Finding Balance

by B. E. Baker

He’s right. Mary always does everything right. Everything.

  Like she told me she’d take care of me. Even if she doesn’t want to after the new baby comes, she will. But will she still want to? I wish I knew. I hate Piper for making me think about it. I sit as far away from her as I can all day, but at lunch she slides onto the bench across from me while Lacy and Mia take the seats on either side of her. “What’s up, loser?” she asks with a smile. Like she’s kidding.

  Which I know she’s not.

  I ignore her.

  She’s wearing a hot pink shirt with a sequin star on it that says DIVA in large letters, so she’s hard to ignore. But I do it. I look down so much that I notice her shoes are also covered with bright silver sequins.

  No matter what Mary said, she doesn’t look much like she’s suffering.

  “Three carrots?” Piper laughs. “Wouldn’t you be sad if all you could afford was three carrots a day, Mia?”

  “I can afford as many as I want,” I say.

  “Sure you can, Mrs. Hannigan.” Piper crosses her arms.

  It’s hard to keep my mouth shut, but every time I open it, she just makes me feel dumber. So I eat my three carrots and my mushy banana and I stare at the ground. But part of me wishes I’d taken the role of Annie, just so she couldn’t have it.

  Because the look on her face when she found out I took her spot would have been awesome.

  Finally lunch is over, and it’s time to go to the playground. I usually sit on the swings by myself, and I like swinging alone so it’s fine. Actually, it’s usually the best part of my day. I stand up, my lunchbox in one hand.

  “Hey what’s on your pants?” Mia asks.

  When I look down, I realize that somehow, even though I fed Hope in my pajamas, I got some of her mashed pellets on my jeans. I gulp. I know it’s chicken feed, but it looks kind of like. . .

  “Maybe she can’t afford to wash her clothes either,” Lacy says.

  “Is it poop?” Piper asks. “Because it looks like poop.”

  I clamp my mouth closed. Nothing I say will make this better. When the line finally moves and I can go outside, I burst onto the playground and run toward the swings. Feeling like I can fly always helps.

  But not today.

  Today I can’t even bring myself to push back and forth on the swings. Today I sit and kick at the dirt clumps on the ground, all crackly and weird. And all alone. I’m like a dirt clump and everyone else in school with me is like the grass. I look over at the grass—all green and happy. No wonder they don’t want to be my friend. I’m just a dirt clump.

  I kick at the dirt underneath my feet until the toes of my sneakers are brown and the dirt clumps are all broken up.

  My next class is choir and singing all the songs from Annie in choir is fun. Since I stand in the corner, no one picks on me. That’s nice, too.

  By the time school ends and it’s time for play practice, I wish I wasn’t doing the play at all. I really do not want to spend the next two hours with Piper. I’m biting my lip when I walk into to gym.

  Coach Brian is looking at something on a clipboard, but when I walk through the door he looks up. “Amy.” He beams. “How are you today?”

  Something about his smile makes me feel better. “I’m okay.”

  “Well, maybe by the end of practice today, you’ll be great.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Have you looked at your lines yet?”

  I shake my head, feeling bad again. “Sorry.”

  “That’s fine. It’s only the first practice. We’ll see how you do, and then you can start working on learning the ones that need the most work first.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you nervous about remembering all the words?”

  I have a good memory. Mary says it’s like a steel trap. I think that means that it’s really hard and moves fast, maybe. “Not really.”

  “Great.” He hands me a stack of paper stapled at the top. “Here’s your official copy of the play, in case you lost the one we passed out for tryouts.”

  I didn’t, but I forgot it at home. “Thanks.”

  Other kids start to walk through the door, and I turn to find a chair. “Do you mind if I ask why you wanted the part you chose?” Coach Brian’s eyes are light, light blue, and he’s only curious. He doesn’t look angry or annoyed. Actually, for an old man, he has a nice smile. And his arms have big muscles in them.

  “Hey did you used to play some kind of sports? Like basketball?” I think I heard that from some of the moms once.

  He frowns. “What?”

  “Someone said you made a lot of money doing some sport and you—” Uh oh. They said he cracked up and that’s why he’s here. But I forgot that part until just right now.

  He drops into a seat and pats the one next to him. “Sit.”

  “Okay.”

  “How about this?” he whispers. “If you tell me why you wanted the part of Mrs. Hannigan, I’ll tell you whether or not I used to play a sport.”

  “Okay.” It feels like he’s being serious, and I think maybe this is something he doesn’t want to share, like I don’t want to answer his question. It seems like a fair trade. “Piper wanted to be Annie,” I whisper. “And I didn’t. . .”

  Coach’s eyes widen. “You didn’t want to make her mad, and you thought she might not be upset if you played the bad guy.”

  I shrug. “Maybe.”

  “That might have been the most honest thing I’ve heard all day.” He sighs. “I guess that means I have to tell you something I haven’t talked to anyone about in a long time.”

  “I thought everyone would ask you,” I say without thinking. Then I clap my hand over my mouth.

  Coach Brian’s smile is big. “A lot of people have asked me, but I haven’t answered.”

  I wouldn’t want to talk about it if I cracked up, either. “But you’re going to tell me, right?”

  “I am, because you’re the first person who has asked about what I did before I came here because you care about knowing the answer, instead of trying to pry.”

  Why else would someone ask something? What does pry mean? I want to ask, but I worry that if I do, he’ll answer that instead of the question I want to know more. But that makes me feel bad for asking it at all. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  Coach Brian smiles. “It’s fine. Look, I was a baseball player. A catcher, actually, for a team here in town called the Atlanta Braves. But one day not so long ago, my mom died suddenly.” His hands grip the clipboard really hard.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She was a teacher,” he says. “My mom was, I mean. She taught kindergarten for more than twenty years.” He meets my eye. “And I don’t know how to explain it, really. She made less money in that twenty years than I had made in a single year, but she had also helped more people in one year than I had ever helped. So, that afternoon, instead of negotiating my new contract, I told my agent I’d be retiring when mine was up.”

  “And you became a teacher.”

  He laughs. “Does that sound dumb?”

  “Not to me,” I say. “You’re way better than the coach we had last year. And I’m really excited to do a play, which they never had enough volunteers to do for the second graders before.”

  “My mom directed plays, and when I was a kid, she was the director for my play every year. I don’t have any kids, so I figured I’d do a play for the grade that never gets one.”

  “Well, thanks,” I say.

  For the rest of practice, when I’m not in a scene, I think about what he said. Coach Brian seems like someone who cares more about other people than he does about himself. And I’m not sure, but he and Lucy look like they might be the same age.

  After our last song, Mrs. Tassain claps her hands. “Amy! That was wonderful. Carol Burnett herself couldn’t have found fault with it.”

  Who?

  But Piper realizes it’s a compliment, even if she doesn’t know the lady either, I can t
ell she’s ticked. On our walk toward the front of the school to be picked up, she and Lacy and Mia beeline toward me.

  “Bet you’re pretty proud of yourself,” Piper says. “But—”

  “She should be proud,” Coach Brian says.

  He noticed them coming after me.

  Piper’s mouth dangles open in a very satisfying way. “Right. I mean, she should be, yeah.”

  “You should spend a little more time practicing and a little less time opining on the merits of other students,” Coach Brian says.

  Piper and Mia and Lacy trot a few feet away and whisper and giggle. I hear the words loser and baseball and fired.

  “Does it bother you that people talk about you?” I ask.

  “Sometimes,” he says.

  “I’m sorry I asked you about the sports thing.”

  Coach Brian shakes his head. “You did nothing wrong. I think you’ll learn that some people can’t find their way toward the light, even when it’s all around them, while other people bring light into every room with them. You keep being one of those people, alright? You’re the reason I decided to teach, not the Pipers of the world.”

  An idea occurs to me. A weird idea. An idea that probably won’t work. But once it does, I can’t stop thinking about it. “Did you know that I have a chicken at my house?” I ask.

  “Excuse me?” Coach Brian asks.

  “My dog accidentally almost killed a chicken.”

  “What?” He looks distressed.

  “But don’t worry. Great Pyrenees are actually really nice. They don’t usually attack chickens, and we’re taking care of the chicken who got hurt. I named her Hope.”

  “Oh.” The lines around his eyes and mouth go away. “Well, that’s neat.”

  “Do you like chickens?”

  Coach Brian shrugs. “Sure. I mean, I like eggs. I like to eat them.”

  I cringe.

  “But I mean, I don’t have to eat them—not the pets I mean.” He frowns. “This sounds bad. What I mean is, yes, I like chickens.”

  “Then maybe you would want to come visit her sometime.”

  “Uh,” Coach Brian says. “Well.”

  “It would mean a lot to me.” Maybe I’m pushing too hard.

  “Well, if your mom says it’s okay, sure. Maybe sometime.”

  “Okay, great!”

  Mary’s waiting for me outside, her white car parked on the edge of the sidewalk. Chase waves really big when he sees me. Somehow, between that and Coach Brian’s words, I don’t care about Piper being mean. Because I have a lot of light around me.

  “Hey sweetheart,” Mary says. “How was your day?”

  I sling my backpack into the backseat. “Pretty good, actually.”

  Mary beams. “Great news.”

  “I’m a really horrible Mrs. Hannigan.”

  The smile disappears. “Uh oh. What do you—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “I mean, she’s a bad person, so I’m supposed to be awful, and I’m good at it.”

  “Oh, well, good then.”

  “How’s Hope?”

  “She’s good,” Chase says. “But she keeps making it hard for Mom to feed her. She’s a butthead.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “She was struggling against me more on the last feeding than she has before,” Mary says. “And I might have called her a name or two when I spilled yogurt all over, but I think it’s a good sign. After all, chickens who are about to die don’t have the energy to struggle, right?”

  “I fed her today.”

  “Your dad told me. You can help me feed her tonight, before dinner.” She pulls out onto the road, headed for home.

  As we drive past, I notice that Piper’s still standing on the curb. Her mom’s not at the school yet. I hope she has to wait all night, but then I feel guilty for wishing that. “Did Dad tell you I asked if we can keep Hope?”

  Mary sighs. “He did mention it, but she has friends back at Lucy’s house. I’m not sure that’s such a great plan.”

  “We could get her some new friends,” I say. “They have chicks at the feed store since it’s springtime. Lucy said so.”

  “She did,” Mary says. “And we can definitely talk about it.”

  Which is almost the same as no.

  I fold my arms across my chest, leaning against the seatbelt. Of course Mary doesn’t want to keep Hope or get chicks. She has a new baby coming, my new little brother. I should be happy, probably. I should understand that babies are a lot of work. Dad’s told me often enough.

  But I love Hope, and I want to keep her.

  “If we did get a few chicks, we’d need to get a chicken coop too,” Mary says. “And they’re a lot of work. With the baby—”

  “I know,” I say. “You won’t have time.”

  “I was going to say that I’d need a lot of help with any extra pets if we did decide to do that.”

  “Oh.” I think about it. “I can help. A lot.”

  I can almost hear the smile in her voice. “Maybe you can.”

  “I want chicks,” Chase says. “They’re so cute.”

  “When have you seen chicks?” Mary asks.

  “At the farm field trip last year,” he says. “Dewberry Farms. They had them. They’re so fluffy.”

  “See? You might love the chicks,” I say.

  “I might,” Mary says. “They would probably be easier to care for than Hope.” She laughs. “At least they’d feed themselves.”

  She might like baby chicks better than Hope, a chicken who’s broken and needs a lot of help. Just like she might like the new baby more than me. The baby won’t cause problems at school. The baby isn’t such a loser that the other kids pick on him. And the baby is actually hers.

  Suddenly I don’t really want new chicks. I just want to keep Hope and have that be enough.

  But probably it’s already too late for that.

  6

  Amy

  The next week goes by super-duper fast. I learn all my lines, and I learn to feed Hope on my own. I’m actually better than Mary at feeding her yogurt, anyway. Hope perks up when she sees me, but that may be because Mary gives her shots and I never do. Either way, she still won’t eat or drink on her own, but she’s still alive and sometimes she even stands up.

  I’ve start taking her outside for an hour after dinner each night while I work on my lines. She mostly just scootches up next to me, but she looks around at the sky and the leaves and the grass, and I think it makes her feel better.

  “Lucy’s coming over later,” Mary announces on Tuesday during dinner.

  “What?” I ask.

  “She wants to check on Hope’s back.”

  “Oh no,” I say. “Tonight won’t work. Aunt Anica said she has a headache.”

  Mary frowns. “Why would you want to—”

  “Can you change it?”

  “Why?”

  “I think Hope’s too tired today to get poked and shifted and—”

  “What’s going on?” Mary drops her napkin on the table.

  I can’t think of anything that will make sense. Other than the truth. Crap. “Um, I had an idea. You might think it’s weird.”

  Dad frowns. “What kind of idea?”

  “She’s trying to explain, if you two would stop interrupting,” Aunt Anica says.

  “I think tonight is too busy,” I say. “And I don’t want Aunt Anica’s headache to get worse with more people.”

  Mary laughs. “Lucy won’t even come inside the house. She’s coming to see the chicken in the garage.”

  “It’s just that I think tomorrow will be better,” I say. “I asked Coach Brian to come tomorrow.”

  “Wait,” Luke says. “Coach Brian of the dreamy eyes and bulging muscles? The retired basketball star, Coach Brian?” He pins me with a stare.

  My cheeks are hot. “No, he played baseball.”

  “Why, pray tell,” Dad asks, “do you want him to come over?”

  “He’s, well, he’s a s-s-super
nice guy,” I stammer.

  “Okay.” Mary smiles. “And?”

  “If you think I need a setup,” Anica says, “then—“

  I laugh. Then I laugh some more. “Not you. Coach Brian is super nice.”

  “Lucy.” Mary’s smile is so big it makes me smile back. “You want Coach Brian to meet Lucy.”

  “Yes, Lucy. She said she wanted a guy who cares more about others. Did you know he quit baseball so he could teach? Because his mom taught and he wanted to help kids like she did.”

  “So he’s good looking, possibly a saint, and you don’t want to set him up with me because he’s nice?” Aunt Anica looks irritated.

  “You just got all mad,” I say. “When you thought—”

  “Women aren’t safe,” Dad whispers. “Don’t expect her to make sense.”

  Anica throws a pea at him.

  “Hey, no throwing food,” Chase says. “Mom says.”

  “Right,” I say. “But about Lucy?” I try to make pleading eyes like Chase does at Mary. “Maybe she can come tomorrow. And you can tell Coach Brian after practice that it’s fine if he comes over to meet Hope.”

  Dad spears a piece of chicken with his fork. “There’s no way he will want to—”

  “He already told me he will.” Kind of. “If Mary says it’s okay.”

  “Well, if you’ve already set this up,” Mary says. “Far be it for me to get in the way.” She whips out her phone and starts tapping. “Lucy says tomorrow is alright. I told her right at five-fifteen.”

  “Perfect,” I say.

  I’m eating my last bite of chicken when the doorbell rings. Chase is faster than me, usually, but this time I beat him to the door. For some reason, I thought maybe it was Lucy anyway. I wanted to try and get some more information about what kind of person she likes. Or maybe I could say something about Coach Brian to make her think about him.

  But it’s not Lucy. It’s just Aunt Trudy, and she’s already getting married so she doesn’t need my help.

  “Hey Aunt Trudy,” I say, freezing mid-hug. Would Mom not want me to call her Aunt, either? Will Aunt Anica get mad that I did? I turn around slowly to see if anyone else heard me.

  But I’m the only one who left the kitchen. Probably because Mary knows it’s Aunt Trudy.