The First to Know

by Abigail Johnson

  “Sadie’s pitching really well.” She laughed to herself. “I think her curveball is better than mine.”

  “It is.”

  Selena’s eyes swung to me. “You’re supposed to say we’re both good.”

  I canted my head against the window. “You already know you were the best, but Sadie’s curveball is sick. When she’s on, no one can hit it.”

  “I know. Maybe she’ll give me a few pointers.”

  “You don’t care about softball anymore.” I didn’t say it to be harsh; it was true, as far as I could tell.

  Selena scoffed a little but kept her eyes on the road. “I care.”

  Yeah, she cared enough to turn down an impressive athletic scholarship after Dad worked so hard to make sure colleges knew about her. I didn’t want to think about Dad, though, so I let it drop. But Selena didn’t.

  “Do you know how many hours a week I spend in this car so I can drive to your games? It’s a lot, like a stupid lot, but I’m here. Okay, fine, I’d probably still be here if you were on the basketball team, but I’d enjoy it a lot less. I love watching you play this game. Don’t forget I’m a Fields too. Baseball is in our blood.”

  Dad’s blood, she meant, but I ignored that for the moment. It was a drive, usually four hours round-trip even when our away games brought us closer to Tucson. I knew that; I loved her for that, even more because I’d thought she hated softball. “Then why did you quit? You don’t play at all anymore.”

  “I play,” she said. “Intramural.”

  “You turned down the chance to play for a Division I school so you could play intramural?” When she’d turned down the scholarship, she’d said it was because she was done with softball. I’d assumed she meant entirely. I couldn’t fathom why she’d choose to play intramural over college level. I couldn’t stop shaking my head, whereas Selena nodded and smiled.

  Glancing at me, she sighed like she shouldn’t have to explain something that was so obvious to her. “How many hours a week do you spend on softball?”

  Still feeling gobsmacked, I answered. “I don’t know, twenty-five?”

  “For me it was forty, minimum.” She nodded at my widening eyes. “Yeah, I was good, but Dad made me work so much harder because of it. For four years, every day of my life revolved around softball. Apart from my teammates, I had no friends, no boyfriend, no job. I couldn’t go out for choir or school plays. I missed dances and trips and everything. And it would have been so much more intensive playing in college. I know girls who leave the dorm at six a.m. and don’t get back until ten, and I didn’t want to be one of them.”

  I wanted to be able to contradict her, but the more I searched my memories, the more they matched what she said. Her whole life had been softball. I guess I’d always thought that was what she wanted.

  “It was at first,” she agreed when I said as much. “And Dad was so proud of me, which felt great too, but it kept getting bigger. It wasn’t enough to practice every day with the team—Dad wanted me working at night too. There was no off-season. In the winter I played club ball. Every weekend I was at another camp. I don’t know how I kept my grades up, I really don’t. I barely remember anything from high school except softball, which was reason enough not to surrender another four years of my life.” Her hands had grown tight on the steering wheel, but with an effort, she relaxed them. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t care. I love softball. I love it more now than I ever have, because it’s fun again. Watching you, playing at school without committing every waking minute of the day to it—I love that. And I love that I’m getting to do new things and try some of what I missed in high school, you know?”

  Selena looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to understand. I did, to a degree. But I couldn’t imagine walking away and disappointing Dad like she had, no matter the cost. Maybe I’d feel differently if Dad pushed me as hard as he’d pushed her, or if playing well came half as easily to me as it had to her. But he didn’t, and it didn’t, and I couldn’t completely quell the resentment toward my sister that lingered just below the surface because she’d given up what I’d never have.

  I opened my door when we pulled into our driveway, but Selena didn’t follow. “Aren’t you coming in?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head. “I guess I’m more tired than I thought.”

  She didn’t look tired. “What about your big news?”

  “It’ll keep.”

  It had barely kept the other night when I’d had to beg her to hold off. I was getting a bad feeling. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Because the cult comment was supposed to be a joke.”

  Selena smiled, but it looked a little sad to me.

  “Hey.” I pulled my door shut again. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, Dana,” she said, in a tone that implied an eye roll even without one. “I was just thinking about old stuff that I don’t have to anymore.” She grinned. “I get to think about new stuff, really awesome new stuff. Stuff that will blow your cap off.” She leaned over and flicked my ball cap up. “Now get out so I can get back to my dorm. Tell Mom and Dad I’ll see them on Tuesday for your game, and then I’ll spill.”

  Chapter 14

  Jessalyn was right behind me as we reentered the locker room after practice on Monday afternoon. We both lifted off our sweat-drenched T-shirts and let them hit the ground with a wet smack. We grinned together.

  “We are beasts,” she said, slapping the hand I raised.

  “Super-hot lady beasts.” I flexed in my sports bra. Then I collapsed onto the bench. “And I’m done.”

  “Oh, get this.” Jessalyn opened her locker. “Ryan asked me out during fourth period.”

  I opened my own locker. “What a tool.”

  She scoffed, nodding. “He broke up with Sadie, what, a week ago?”

  “Not even. So what did you do?”

  “I told him to blow me.”

  “Did you really?”

  Jessalyn and I both turned to see Sadie standing behind us. Their breakup had blindsided her. Most days her eyes were still red from crying, but she almost looked like she could smile as she waited for Jessalyn’s answer.

  “I have the detention slip to prove it.”

  Sadie did smile.

  “He’s a turd of a human being,” I said. We’d all told her the same thing over and over again, but she said it helped each time she heard it. I had no problem reminding her as often as I could.

  “Thanks, guys.”

  “Hey, why don’t you come over?” Jessalyn said to Sadie. “We can all swing by Mostly Bread and grab food, say hi to Nick, then binge-watch something at my house.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  I slipped on my flip-flops, avoiding eye contact. “I can’t this time.”

  “Why not?” Jessalyn frowned at me. “I know you were sick yesterday, but you said you felt better.”

  I’d claimed another headache as an excuse to hide in my room Sunday and avoid my parents. “I feel fine. I just can’t, okay?” I turned to Sadie. “Ryan never deserved you. Never. Not for one tiny second. He’s a skid mark.”

  “Skid mark,” Jessalyn echoed, but she was still frowning at me as I pulled on a clean shirt and grabbed my bag.

  “I’ll catch you guys tomorrow.”

  * * *

  At home, I tried to slip in unnoticed, but Mom had bat ears. She probably heard me walking up the driveway. She came around the corner just as I was closing the front door behind me.

  “Hi, honey. School good? Practice?”

  “Yep. I learned all the things.” I craned my neck to peer into the office and saw a mountain of empty Hershey’s Kisses wrappers on her desk. “Tough design?”

  Her lips pursed. “He gets these ideas—” and by he, she meant Dad “—and they lo
ok great, but I have to figure out a way to make them work. This morning he drops this brilliant design for a website we are already overdue on.” She sat on the armrest of the sofa and pulled out another Kiss from her pocket. “Triangles. In pure CSS.” She crumpled the wrapper in her fist. “I mean, right?”

  I was supposed to be upset by triangles, but I didn’t know anything about coding, so I went with, “Triangles, those bastards.”

  Her chin dropped to her chest. “Thank you.” Then it snapped back up. “And don’t swear.”

  “Sorry.” I backed toward the stairs behind me, knowing I needed to hurry up if I wanted to be gone before Dad came home, which I did. “Can’t you just tell Dad that he’s asking for something you can’t do?”

  “Oh, I can do it.” She opened another Kiss. “I might go insane trying to get the angles right, but I can do it.” Her eyes lost focus, and I knew that look well enough to know she was already imagining how she would succeed.

  “Fine.” She stood up and set the empty wrappers on the corner of the coffee table. She slipped her earbuds back in and her voice rose to compensate for the deafening music she liked. “YOU AND DAD ARE ON YOUR OWN FOR DINNER. I’LL HAVE HIS TRIANGLES BY MORNING.”

  I went upstairs just long enough to drop off my books and shower at lightning speed before dashing back downstairs into the kitchen. On the message board by the fridge, I wrote a note.

  Dad,

  Mom is working on the triangles (?) you wanted. I’m going to Jessalyn’s to work on homework. I’ll eat dinner out.

  I started to write sorry, but my nostrils flared and I erased it, leaving only my name. I dropped the marker, letting it swing in a wide arc from its string, and left.

  * * *

  I got to the batting cages a good half hour before I was supposed to meet Chase, so after sitting for a few minutes in my car, I did something I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do at home.

  I Googled my brother.

  I checked every social media site I could think of. And there he was: Brandon McCormick III. I found pictures going back to middle school, where he looked so much like Selena, all long limbed and skinny. His awkward phase had been short. Between seventh and eighth grade, his skin had cleared up and he’d filled out. He looked the way I remembered him from a few days ago.

  I read up on his hobbies (video games and swimming), the movies he liked (he was really into Asian films) and his favorite books (big fan of Robert Jordan).

  I found out he’d broken his leg skiing when he was fourteen.

  I found out he wanted to be an astronaut, and not like a little kid wants to be an astronaut. He was planning on joining the air force.

  I found out that he and his dad—and Chase—went deep-sea fishing in Alaska every summer. There were pictures of the three of them on different boats, holding high their catches.

  His dad looked like an average guy. Shorter than his son in recent photos, but with similar coloring. They weren’t so different that people would notice and wonder.

  That was something I hadn’t had a chance to ask Brandon. I could see my dad so clearly in him. I hadn’t seen the man Brandon thought was his dad, but I thought Brandon could have wondered why the resemblance between him and his supposed father wasn’t stronger. Then again, what kid really did that? Seeing the man now, dissimilar from Brandon but not startlingly so, I could see how love might have blurred the differences between them. And if both Brandon and his dad had been truly ignorant of the affair—though I was less convinced about his dad—they might never have thought to scrutinize each other. I believed Brandon had been blindsided by my paternity claims, but I still didn’t know about his dad. Pictures online could tell me only so much.

  Still, I kept looking. It was a compulsion.

  I found out that Brandon still mourned the mother he never knew. He posted about her every year on her birthday and on his—April 18. He’d said he’d just turned eighteen; I hadn’t realized he’d meant literally the week before. He was only five months older than me. Selena would have been barely a year old when Dad was with his mom and then back with Mom not even half a year later. I lowered my phone and tasted bile. How could he have left her with one baby to go off and make another only to return and make me? What kind of man could do that?

  I forced my eyes back to my phone, my only hope for answers in that moment. Brandon always shared the same photo—apparently, he had only one of the two of them together. It was in a hospital and he was lying on her chest wrapped in one of those newborn blankets with a tiny blue baby cap. She wasn’t really holding him—she clearly didn’t have the strength—but she was smiling at him. My stomach churned. Had Dad known about his son? Had they picked out his name together? Made plans to leave their spouses and start a new family? Had her death devastated him so much that he’d lied to his first family all these years, or was he as ignorant about Brandon as I’d been?

  I couldn’t imagine Dad abandoning his son for someone else to raise, doing to his child what had been done to him, but I couldn’t have fathomed his cheating on Mom either, so my shattered faith in him wasn’t a litmus test for anything anymore. On top of that, I knew nothing about Brandon’s mom. Had she been in love with my dad? Happy to discover she was pregnant with his child? Or had she viewed the affair as a mistake and the paternity of her unborn child as something to conceal from both his father and her husband?

  I banged my head against my headrest again and again. It was either that or cry. Maybe Dad knew, maybe not. Maybe the man who raised Brandon knew, maybe not. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I no longer had any proof of Dad’s connection to Brandon. The DNA results were gone, the website didn’t even list the match since Brandon had revoked and removed his information, and it wasn’t likely that he’d be giving my one printed copy back, assuming he hadn’t destroyed it when he deleted his account. I had next to nothing to corroborate my claim, if I decided to make one. And that was a big if. The destruction that would rain down on my family, on Mom in particular... Tears pricked my eyes, blurring the face of my half brother as a newborn. He looked round and swollen like every other newborn. The resemblance to Dad didn’t show up until later. I blinked, noticing something else in the photo of Brandon with his mom—a man’s hand resting on the bedrail of the hospital bed. The rest of him was out of frame. I pinched the image larger, trying to see every possible detail of that hand. I scrolled back to the last fishing-trip photo, trying to make out any distinguishing marks on the hand of Brandon’s dad, but the sun was glaring and I couldn’t tell. Back to the hospital pic. My nose was practically brushing my phone screen. Whose was it? My dad’s or his? If he’d been there, then he knew, he—

  I jumped as a figure approached my window. Chase.

  I dropped my phone. The image was so zoomed in it wasn’t recognizable, but I didn’t want him asking about it either. Mentally, I was still thinking about the hand. It was a man’s hand, of indiscernible color, and it was strong, like say from playing baseball or years spent reeling in monstrous deep-sea fish. It could be either of them in that photo. But if it was Dad’s hand, if he’d been at her bedside when their son was born, bile or not, Mom had to know.

  My best shot of finding out was standing right outside my window, smiling and happy to see me. I swallowed a wave of guilt and smiled back.

  Chapter 15

  Once we’d claimed our cage, Chase wanted me to go first, but I was still preoccupied by the hand in the photo. I let him start while I tried to sever myself from everything that picture might mean.

  Fortunately for me, Chase was not as proficient hitting balls as he was smashing walls. He missed his first swing. And his second.

  And his third.

  The rest of the round didn’t get any better. He tipped a few, but that was about it. He stepped back and shook his head before meeting my eye. “A little help?”


  I joined him in the cage, widened his stance slightly and used my hands over his to line up his knuckles on the bat. At that first brush of contact, warmth pulsed through me, heating my cheeks down to my toes and everywhere in between. I’d come up behind him, but he was so much bigger and taller than me that I’d had to go up on my toes and lean into him to see over his shoulder. “If you grip it like this, it’ll help you turn your wrists when you swing.” My arms were around him as we practiced the motion. It was almost like a dance, slow and focused. Pressed up against him, I was feeling the muscles I’d only ever seen before, and they made me go a little light-headed. That close, it was impossible not to breathe him in. He smelled like the ocean, fresh and inviting. I swallowed and moved back.

  “You ready to go again?” I stepped clear as soon as he was in position, and I fed more tokens into the machine. He swung again, and the solid hit elicited a whoop from me. I held both hands up for the double high five he gave me through the net.

  “You’re good at this coaching thing.”

  “I was raised by one, plus my dad has been coaching me and my sister since T-ball.” Chase made another solid hit to the back of the net. “And you’re picking it up really well. Did you ever play as a kid?”

  “Not much. Little League for a year or two with Brandon, but—” crack! “—we were never really into it. My uncle isn’t a big sports guy, so he never pushed us one way or another.”

  Chase was the kind of guy you looked at and immediately thought athlete. He was strong, and there was something about the way he moved, a sense of complete control. I watched him hit again, and there was enough power in his swing to rival the sound of a gunshot when it connected. “You had to have played something.”

  “I played some football in high school, and now I do CrossFit.”

  That explanation fit almost as well as his T-shirt. I got lost watching the way the muscles in his back and arms shifted each time he swung. It was...impressive. I was almost disappointed when Chase lowered his bat once his second round ended.