Rooting for Rafael Rosales

by Kurtis Scaletta

  “I will. Thanks!”

  The rest of the game was lopsided. The Kernels scored a bunch of runs. The Lugnuts scored a few but were way, way behind. In the eighth inning, Rafael sailed a ball over the fence, and the crowd stood and cheered. Grace looked at her smudged-up scorecard, and her eyes popped open.

  “Rafael hit for the cycle.”

  “What’s that?”

  Grace pointed at the row on her scorecard representing Rafael’s at bats. “He hit a single here, a double here, a triple in his first AB, and now a home run. That’s the cycle. It’s a big deal. As rare as pitching a no-hitter.”

  “Wow.” Maya looked down and saw him by the home team’s dugout, waving at the cheering fans. She was mostly happy, but she also felt an inexplicable twinge of loss. Now she had to share Rafael with all of Cedar Rapids. It was like the fox all over again: he didn’t need her.

  ***

  It wasn’t even dark when they got home, but of course the days were long in the middle of June. Mom got to them first, hugging them both the moment they walked in the door. She squeezed them like they’d survived a fire. Dad loomed behind her, seeming twice as tall as he normally did.

  “We’re glad you’re all right,” he said. “But what you did was totally unacceptable. We thought about calling the police.”

  “We would have in another hour,” said Mom.

  “Maya shouldn’t be in trouble,” said Grace. “It was all my idea.”

  “I did have fun,” said Maya. “I should be in trouble too.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” said Grace. “This is all on me.”

  “Did you have supper?” Mom asked Maya.

  “Yes.” They’d had personal-sized pizzas at the convenience store in Mason City.

  “Then go to your room. We’ll talk to you later.”

  Maya looked back at Grace, standing calm and blank-faced.

  “Now,” said Mom.

  “Thanks,” Maya mouthed at Grace.

  ***

  Grace came up the stairs an hour later, her eyes red and watery. Maya met her in the hall.

  “What happened?” Maya asked in a whisper.

  “They said I behaved selfishly and irresponsibly. I can’t use the computer or the car for a week.”

  “So you can’t apply for any more jobs?”

  “I already applied for fifty jobs,” said Grace. “I don’t care about driving, but the computer part is rough. I won’t be able to blog. My readers will think I’m dead!”

  “Do you want me to get on and tell them you’re grounded?”

  “Sure, but make it funny,” said Grace. “Tell them I’m scouting baseball talent in Finland or something.”

  “Do they have baseball in Finland?”

  “I don’t think so. That’s why it’s funny.”

  “Will do,” said Maya.

  “Maybe not that,” said Grace, “but something.”

  ***

  Maya logged into Grace’s blog using the password she’d given her and found the new-post button. She stared at the screen, occasionally typing a line or two and deleting it. She tried to be clever like Grace, but her attempts fell flat. Then she did not try to write like Grace, and she didn’t try to be funny. She simply told her story.

  Three months ago, I didn’t care about baseball. Sports seemed like such a waste of time and money when the world has real problems. That changed when my family attended a spring training game and found out about a player named Rafael Rosales. He seemed like a nice guy, and when I found out he had the worst stats on the team, I started rooting for him.

  She did not write about the garden. That was too hard, even now. She simply said that she was sad about something. She wrote about the trip to Cedar Rapids, her sister’s mysteriousness, and the misunderstanding about rabbits. She wrote and wrote, trying to fix the misspellings that showed up with a red underline, but otherwise not worrying if it was any good. She wrote it the same way she used to narrate stories about Princess Bombadala to Claire.

  And so here is finally the point. Thinking Girl will be on a short time-out from the blog because she did a nice thing for me, something to give me hope and make me happy even though she knew it would get her in a load of trouble. She’ll be back soon with the stats and sass we all love.

  She titled it “We Go to See the Rabbits” and signed it at the bottom, Fledgling Fan.

  She bumped the cursor over to the publish button but couldn’t bring herself to do it. There was something wrong with the wall of text she was about to post. She clicked Save Draft instead.

  It was late. Even Mom and Dad had gone to bed.

  She remembered the card in her pocket. She took it out and sent a quick email to the reporter, asking for the picture of her and Grace. Monica replied with amazing speed, considering how late it was.

  Attached. Sorry, could not use the pic. Attribute if you use publicly.—M.

  It was a beautiful picture. Monica had caught them both at a moment of surprised joy, celebrating the triple: Grace pumping both fists, Maya’s own eyes wide and shining in the afternoon light. This was what the post needed. The photo was like an exclamation point on her post.

  But would Grace like it? She’d never posted a photo of herself, and that was probably on purpose. Oh well, thought Maya. This couldn’t be worse than driving to Iowa without permission. She figured out how to upload the photo, added a caption, and posted the blog entry. She read it once more, not quite believing she’d done it. Then, to stop herself from taking it down in a fit of second-guessing, she went to bed.

  “You blew up my blog!” Grace hollered from the office. She had jumped on the computer as soon as a week was up, exactly 168 hours after the punishment was handed down. Maya was lying on her rug, doodling bees and flowers in a notebook. She’d meant to write one of her stories, but the words weren’t coming.

  “Maya!” Grace called again. Maya dropped the pencil and ran into the office.

  “I didn’t delete anything.” She looked over Grace’s shoulder. “See, it’s still there.”

  “I know, but look. I have almost seven hundred comments.”

  “What? There were none yesterday.” Maya had even checked the blog a few times to see if anyone had responded, and no one had. She’s been disappointed. She’d hoped for at least some of the same friendly replies Grace always got.

  “You didn’t see any comments because they were held for moderation,” said Grace. “But here they are, seven hundred comments waiting to be approved. And look at this.” Grace opened a bar graph. The bars on the left were short; the ones on the right were tall. “This shows my daily hits. It used to be like twenty to thirty a day. Since your post, it’s six or seven thousand a day. Not hundreds. Thousands. And—ahh! Look!”

  She pointed at the screen like she’d seen a spider.

  “What? I can’t see because of your finger.”

  “This shows hits coming from Sports Illustrated and ESPN. Huge national websites are linking to my blog.”

  “Wow.” Maya still wasn’t sure if Grace was mad or excited. “That’s good, right?”

  “I don’t know,” said Grace. “I haven’t even read your post. But whatever you did, it went viral.”

  “Viral?” Maya remembered a librarian trying to prove something about the Internet, posting a photo that made it to a dozen states and a few foreign countries in an hour. “Viral is bad, isn’t it?”

  “Sometimes,” said Grace. “But not always. Let’s see what people are saying.” She started scrolling through the comments.

  “This is so sweet… ‘Sharing with everybody I know…’ ‘This reminded me of the last game I saw with my ninety-year-old grandfather…’ ‘Fledgling Fan, you’re lucky to have such an awesome sister.’ At least one person is talking sense.” Grace stopped. “I think that’s enough to say it’s the good kind of viral.”

  “I didn’t mean to steal your thunder.”

  “Pfft. I didn’t have any thunder.”

  “But you�
��re a way better writer than I am,” said Maya.

  “I know,” said Grace. “Well, I should read the post that gave the world chicken pox.” She closed the comments box and started reading the post. Maya left the room, not wanting to hover. She couldn’t stand to stare at a blank page anymore, so she resumed work on a jigsaw puzzle she’d started a long time ago: a nature scene with goldfinches perched on a pine branch. She’d gotten part of a branch finished when Grace yelled again.

  “Maya, you better come in!”

  Uh-oh. What happened? Was she in trouble? She walked back into the office.

  “What?”

  “We’re invited to be on TV.”

  “Really?”

  “If the offer is still good. It’s from a couple of days ago. I missed it because of being grounded. Channel 5 invited us to be on the morning show. They would do a bit about how a girl blogger hit the big time. They mean you, but they want both of us.”

  The thought of having a camera pointed at her terrified Maya, but she had to do it. She’d blown up Grace’s blog, and this might make up for it.

  “Ask if they still want us,” she said. “Hopefully it’s not too late.”

  “Right.” Grace started typing a response to the message. “I’ve still got hundreds of comments to read. It’s killing me. I wonder how the big-time bloggers do it.”

  “Do you want help?” Maya offered.

  “Sure, but not right now. If you’re up before me in the morning, you can slog through and approve anything that isn’t from a spammer or an obvious troll.”

  “What’s a troll? Someone who wants to cause trouble?”

  “It’s OK if they disagree. Conversation is good for a blog. But if they are mean and pointless, delete. And if you’re not sure, leave it for me.”

  “Will do.”

  ***

  Early the next day, Maya got on the computer. She first read Grace’s new blog post (“I’ve discovered the secret to success: be gone”). That post had thirty or so comments, and there were a dozen new ones on Maya’s post.

  She read comment after comment, clicking the green check marks to approve them or the red X to delete. Most were kind, saying the post was nice, sweet, cute (she cringed), or “so adorbs” (she came close to deleting that one). She deleted a couple of mean ones and several spammy ones. She came to one that made her grit her teeth.

  Sorry, if women want to be taken seriously as sportswriters, they shouldn’t talk about how cute the players are or play to cheap sentiment.

  That wasn’t fair. She had never used the word cute. She simply said that Rafael looked better clean-shaven. She saw that the comment came from Danny Diamond, with a link to his own blog. She deleted it with extreme prejudice. The link made it spam, right?

  A few seconds later she came to one from a reader who called herself Jewel.

  Hola from La Republica Dominicana! I find this blog when I search news for stories about Rafael. I have known him for years. Thank you for kind words.

  Of course the Internet was full of fakers and scam artists. But if somebody wanted to trick her, they would claim to be Rafael himself, right? Or they would ask for money. Jewel said only that she knew him and didn’t ask for anything in return.

  Maya opened an incognito browser tab, set up a free email account, and composed a message to Jewel.

  Dear Jewel,

  Thank you very much for your comment on the Thinking Girl blog. Sorry to ask, but how can I know that you really know Rafael? Leigh

  She wasn’t ready to sign her real name, so she used her middle name. She fired off the message, then went back to the blog and trashed the comment. For some reason, she wanted this friend to be a secret. Grace had a bunch of friends through her blog, and Maya just wanted this one.

  ***

  She had a response later that day.

  Dear Leigh,

  My real name is Bijou, the word for jewel in my first language, Creole. I have always lived in the DR, but my parents are from Haiti. Here is a photo of me with Rafael from six years ago. This proves I know Rafael. Honestly! Rafael is in the background. The boy next to him is his best friend, Juan, and the boy showing me how to pitch is Juan’s big brother. My father works for a baseball academy, and we both live here at the academy. So I know many baseball players, but to most of them I am nobody, a skinny Haitian girl in the hall. But Rafael always took the time to say hello when he was here.

  Bijou

  The photo appeared as a thumbnail at the bottom of the message. Maya clicked to enlarge it. A boy was showing a girl how to hold a baseball while Rafael and another boy looked on. It sure looked like Rafael when he was twelve or thirteen. The boy with the baseball had a tight-lipped smile that looked forced. The girl was eight or nine. That made her fifteen now, since she said the photo was six years old. Maya was glad she was a kid.

  Bijou,

  My own real name is Maya.

  Thank you so much for this picture. It is amazing to see Rafael as a boy!

  I hope we can keep emailing. I have never had a pen pal.

  Maya

  “So, I understand you two are Internet stars,” Dad said at dinner. Maya nearly choked on a forkful of rice pilaf. Grace dropped her fork and put her hands on the table like she was trying to steady herself. “My colleague Meaghan saw the story on Facebook,” he explained. “She said it had a lot of shares. Is that what it’s called? A share?”

  “Yeah,” Grace confirmed. “Aren’t you a computer nerd?”

  “I never got into social networking,” he said dismissively. “Meg showed me a screenshot. It said, ‘This girl’s blog will make you stop what you’re doing and go to a baseball game.’ And there was a picture of you two. Of course, I’m wondering when you started a blog”—Dad drew out the word—“and why my tween girl thought she should share personal information with the world.”

  “What personal information?” Maya protested. “I didn’t even use our first names.”

  “It had your picture,” he said. “It had your home-town.”

  “It said we were from the Twin Cities,” Maya corrected. “We could be from Saint Paul or the suburbs…”

  “Whoa. Hey. I’m not going to argue here,” said Dad. “But it’s startling to find out my daughters are famous on the Internet, when I don’t even know they have a blog.”

  “It’s my blog,” said Grace. “I’ve had it for over a year. Maya wrote one post.”

  “Grace,” Mom said in her that’s-not-the-point voice.

  “I’ve been careful,” said Grace. “No real names, nothing specific about who we are, no photos.”

  “There is a photo,” Mom reminded her.

  “Maya posted that without my permission.”

  “And you didn’t take it down?”

  “It was too late,” said Grace. “Besides, you see kids in the paper all the time. Four-year-olds feeding ice-cream cones to puppies. Do you think kidnappers see that and hunt the kids down?”

  “Maybe!” said Mom.

  “Then what’s the big deal about a blog?” said Grace. “If we’re in constant danger all the time, because terrible people lurk behind every bush and building…”

  “Grace!” Dad interrupted. “You’re getting carried away.”

  “Do I have to shut the blog down?” Grace asked, her eyes bulging, pupils darting between Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad, daring one of them to say it. They looked at each other. A long moment of silence passed.

  “Seriously, all she writes about is baseball,” Maya offered in a small voice. “It’s not like she’s having private chats with grody old guys or anything. It’s fine.”

  “Sorry if we don’t let our younger daughter decide what’s best,” Dad grumbled. “This is a grown-up discussion.”

  “You sprayed a pollinator garden with insecticide!” Maya said. “Shows how much you know. Being grownup didn’t help there!” She folded her arms and waited for him to respond.

  Dad took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Maya couldn’t
see his hand under the table, but she suspected he was taking five.

  “I did,” he admitted. “I acted hastily. And that’s my point. I didn’t consider all the consequences, and that’s why I made the wrong decision.” Maya was too surprised to say anything. Was Dad kind of apologizing? “I know how much that garden meant to you, and it kills me every time I see the empty rectangle in the backyard.”

  “You could have told me that sooner.” Maya wiped her eyes on the shoulder of her T-shirt.

  “So, maybe you should have read more of my blog before you freaked out,” Grace suggested timidly.

  “If anyone told me what was going on in the first place, I might react better,” Dad muttered.

  Grace took a deep breath.

  “Probably not the best time to bring this up, but I kind of need an answer fast.”

  Mom and Dad looked at her, puzzled.

  “Can me and Maya be on TV?”

  ***

  Dear Maya,

  I looked up your phrase, pen pal, and I like the idea very much. I can practice writing in English and learn more about your life in the USA. What do you want to know about me? I have fifteen years. My favorite thing is domino, I think the word is the same in English? It is a fun game, and I am very good! It is very popular here, but sadly there are no million-dollar bonuses for playing domino. Tell me about you?

  Bijou

  ***

  Dear Bijou,

  I am twelve and turn thirteen in November. I like to ride my bike, read, draw, and do jigsaw puzzles. I also like gardening. I had a garden this summer, but now it’s gone. (It’s a long and sad story.) We call the game dominoes. I don’t know how to play, but I like most games.

  Maya

  ***

  Dear Maya,

  You can tell me your long & sad story. I have time.

  Bijou

  Every Saturday, Rafael waited for Hugo and Juan outside their house to walk with them to the campo. He was surprised one Saturday when their cousin came out first. He’d met Damian once before, when his whole family came from Yamasá to visit. He had four or five sisters that filled the Santos-Garcia house with squeals and giggles, the kind of happiness that rarely brightened Rafael’s own home.