I watched her until she was lost in the stream of people.
“Oh, man,” Nathen said loudly. “You got it bad! You been jonesing for her since middle school. Why don’t you just tell her?”
“You’re one to talk.”
“What do you mean?”
“Clarissa...” I prompted.
“Ah, Clarissa.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “Clarissa is different. Clarissa is like BAM, Clarissa. You know?”
“No, I really don’t.”
“And you never will, my love struck friend.” He pushed my shoulder. I winced. “Besides, I’ve actually let my intentions be known.”
“And those intentions are to keep stalking her until she gives in?” I asked.
“More like, keep showing her my charming side until she can’t resist it anymore.” He flashed a smile at me.
I shook my head. “You are so cheesy.”
“Better cheesy than breezy.”
“What does that even mean?”
He draped his arm over my shoulders. “You’ll figure it out. For yours and Carina’s sake, I hope you do, anyways.”
I laughed through a clenched jaw. I had no idea how I was going to play in the game after school with this shoulder.
4:16 p.m.
Okay, so I have these freakish abilities if you couldn’t tell. Other than the fact that I heal a lot quicker than normal people, I’m stronger. Faster, too. Think about Olympic athletes, and then ratchet up their physical abilities a few times. I’m pretty sure I could out-lift the strongest weightlifter or outrun the fastest runner. I could jump on a pair of parallel bars and do things that would leave the best gymnasts in the world with their mouths hanging open.
Don’t think I’m bragging. I’m not. But I have to walk a fine line when it comes to the things I do or I end up putting people in the hospital.
I especially have to tightrope-walk that line when it comes to sports. I could be the best football player in the country. The best baseball player. I could be the best at whatever I tried. I’ve definitely thought about it. A lot. I could pick a sport and just start raking in the money once I was old enough.
There were two problems as I saw it, though. First, there are athletes out there with the nickname “Freak,” but I’m literally a freak. I’m not normal. I was shot only a few hours ago and yet I’m getting ready to play a baseball game. Not normal.
I slipped on my baseball jersey, settling it over my shoulders, and twisted my arm. I ground my teeth but kept moving it. No time for babying it. I needed it to be loose for the game.
So, what’s the problem with being a freak? There’s nothing wrong with being able to do things better than other people, right? Well, I guess I was born with a very active conscience. What right did I have to excel in sports at the expense of other athletes who have to work hard to compete? Just because these abilities popped up in me doesn’t mean I can use them to my advantage. Does it? I guess some people could and would. I haven’t been able to talk myself into doing that. Not yet.
Even though I was trying not to limit the movement of my shoulder, I still found myself not using it as much as I normally would. I slipped on my cleats one-handed, although I couldn’t figure out how to tie the laces without using both hands.
The second reason for holding back in sports is “the unknown.” I wasn’t born with my abilities. Gifts. Powers. Whatever you want to call them. They’re relatively new. I don’t know where they came from and I don’t know how long they’ll stick around. What if I signed a big, fat contract with an NFL team right before these abilities wore off? That would definitely not be cool. There would be a lot of fans out there who would hate my guts.
“You look deep in thought.”
I looked up at Nathen. “Maybe I am.”
“There’s a first time for everything.” He said with a smile. “What’s up with your shoulder?”
“What do you mean?”
“You keep rolling it.”
“Just a little stiff,” I lied. “I must have slept on it wrong or something last night.”
“Well, you better get it un-stiff. You’re our best hitter and the other team’s pitcher is a blazer.”
Okay, so maybe I do use my abilities to my advantage. Just a tiny bit.
“It’s all good,” I told him. I stood and tucked my jersey into my pants.
“A’ight. I’m thinking you’re going to crush a couple today,” he predicted.
“Look into your crystal ball, did you?”
“I just got a feelin’, man.” He bounced on the balls of his feet. “Today is going to be a good one! Today is the day!”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “The day for what?”
“How am I supposed to know?” He looked at me like I was stupid. “C’mon, let’s get out there.”
4:53 p.m.
The first inning ended with nobody reaching base on either team. Just a few ground outs and a couple of strikeouts. The top of the second ended the same way. The other team’s players only managed to dribble the ball into the infield and they sat down after three quick, easy outs. I was next up to bat in the bottom of the second.
In between innings, Nathen caught me on the way out of the dugout. “The catcher has a mouth on him. How about you shut him up?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” I strolled onto the field.
On the batter’s deck, I gingerly worked my shoulder. I glanced at the scoreboard and wondered how I should play it. Should I strike out or maybe a high pop out? Should I get on base or hit one into the stands for a home run to get the team kickstarted? The choice was mine. We have a few very talented players on the team, like Nathen. He’s an awesome shortstop. I just gave the team a little boost here and there when they needed it.
The umpire signaled for the game to continue and I stepped into the batter’s box.
“How ya feelin’ there, Money?”
I looked down at the catcher as he knelt on his toes. “Money?” I asked.
“Ain’t that what they called you last year? On account of you always comin’ through in the clutch.”
I swung the bat back and forth, feeling out my shoulder. “Nobody’s ever called me Money.”
“Oh.” The grin behind his catcher’s mask faded for a second before returning. “Well, if they did call you Money, they gonna be about to ask for a refund, ‘cause my boy’s about to cash you in.” He laughed at his own joke even though it didn’t make much sense. If somebody had actually called me Money at any point in my life, it might have. Maybe.
I looked at the pitcher. He was tall and skinny. Barely a buck fifty soaking wet and carrying a twenty-pound bag of sand. This was the guy who could throw a blazing fastball?
“If this light breeze doesn’t blow him over first,” I said.
“Ha! Oh, you in for it. Watch, he’s about to smoke you,” the catcher promised.
“Play ball!” the umpire barked.
“Fastball right down your pipe, Money,” the catcher mumbled as he squatted behind the plate.
I had to hand it to him. Took some real big ones to tell me the pitch. Not that I needed it. I’m sure this pitcher was as good as everybody says, but I’m better. If I wanted to be. I turned my full attention to the pitcher, settling into my batting stance, bat hovering over my right shoulder.
The blade of grass in a baseball uniform pulled the ball up in front of him, hiding it behind his glove. He nodded whatever pitch the catcher signaled. I had no doubt that it was going to be exactly what he said. The pitcher kicked his leg up and then out in front of him. His arm rotated over his head.
It all happens in a blink. The really good hitters, the pros, train to recognize pitches by having pictures of pitching hands flashed on a screen and they have to call out the pitch in the amount of time it takes for a pitch to cross home plate. Usually a fraction of a second. It came naturally to me after I developed my abilities.
Time seemed to slow down. My eyes flicked to the pitcher’s hand as it rolled
over his head. Sure enough, he held the baseball with two fingers on the threads. A fastball.
Recognizing a pitch was only the beginning of being a good hitter. Seeing a pitch as its coming doesn’t tell where the ball will cross the plate. That’s where speed came in. A hitter has to be able to see the flight path of the ball and react to it—whether to swing the bat or not. Again, the good hitters practice at it endlessly.
The pitch flew straight towards the plate. Straight “down my pipe.” I smiled and let it whiz past. It thudded into the catcher’s glove.
“Streee-ike!” the ump cried with enthusiasm.
“Oh!” the catcher barked. “Did you even see that? Hey, look. I have the ball right here.” He waved his glove, ball inside, at me.
I smiled at him. “Impressive.”
“Right? Want another one? He can throw them all day.” He tossed the ball back to the pitcher.
I settled back into my batter’s stance, swinging the bat a couple times. My shoulder was tight and sore, but it felt like I could get a good swing out of it. I decided the next ball that flew over the plate was going over the fence in the outfield just because I didn’t like the catcher and his smug mouth.
The pitcher pulled up into his beginning stance.
“What do you think of Darkdevil as a nickname?” I asked the catcher.
“What?”
The pitch came. Sure enough, another fastball, but its trajectory was off. I knew it would go wide of the plate, so I laid off it.
Thrown off the rhythm of the pitch, the catcher reacted too slowly and the ball flew past his outstretched glove to the backstop behind him.
“Ball,” the ump said with less enthusiasm.
“Did you even see that?” I repeated the catcher’s words. “You might ask him to back off a little so you can catch those.”
He glared up at me with his beady, blue eyes. I smiled and prepared for the next pitch.
The ump threw a new ball to the pitcher.
There wasn’t really any doubt that the next pitch would be another fastball right down the plate. The catcher wouldn’t have it any other way. His ego fed off his pitcher’s talent.
Even though I hadn’t lifted my arm above my shoulder all day, I knew I’d be able to get enough speed and power behind my swing to hit it over the outfield fence. Time to end this at bat.
The smile faded from my lips. I glued my eyes to the ball as the skinny dude pulled it behind his glove and kicked his leg up and forward.
Two fingers on the seam. Another fastball. My muscles coiled. The ball flew towards me. I pushed my front foot forward, my hip following behind it. Then came the bat.
In a moment, I heard two sounds. First was the ting of the ball jumping off my aluminum bat. The second was the sound of something tearing deep in my shoulder. An eerie parallel to the night before. The sound of the bat along with the sound of flesh.
I didn’t have time to contemplate that bit of irony, though. Pain brought me to my knees. I dropped the bat, biting back a cry.
“That sounded like it hurt, Money.” The catcher stood over me. “Too much for you to handle?”
I looked up at him. “How many rows back did it land in the stands?”
His eyes flicked to the outfield then back to me. He sneered and turned his back, walking away from the plate.
I gritted my teeth and stood. The referee behind first base twirled his index finger in a circle above his head.
Homerun.
Chapter 4
6:48 p.m.
After the game, I stuck around just long enough to assure my mom—Dad wasn’t there, shocker—I was fine and to get the gist of Coach’s postgame speech. “Played your hearts out.” “Kept fighting to the end.” “I’m proud of you.” “Put this loss behind us and move on to the next game.” Blah, blah, blah. The usual speech loaded with too many sports clichés.
We had our butts handed to us. The lamppost with a pitching arm turned out to be as advertised. The team managed only two more hits, a couple of singles. Nathen went oh-fer, striking out twice and hitting a weak grounder to the second baseman who threw him out at first. Final score, 4-1.
I had pulled myself from the game after the homer. I took my trip around the bases and told Coach it was only a muscle strain. That saved me from having to explain how I would recover from a muscle tear, the true injury, within the next couple days.
I beat myself up over letting the catcher get to me. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have pushed that swing so hard. The problem with having superhuman abilities is that it leads to being a bit cocky. I had no short amount of that lovely trait every now and then.
It wasn’t shredding a muscle in my shoulder or missing the rest of the game that gnawed at me, though. Watching my teammates get up to bat and sit back down without so much as sniffing first base became monotonous after a few innings. My mind wandered from the game and without it to distract me, my thoughts inevitably made their way to the previous night.
What really got to me were the sounds that kept replaying in my head. The tink of my bat hitting the ball and the tearing of flesh in my shoulder matched up almost perfectly with the metallic clank of the t-ball bat hitting Punk #3 in the head and the fleshy smack of his head hitting the asphalt when he fell. It sounds were close enough to dig deep into my conscious and yank out more guilt.
I hit the locker room doors as soon as the last words of the postgame speech came out of Coach’s mouth. I strode across the parking lot like a man on a mission. My mission? Get those sounds out of my head.
“Yo, C-Dawg!”
I turned to Nathen hurrying to catch me in the parking lot. “C-Dawg?”
“Yup. That’s your new nickname.”
“I have a nickname now?” I asked.
“After today, you earned it.” He nodded vigorously.
“C-Dawg?”
He smiled a proud smile. “After going yard on that punk and blowing out your shoulder at the same time, you definitely deserve it.”
“C-Dawg? Really?” That was worse than anything I’d come up with so far.
“You know. Conor and dog. C-Dawg. You can thank me later. Man, you crunched the ball that hard with a bad shoulder. You need some cred for that.”
“A bad shoulder?” I asked.
“I’ve been your best friend since you were all freckles and awkwardness. You think I wouldn’t notice you favoring your shoulder all day?” He frowned. “Not that you’re not still all freckles and awkwardness, though.”
“Seriously. Please don’t spread C-Dawg around.”
“Already did, bro. I did you a solid.”
I groaned and turned.
“Need a ride home?” he asked.
“Naw, it’s cool. I’m going to walk home.” I said. “Been cooped up on the bench all game. Need to walk it off.”
And walk I did. I walked out of the parking lot and down the sidewalk. I don’t remember picking a direction, I just turned and walked.
7:19 p.m.
Maybe I knew where I was going. Maybe I didn’t. Either way, I ended up standing in front of Salt Lake City Advanced Medical Center.
I stared at the building—all white brick and windows—and wondered what made it so advanced. I imagined Star Trek-like gizmos with flashing lights and beeping bops that the doctors waved over their patients to diagnose them. I imagined Star Wars-like tanks filled with bubbly water that patients submerged themselves in until they were all better.
It’s not like I’ve been in a lot of hospitals, but it turned out that SLCAMC was just like any other hospital I’d ever visited. Understaffed, ill-equipped, and way too many patients.
I went in through the visitor’s entrance and hurried past the guest service desk where a dude—who looked new to the job—frantically tried to get help for a young couple who came in through the wrong entrance. The mother-to-be leaned over the desk, holding herself up with one hand, the other under her very large, very pregnant belly. She sucked in hissing breaths while her sweaty
and panicking husband looked on the verge of wetting himself.
While they were distracted, I slipped down the nearest hall. I had no clue how to get to the ICU, but I didn’t want to attract any attention by asking about the boy involved in the fight last night. I figured I’d find signs pointing the way.
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