greenacres. Sarah Milligan might not have been the friendliest person Cassie was ever going to play softball with, but Sarah might have been the most honest. You had to give her that.
Their game had started at ten o’clock, and was over by eleven thirty. The Cubs’ game at Highland Park wasn’t until two, so Cassie had plenty of time to get back there in time to coach third.
She had come to love the job. In her heart she felt as if she were actually doing a lot more than coaching third base. She felt like she was a part of something really cool and really special that was happening with the team. It was something she just felt, the way she thought they all did, that they were a part of some crazy adventure now that Jack had become player- coach. Almost like they were kids who’d taken over the principal’s office.
“You guys are the ones who should be playing for a chance to get on television,” Cassie said to Jack during batting practice.
The Cubs were playing their second game of the season against Rawson today.
“I don’t care about being on TV,” Jack said.
Cassie said, “Wait a second. I thought everybody wanted too be on TV!”
“Not me.”
“I know,” she said.
“This looked like it was going to be one of the worst seasons ever, because of Mr. Anthony,” Jack said.
“You hardly ever talk about him.”
“But I can with you.”
They both knew he could.
“Now it’s like everybody can’t wait to get to the next practice, or the next game,” Jack said.
“Guess what?” Cassie said. “I feel the same way, and I’m not even playing.”
Jack grinned. “It’s because you finally learned the signs.”
“Maybe,” she said, “it’s because I like being with your team better than I do being with mine.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What I know,” he said, “is that nothing beats playing. You know when I found that out for real? When I helped coach your team for that little while last season after I quit playing.”
Now, that was something two people who felt they could talk about anything with each other hardly ever talked about. It had been such a terrible time for Jack, after his brother, Brad, had died in a dirt-bike accident, and he’d blamed himself for not telling his parents that he knew where Brad, who’d been a risk taker his whole life, was going that night. It wasn’t his fault, of course. But if there was one thing Cassie knew about Jack, it was that he was accountable even to a fault.
The whole thing had been so terrible that Cassie felt as if it had happened to her. Because if something hurt Jack, it hurt her, too.
“It would still be cool if you guys got a chance to play on TV,” Cassie said.
“Why do I need TV,” he said, “when I feel like we’re all in a movie?”
He was pitching today against Rawson. He had Sam Anthony in left field, something he’d done a couple of times before, even though Sam had told Jack he didn’t need to be in the lineup when he wasn’t pitching, especially now that he’d started to pitch a little better. But Jack told him that he wasn’t just part of the team on days he pitched, he was part of their team every day.
And it turned out he was a pretty decent hitter. Cassie and Jack watched now as he put two batting-practice pitches thrown by J.B. over the left-field fence. When he came back to the bench, Jack said, “You know, you’ve surprised me.”
“Why, because I don’t stink at pitching now?”
“No,” Jack said, “because you don’t stink at hitting.”
Sam actually laughed. It occurred to Cassie that the sound of Sam Anthony laughing was almost as unusual as Sarah doing the same thing. She couldn’t get inside Sarah’s head. She’d probably never be able to do that.
But at least Sam Anthony was acting like less of an outsider these days. Her dad always liked to talk about the law of unintended consequences. Maybe one of the consequences for the Cubs now that Jack was coaching was that Sam felt as if he were a part of something too.
More than he ever would have been with his dad coaching the team.
• • •
The Cubs were in first place alone by no
w. Rawson was in second, a game behind them. If the Cubs could win today, with only a week left in the regular season, they’d lock up the top seed, and home field for the play-offs. And she knew that Jack wanted that, even if he never talked about it in front of the team.
“Last ups,” he told Cassie. “You always want last ups.”
“I like our chances today,” she said. “The guy who’s starting isn’t half-bad. He isn’t me, of course.”
“Who is?” Jack said, and then gave her a quick high five and grabbed Teddy for a few more warm-up pitches.
The Cubs scored first when Jack hit his first home run of the season, making it 1–0 in the bottom of the first. The score hadn’t changed by the bottom of the fourth, when Cassie turned around and noticed that Sarah was sitting across the field, in the last row of the third-base bleachers. Cassie gave her a wave. Sarah didn’t wave back. When Jack took a seat next to Cassie on the bench, she told him about Sarah.
“Looks like the team has added a fan,” she said.
“Well, let’s see if we can send her home happy with a win,” Jack said.
“Good luck with that.”
“Getting a win?”
“No,” Cassie said. “Making her happy.”
Jack struck out the side in the top of the fifth. But in the top of the sixth, he did something he hardly ever did in a close game. He got ahead 0–2 on the Rawson shortstop, elected not to waste a pitch and try to get the kid to chase. He tried to blow a fastball by him, and the shortstop, a lefty hitter, hit one over the right-field fence. Way over.
Just like that, they were tied. When the top of the inning was over, Jack walked slowly back to the bench. But Cassie knew him well enough to know how furious he was with himself, just by the way she could see him taking one deep breath after another. And she knew enough not to say a single word to him. She decided instead that this was a good time to go get a drink of water.
Brett’s dad was the adult on their bench tonight. He was the one keeping the pitch count on Jack. When Cassie sat down next to them, Jack was saying, “Where am I, Mr. Hawkins?”
“You’re one short of your limit.”
Jack turned and said, “J.B., start warming up.”
