Heroine

by Mindy McGinnis

  “¿Qué te dijo el doctor?” Carolina asks me, as we fill our bowls.

  “I’m cleared to start conditioning,” I tell her, and Clarita breathes a deep sigh of relief. I don’t add that Ferriman suggested I consider a different position. Our lineup has been set in stone since seventh grade, the chemistry of our starters carefully proportioned. Me not catching would be like substituting the Virgin Mary into Ian’s carvings of the three kings.

  “Gracias a Dios,” Clarita says. “I am happy for you, Mickey.”

  “And for Carolina’s sake,” Ian adds. “She can shine on her own, but the two of you together have a special polish.”

  That’s the truth. The pitcher is only as good as her catcher, and Carolina and I work together, hand in glove. We use our own signals, a silent communication from mound to plate forming a thread that the ball follows, back and forth, flowing free and easy. That doesn’t happen naturally; you’ve got to have a good pair to make it work. And while the speed Carolina can put on the ball is what gets attention, there’s still got to be someone with the cojones to stop it.

  What I do might not be sexy, but it’s useful.

  “¿Cómo está tu brazo?” I ask, watching as Carolina reaches for the soup pot again, using her uninjured arm. The other one rests on the table, and I realize she’s been babying it.

  “Carolina está bien,” Clarita answers for her, and my friend’s jaw tightens.

  “The doctors, they wanted to give her stronger . . . pastillas.” Mr. Galarza looks to his wife, spinning his hand in the air, unsure of the English.

  “Painkillers,” she says, shaking her head. “I told them no, ella no lo necesita. Poison will not make her better.”

  “Poison?” I ask, not catching Carolina’s warning glance in time.

  “Sí, es veneno,” Clarita says. “My brother sits in a prison in Puerto Rico because of un dolor de cabeza.”

  “A headache?” I ask, unsure of my translation.

  “Sí, una migraña,” Ian says. “Pain that split his head in two. The doctors gave him the pastillas, and . . .” He shrugs, ending the story without finishing the sentence.

  “And that was it for him,” Clarita says. “A man who steals is not a man, and when he steals from familia, he is no longer mi familia.”

  I feel my blood warming, my tongue loosened by my own pastillas. “He must have been in a lot of pain,” I say.

  “It was not the pain, but the poison,” Clarita says sternly. “The drugs were more important to him than everyone; now everyone has found more important things than him. His wife left him, and his son has a new father who does not share that weakness.”

  I glance at Carolina, who is tipping her bowl up to get the last of her soup.

  “Now he wishes his only problem was una migraña,” Ian says, trying to lighten the mood, but his wife will have none of it.

  “This is why mi hija will not take pastillas. She is strong, and smart. Carolina does not need it.”

  I look down at my dinner, jaw clenched.

  Because if Carolina is strong and smart, then what would the Galarzas have to say about me?

  Chapter Eighteen

  choke: to render unable to breathe by filling, pressing upon, or squeezing the windpipe; to affect with a sense of strangulation by passion or strong feeling; to fail in a critical situation

  “Hail the conquering hero!” Big Ed shouts at me when I walk into the market, a bitter end-of-February gust blowing me most of the way in. That became my official greeting right after I lost the crutches.

  “Heroine, Ed,” I correct him as I settle onto my stool.

  “How’s lifting?” he asks, pouring my coffee.

  “Pretty good,” I say, and it’s mostly true. I’ve had a couple setbacks when I pushed too hard, got optimistic with the weights. But always the Oxy took the edge off. I’ve even started experimenting with squats. Slowly, it’s true, and with no weight and the trainer keeping a steady eye on me.

  But I did it.

  “I heard the Gatts twins both signed with Ashland,” Ed says.

  “Heard that too,” I say. “Baylor Springs always has D1 and D2 scouts crawling all over them. Money likes money.”

  “And there’s more of that in the suburbs. But OSU came all the way out here to the sticks for Carolina,” Ed reminds me, like I could forget.

  “Yeah, but that’s Carolina,” I tell him. OSU wasn’t the only Division One school to send scouts to take a look at our pitcher, but they usually only stayed for a few innings, and I guarantee their notes included only her name. All of us are good, some of us are great, a few might be gifted. But Carolina is exceptional.

  “You’ll get an offer, Mickey,” Ed says. “They’re just waiting to see what you can do on that leg.”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “Yep,” he says confidently. “You’ll show ’em. Get you back behind the plate, Carolina on the mound, them three Bellas on the grass. You guys will make it this year; I guarantee it. State champs, I’m calling it right now.”

  “That’s ballsy, Ed.”

  “Nothing to it.” He shakes his head. “I’m not jinxing it to say you’ve got conference champs buttoned up. Sectional tournaments, no problem.”

  I can’t really argue with that. We’ve won sectionals since my freshman year.

  “District, the only team I see giving you any issue is Calcutta, and they lost that shortstop . . .”

  “Vixon,” I supply.

  “Yeah, Vixon. She graduated. So I say you’ve got districts.” He starts ticking off his fingers, raising them one at a time. “Regionals—”

  “Is where we choke,” I tell him, more bitterly than I intended. “Every time.”

  “Maybe,” Ed allows. “But you got hosed on that play at third last year.” He ticks the regional tournament off his fingers like it’s a done deal.

  “State,” he says, holding up his index finger. “You’re going to get there this year, and you’re going to win.”

  “That’s the plan,” I say. “We’d be the first softball team to make it that far.”

  “Check your school history,” Ed corrects me. “You’d be the first ball team, period. Baseball never made it that far.”

  “Nice,” I say.

  Ed takes a sip of his coffee while he searches for a different topic, and the police scanner disrupts the silence from the back room, though I can’t quite make out the words.

  “You hear about the dollar store?” he asks.

  “I know they got broke into,” I say, but he waves that away.

  “Nah, I mean yesterday. Young mother hits the ground over in the diaper section, and Dolores—you know her, she’s the one with the real short hair—she gets there and this kid, couldn’t be more than two, is tugging on her mom’s arm, trying to get her up, just crying and crying.”

  “What was wrong with her?”

  “She’s a goddamn idiot, that’s what’s wrong with her,” Ed says. “OD’d, right there in the dollar store with her kid holding her hand.”

  “She’s not dead, is she?” I ask.

  “Nope.” Ed shakes his head. “Squad Narcan’d her and she’s fine. Fine as someone like that can get, I guess.”

  “Mmmmm,” I say, burying my face in my coffee cup. I take a sip, letting it burn all the way down, to meet the heat gathering in my veins from the two 80s I took right before I walked in here.

  “Do you know who it was?” I ask. Chances are, if she’s that young, I’ll at least recognize the name.

  “Heather Bellinger,” Ed says. “Used to be Heather Donahue; she married one of the Bellinger boys from Left Bank.”

  “Shit, Ed,” I say. “She TA’d my gym class, freshman year.”

  Heather was pretty cool. Even though she was supposed to check off her clipboard to make sure all the girls showered after class, she’d ignore it if some of us just ran our hair under the sink. There were some heavier girls in that class too, and one skinny girl who was so mortified at the idea of und
ressing in front of everyone else that Heather made sure anyone who wanted a stall with a curtain got first pick.

  “Damn,” I say, sipping my coffee again even though the last swallow scalded my throat.

  The scanner goes off again, and this time Ed tilts his head to catch the sound, and I glance up at the clock.

  “I gotta get to school,” I tell him. “Have a good week.”

  “You too, kiddo,” he says. “Be careful out there. Keep your grades up and you’ll get a scholarship, I know it.”

  “See you later” is all I’ve got to say to that.

  I make my way to the car, shoulders hunched against the wind, scanning the ground for icy patches as I walk. But I can’t get Heather out of my head, or the image of her unconscious on the tiles of the dollar store, a panicked toddler beside her.

  I get behind the wheel and flick on the wipers, scattering the fresh coat of snow that accumulated just while I was talking to Ed. The heat comes on, and I hold my hands up to the vents, hands that were shaking a little before I took the Oxy this morning.

  I think of Heather again as I pull out of the parking spot.

  But I don’t have a little kid.

  So it’s kind of different.

  Chapter Nineteen

  justification: a sufficient reason why a person behaves or acts as they do

  Lifting improves my spirits, especially when I get to the weight room before Aaron, and Carolina partners with me instead of him. We’re both careful with our injured limbs, her arm pale and too thin, the scars on my leg a vibrant red against the whiteness of my skin, my strong leg clearly larger than the other. We look like somebody took toddler parts and stuck them on our bodies, the muscular outlines on the rest of us wildly out of proportion.

  “You sure?” she asks me, standing by as I lie down on the leg press.

  “Yep,” I say. Carolina would only let me put sixty pounds on it. It should be like pressing a feather. Maybe two feathers and one piece of paper.

  I take a deep breath and extend, keeping my hips straight so that I’m not pushing more with one leg than the other. Everything stretches. Time. Muscles. The thin covering of Oxy that my whole consciousness is bathed in these days. But as the weights lift, nothing breaks through. I feel no pain, no puncture of this bubble I’ve created, within which I can do anything.

  “One,” counts Carolina as the weight comes back down. I push again.

  We agreed on a set of ten, and I do it, easily. I want to tell her to add more weight, or let me go to fifteen on my next set, but when I swing off the bench my leg spasms. It’s not painful, just a reminder that the muscle there has been taken by surprise and pushing it to exhaustion isn’t to my benefit.

  “You good?” Carolina asks as I come to my feet.

  “Yeah,” I say, experimentally standing.

  “Cool. Wanna see if my arm falls off when I try to curl?”

  I glance at Aaron, who is over on the butterfly machine, his face red in concentration as he pushes his elbows together.

  “It won’t,” I tell her.

  And it doesn’t. The weights might be lower, our reps not as quick as they used to be, but we’re together, and we’re working on it. I can’t forget what Aaron said to me in the parking lot, but I’m not going to tell Carolina to ease up on her workout, and I’m sure as hell not backing off mine. I spot her as she does a bench press, maybe helping more than I usually do. She shakes her head at me in warning, her hair swishing against my knees.

  “Do I look like a bebé to you?” she asks.

  “No,” I tell her.

  “Then don’t treat me like one.”

  I step back, only eyeing her as she benches, hoping that Aaron overheard, that he knows his girlfriend doesn’t need him—or anyone else—taking care of her. Carolina racks the bar, then gets up from the bench, tripping over a twenty-pound plate I had set out for myself.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Not your fault.” She waves me off.

  I hold on to those words as I set up my bar.

  Not my fault.

  The others had stopped watching us as we go through our workout, no longer keeping an eye out to gauge how the season is going to go, or whether they might need to dive in to help if one of us struggles. We’re two girls getting ready for the upcoming season.

  I can almost forget that I was broken.

  When I get home there’s a note from Mom saying she’s been called to the hospital, so I take over her tub with the jets. The water feels good, rolling over me, the outside world matching the inside waves that the Oxy seems to bring to my mind. I settle in, resting happily. The feeling of normality hasn’t left, almost as if I could look down in the driveway and see my old car there, glass still intact, wheels on the ground like they’re supposed to be, not up in the air and spinning like they were last time I saw them.

  I get out of the water, suddenly too warm.

  The weekend stretches out before me and I don’t have a lot to fill it with. I’ve exhausted my Netflix options while recovering, and I swear I’ve looked at most of the internet, too. I shoot Carolina a text, asking if she wants to see a movie, get a pizza, or just come over. I’m getting dressed when she answers.

  Can’t tonight. At Aaron’s. ☹

  I know the frowny face means she’s bummed that she can’t hang out with me, not that she doesn’t want to be with Aaron.

  Don’t get pregnant, I shoot back.

  She sends me a thumbs-up, which doesn’t exactly make me feel better.

  I toss my phone on the bed, my body following shortly thereafter. It’s not like I don’t have other numbers in my phone. The Bellas. Lydia. Even Nikki. But the Bellas require a level of energy I don’t have right now, and I don’t want Lydia to misinterpret anything. I’m considering texting Nikki and seeing if she wants to do something other than read required novels to me when my phone goes off.

  Wanna hang?

  It’s a text from Josie Addison.

  I look at my ceiling, then check the time. It’s only six. An entire night of hanging out alone in my room isn’t something that used to bother me, but now it feels too much like convalescing, something I’m very done with.

  I text back, yes.

  It turns out that hanging with Josie also includes hanging with Edith. She instructs me to head over to “Ede’s place,” where I find the two of them watching QVC while eating dinner.

  “Hey, darlin’,” Edith calls after I let myself in, following the sounds of the TV to Edith’s living room. “There’s dinner in the oven, if you’re hungry.”

  I feel kind of weird about it, but I get myself a plate and load up with mashed potatoes, ham loaf, and green beans. I grab a Coke from the fridge and settle in with Josie on the couch.

  “Hey,” Josie says, scraping the last of her dinner off her plate. “You’re here just in time. They’re almost out of the double-encrusted emerald pendant.”

  “Oh good,” I say.

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” she says.

  And dammit if she isn’t right. I end up watching the pendant go out of stock and get weirdly excited about the next item, a set of kitchen knives that the guy throws pineapples at, the three of us making an ooooh noise when they split in midair.

  From the kitchen, the scanner squawks.

  Unit 32, respond to 1525 County Road 46 for a Code 12.

  “Somebody’s got no cash for their stash,” Josie says. “That’s the third B & E this week.”

  “Seriously, that’s impressive,” I tell her.

  “I’m even better at scanner codes than I am at blow jobs,” she says, sucking on her fork.

  “Josie,” Edith chides her.

  “Not that I give those,” she adds easily.

  I laugh, no longer caring that Carolina is with Aaron and Mom is at the hospital. My empty house fades into the background as the knives are replaced with a line of skin-care products, and Josie pops a pill.

  “It’s the weekend,” she
says. “Have an 80 on me.”

  I feel fine, my legs stretched in front of me, muscles sore—in a good way—from working out. But I take it. I take it because it’s free Oxy, and an offering of friendship from Josie. I take it because she just took one too, and that means I don’t have to feel bad about it. I take it because I don’t have to justify to anyone that I’m taking it even though I’m not in pain.

  I’m taking this Oxy because I like the way it makes me feel.

  And nobody here is going to call me out on that.

  By ten o’clock Josie has raided Edith’s liquor cabinet and I’ve texted Mom to tell her I’m spending the night at a friend’s house. She answers quickly—ok. In the midst of a delivery I doubt she has time to even question it.

  Josie offers me a shot of something amber-colored, but I hold my hand up.

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “If I get caught drinking, I’m off the team. Not worth it.”

  “Um, but Oxy is fine?”

  “That’s different,” I explain. “I’ve been prescribed Oxy.”

  “And that pill you just took was given to you by a doctor, right?” She throws back the shot she poured for herself, then mine as well.

  “Dr. Edith, accredited by the School of Hard Knocks,” Edith shouts from her recliner, where she’s taken up residency after a failed attempt at standing. “You leave Mickey alone, Josie. No fighting.”

  “We’re not fighting, Grandma,” Josie says, gathering up the bottle and reclaiming her spot next to me on the couch. “You don’t drink, whatever. More for me.”

  “’Kay,” Edith says, her eyelids drooping.

  Josie mutes the TV and leans her head back on the couch, two bright spots of intoxication sprouting on her cheeks.

  “Wait, Edith is your grandma?” I ask.

  Josie starts to shake her head, then thinks better of it when it goes too far to one side. “No,” she says. “I just call her that.”