Stealing Bases

by Anne Key

  I say it, right to my mom, like I’m the most put-together person on earth and I’m dying inside, scared to meet her eyes.

  “Charlene Desiree.” Her voice snaps out and I swallow hard, and I swear to God, my heart stops. Bang. I’m fixin’ to die, right here. “Charlene. Look at me.”

  I do, because I have to, because she’s my mom and I don’t have any choice, but I don’t want to.

  “Baby girl, I love you. It’s okay.”

  “What?”

  She grabs me and squeezes me and she smells like cigarettes and cornstarch and baby powder and it’s the most familiar, right scent everywhere. She hugs me, holds me, and I finally squeeze her back.

  “It’s okay. You’re okay. Lots of folks are gay or lesbian or bisexual or whatever.”

  “Did… did you know?”

  She shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, I figured you’d tell me once you figured shit out.”

  “I like her. A lot.”

  “Well, I’m glad you let me meet her. I’d like to do it again without having a migraine. It would make things easier.”

  I start to giggle. “Or less painful.”

  “Or less painful,” she agrees. “So, tell me how exactly any of this has anything to do with Kaylee. Were you two… a couple?”

  “No! No, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I mean, I did fu… mess up because I didn’t tell her about Meaghan, but there was the thing with Brant and the thing with Steve and I couldn’t and when she found out I—”

  “Wait. Wait. Brant is the boy that took you to Homecoming?”

  “Yes. We dated for a couple months.”

  Mom’s eyebrows go up all the way to her hairline. “Yeah?”

  “No. I mean…. Yeah, but no.” I sigh, trying to explain. “I did it because he’s like me. I mean, he likes boys, not girls, but he’s gay and so I was….”

  “Being his beard?”

  I stop, blink. “Mom!”

  “What? I’m old, not dead. I do know things. People.”

  Yeah, but that was almost cool. I can’t deal with that. “I thought he was my friend.”

  “He couldn’t handle when people guessed about you and Meaghan?” Okay. This is getting pretty damned creepy.

  “How did you know?”

  She rolls her eyes, grins at me. “I realize you kids think I’m stupid, but I’m really not. Really.”

  “His parents are preachers.”

  She winces. “I’m assuming not the good kind?”

  And that’s it. I know she’s on my side. Know it.

  “Yeah, and I want it to all be okay. But it’s not. It’s not okay. I mean, Kaylee outed me and Meaghan. The whole thing. It sucked. I mean, totally.” I swallow hard, and suddenly, my worries about her and Amy and Ben moving out and college and finally, finally, Kaylee and the baby just pour out of me. “Pregnant. She’s, like, genuinely pregnant. Like gonna have a baby. She wants me to run away with her, Momma. She wants me to go and I….” God, I don’t want to. I want to be a good friend, a true friend, but, “I don’t want to.”

  Mom snorts like I’ve just told a really dirty joke. “Why on earth would you want to? You have your whole life ahead of you. Why would you need to run off? That’s stupid and you’re not stupid.”

  “But….”

  “No. No, for once, please, just listen. First of all, it’s not your place to worry on me. I’m the momma. I worry about you guys. Me and Amy, we’re gonna be fine as frog hair, I swear.”

  I open my mouth to say something and she shakes her head, so serious and I’m scared she’s going to cry because her eyes are shiny, sparkling. “Shh. I’m serious. We’re good. I have my child support. I have my job. I made my choices. Now you need to make yours, not Kaylee’s.”

  “I’m so scared.” I start crying, hard sobs that hurt, deep down. Mom doesn’t say anything, she just touches my hair, stroking and letting me cry. “I’m sorry. I’m so stupid.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything scares me. Everything. I don’t know what to do, Momma. I don’t know how to figure this out.” I hold my breath, because isn’t this sort of like me telling my own mom that she messed up with me?

  “Oh, baby.” Her laugh sounds, sort of falling down around me. “Nobody does. You fake it, from birth to casket, and you pray that the folks that catch you fucking up love you instead of hate you.”

  “You promise?” God, I want to believe that.

  “With all my heart. No one has ever been any better together than you. No one. It’s all a huge lie, this growing-up bullshit. You do your best, you admit when you fuck up, and you try not to outsmart your common sense. That’s it. That’s our best.”

  “I don’t know what to do next.”

  “That’s okay. I do.”

  I look up, surprised. “Yeah?”

  “Yep. We take Kaylee home and talk to her momma and her daddy. This isn’t your problem? It’s hers.”

  “But I can’t….”

  She nods.

  “We can. Charley, you have a life. You didn’t make her have sex, you aren’t the baby’s daddy, you….” Her words trail off and she starts chuckling. “Although, that would be Weekly World News worthy, if you were. That would be worth selling the story to.”

  “Mom!” Oh. Oh, that’s awful. “No jokes! That’s awful!”

  “Possibly evil.” She doesn’t look the least bit sorry. I mean, not even a little bit. “It’s true, though. You get another girl knocked up and I’m totally selling you out.”

  “Oh, stop it.” I start giggling and I can’t stop. No way.

  This isn’t what I’d expected. I mean, I’m not sure what I’d expected, but I hadn’t thought the word easy the whole time.

  “Seriously, though, for the most part, you run into way less bears in real life, and lots of times, if you back away from a bear, it’s better than running away.”

  Like my mom’s ever seen a bear outside of a zoo. “You’re so weird.”

  “I know. You’re so lucky. You could have a momma that just threw cupcakes and money at you and where would you be?”

  “Fat and happy?”

  She gooses me. “Spoilt girl.”

  “Am not.”

  You know when they talk about a weight coming off your shoulders? That’s what I feel like, like I can breathe. I’d been lugging around a lot of secrets and they finally got too heavy and tumbled right off.

  “Let’s start some pancakes. I have the feeling Kaylee’s going to need them.”

  “Yeah. She’s gonna be so mad at me.”

  “She’s got the same panties to be glad in.” Mom looks at me again. “Sometimes, girl, you got to let folks deal with their own shit, make their own beds. I won’t lie to you, there’s a bad part of me that’s going, I’m the shitty mom, huh? I’m trying to not base this decision on that, and I pray I’m not. What my first job is, is to think on you. Then to think on Kaylee, because I do love her.”

  “Yeah? You do, for real?” Because no matter what, for reals, she’s still my best friend. I can’t just make that go away.

  “Sure I do. I’ve watched y’all grow. We’ve also got to do what’s best for that baby. Running away is a shitty idea all the way around. It won’t do no one a bit of good.” She slaps the bed. “So, that mess is officially off the table, yes?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  God, I need to text Meaghan. I have so much to tell her. The biggest one is that Mom wants to meet her, the girlfriend her, not the girl who is a friend her.

  “That’s my smart girl.” Mom rubs her eyes, smearing the leftover makeup a little more. “Okay, pancakes and planning, my favorite things.”

  I hug her tight, one more time because I just have to, because I need her so much and I’m going to move away this summer all the way to Austin. “Thank you, Momma. I was so scared and I didn’t know what to do.”

  I should have come to her, but…. Oh, hell, maybe not. Maybe this was the right time. How the hell do I know?

  “That’
s what mommas are for.” She pats my back, sighs. “Come on. I need another cigarette.”

  “Those are bad for you,” I tell her.

  “So is bacon and I’m not giving that up either.”

  “You’re a derp.”

  “I’m relatively sure I don’t even know what a derp is.”

  We head down the hall and Kaylee’s standing there, looking like shit. “Hey.”

  Mom nods. “You far enough along to eat in the mornings, or do you just puke?”

  “What?”

  “Morning sickness.”

  Kaylee looks at me, and I can’t decide whether she’s hurt or mad. “What did you tell her?”

  “The truth. I needed help. I couldn’t figure things out all alone.”

  I need people sometimes. This whole living thing is hard.

  “I…. How could you? You promised!” The tears are falling again and, you know, I have to admit I’m a little tired of them, really.

  “I’m sorry. I needed advice.”

  “That’s your mom!” Like there’s no one less likely to go to.

  “She’s not the enemy. She cares about me, you know?”

  “I’m out of here.” Kaylee heads back to my room, and Mom’s voice cracks out like a whip.

  “Enough.” She twirls Kaylee around, eyes just hot with fury. “You know what? You’re a spoilt little girl, and that lands at your parents’ door, but you’re fixin’ to be the momma yourself. You didn’t want to get knocked up, you should have been careful. You are now, and that don’t have a thing to do with anyone that wasn’t having sex together. Me and Charley, we got your back. I will even sit with you when you tell your folks, but running away? Hiding? That baby is going to show up. You have to be a grown-up and make decisions.”

  “I can’t tell them. They’ll hate me. You don’t understand.”

  “Sure she does. She was sixteen when she had Ben.” My mom may not be a doctor or a lawyer, but she knows about being a mom.

  “You think it’s just going to go away?” Mom is getting pissed now. “It’s not like playing with dolls.”

  “That’s why I asked my supposed best friend to help me! She knows about babies.”

  “But I want to go to UT, Kaylee. I don’t want to raise babies. I want to play ball.” I’m good at that. Really good. And I haven’t been to college, but everybody says it’s different and fun and it’s a chance to start over.

  I want to try it. I do.

  “Charley….”

  “I’m sorry. I am, but… I don’t think I can go with you.” As soon as I say the words, I know it’s the truth.

  I don’t want to.

  I don’t want to go and have a baby. I want to pitch and take classes and text Meaghan and be a Longhorn.

  I want to try.

  “You’re supposed to be my best friend.”

  “I know. You’re supposed to be mine too.” And maybe… I don’t know. Maybe that means something else now.

  “I’m going home. You… I hate you, Charley. You were supposed to save me.”

  “How? I’m just figuring out how to save myself.” And I’m not sure I’m doing a good job with that.

  Nobody says anything else because… what is there to say? We hang in time for what seems like forever before Kaylee leaves and it’s just me and Mom, standing there together.

  Finally, Mom looks at me. “Bacon?”

  “Okay. Yeah. I think so.”

  “You all right, baby girl?”

  “I hope so? I think so? I just… I don’t want to disappoint anyone, but….”

  But sometimes I do and I can’t keep screwing up because I’m scared. I don’t throw games on the field, right?

  “Oh, Charley, joke them if they can’t take a fuck.”

  “Mom!”

  “Go text your girl. I’m going to start bacon.”

  My cheeks get all hot. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I know you. Get your phone and run out and grab my paper, huh?”

  I nod, then wink at her. “You know hip moms read the news on their iPads, right?”

  “Oh, because when they look up hip in the dictionary, they see my name.”

  “Mom?” I pause, then wink again. “What’s a dictionary?”

  Epilogue

  AUSTIN IS like a city. Like big and fast and totally overwhelming and I can’t stop staring out the window of the dorm.

  I did it.

  I pitched. I played. I got my scholarship and I’m here. Like for real. Here.

  My phone buzzes.

  miss u

  Meaghan.

  miss u 2

  She moved all the way to Kansas. I’ll play against her in the spring, even. She’s texted me pictures of the campus and stuff, and I’ve done the same. Kansas. It’s as far as Mars. I know that the odds aren’t great, but still.

  Kaylee never came back to school. Neither did Brant. I drove by her house, but no one was ever there that I saw. I mean, I don’t know if she had the baby, if she gave it up. Nothing. It’s like she disappeared and no one ever said anything. It’s weird, like graduation was really at Christmas, like I totally missed the boat. Of course, off-season is always totally horked, right?

  We won’t have off-season here, I don’t think.

  The door opens, and I look around. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” This big old girl with a Mohawk comes in with a suitcase. She sort of seems to fill up the room, steal all the air, and then she gives me a scared little smile and all the breath rushes back in. “I… I’m Nina.”

  “Charley.”

  “Wicked.” She looks at my side of the room, eyebrow lifting. “You’re already all set up. Wow. Are you like, super organized girl or something?”

  I snort. “Shit, no. I got to come in early for practice. I’ve been here.”

  “Practice?”

  “Softball.”

  “Cool.” She relaxes, like I’ve said something that makes sense. She walks over to the bed, plops her suitcase down. “My mom’s coming up.”

  She takes something out of her bag, takes it to the window, and hangs it up. It’s a rainbow suncatcher. “This cool?”

  I grin at her, show her my shoulder. Meaghan and I have matching ink—bats with rainbow tape. “It’s cool.”

  “Rock on.” A Hispanic lady comes in, and Nina grins. “Mom, this is my new roomie, Charley.”

  “Hey, Charley. Are you excited?”

  I nod. “I can’t wait to throw out the first pitch.”

  About the Author

  ANNE KEY recently left her beloved Texas and now lives with her amazing wife in the New Mexico mountains, spending her time writing the kinds of books she wants to read, playing with her basset hounds, and making stuff that wants to be art when it grows up. She’s been writing and illustrating for decades, exploring media from poetry to sculpture, from romance novels to weaving. She believes in ghosts, in cowboys, in forgiveness, in happily ever after, in magic, and in love at first sight.

  Mostly, she believes in experiencing your own personal joy wherever you can.

  She loves to hear from readers and can be found at:

  E-mail: annekeywrites@gmail.com

  Website: annekeywrites.com,

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008784885898.

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