by Amelia Stone
The home bleachers exploded with cheers as the ball continued on and on, floating over left field like the Goodyear Blimp, before it finally dropped. The outfielders all looked at each other like none of them were sure who was supposed to go after it, or even if they were supposed to. Apparently they were confused about what side of the fence it landed on.
I couldn’t blame them. That was the farthest I’d ever hit the ball. It was the farthest I’d ever seen any kid hit the ball, and I’d been playing for three whole years now.
And the whole time, I just kept going and going, my heart beating really fast as first Hunter Gilchrist, then Sage, then Ward scored. And then the third base coach was waving me on, and I grinned from ear to ear as I crossed home plate for my very first inside-the-park home run.
My teammates and coaches surrounded me, patting me on the back, hugging me, and jumping up and down. Even Sage smiled, which I’d never seen before.
The game was over, we won six to four, and I’d gotten my revenge against those jerks who’d made fun of Krista. Life was pretty good.
Both teams lined up for handshakes, and I tried not to gloat. It was hard, though, because some of those North Babylon punks were giving me dirty looks.
But in the end, who cared? We won!
When the line broke up, I headed over to the dugout with everybody else. Before I could grab my gear, Krista came running over and threw her arms around me, knocking my hat off my head. She gave me a hug every time we won the game – and every time we lost, too. I always liked it when she hugged me, but it was sweeter now that I’d won the game for her, even if she didn’t know it.
“Ew.” She stepped back, dropping her arms. “You stink.”
I laughed, cause her nose looked cute like that, all wrinkled like she’d just smelled dog poop.
“Yeah, but I always stink after a game.”
“I know that.” She rolled her eyes. “Which is why you should definitely take a bath before we go for pizza.”
“Ugh, no.” Now it was my turn to wrinkle my nose, because there was no way I was gonna wait an extra hour before I ate. “Also, I take showers, because I’m a man.”
I heard my dad’s rumbling laughter as he walked up behind me.
“Good game, big man,” he said, dropping his hands on my shoulders and squeezing.
I tipped my head back to smile at him. His blue eyes crinkled when he smiled back at me, and I could see the pride in them. I felt like I was ten feet tall when my dad looked at me like that.
“You did the right thing, son,” he said, his eyes flicking to Krista.
I nodded, because we’d talked about this before. Krista was my best friend, and she was a girl. He’d told me it would always be my job to take care of her. But I knew my dad didn’t like hitting or fighting. A good man, he said, uses his wits, not his fists, to solve problems.
I always tried my best to be a good man like him, so to hear him tell me I’d done a good job made me feel even better than when I drove in the game-winning runs.
“Max!” We all turned around to see Coach Hale waving my dad over to him. “I have some more fundraiser stuff for you guys.”
Dad nodded to him, then patted my shoulders. “Don’t forget you’re on equipment duty with Ward this week,” he reminded me before he walked away.
I sighed, because I hated equipment duty. Also, I didn’t really like Ward all that much. He was kind of a butthead. But I guess there was no way out of it.
When I looked out onto the field, I saw that Ward was already moving along the base line, pulling up the bag at first before making his way over to second. The field was empty, since everyone had already moved to the parking lot on the other side of the field. Dad and Coach Hale were walking that way, too, and I watched as they stopped in front of Coach’s car.
Coach Hale pulled a couple of boxes from his trunk, and I got excited, because that meant more candy bars. We were supposed to sell them, but Dad and I always ended up eating them all. Dad would grumble that we might as well just buy new uniforms out of pocket for all the money we had to pay, but I knew he secretly preferred the candy.
“Dude!” Ward shouted at me, waving his arm like he wanted me to hurry up.
“Wait here for me?” I asked Krista. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“I came here with you,” she reminded me, her voice full of ‘duh.’
I rolled my eyes. “I know that. But I mean wait here.” I pointed to the dugout.
She shrugged in reply as she sat down on the bench, pausing just long enough to pull a book from her backpack. I glanced at the title: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, whatever that was. Looked weird, if you asked me. And was that kid on the cover flying? On a broom?
But at least she would be entertained until I came back – or until she finished the book. Whichever came first.
I trotted over to third base, bending to pull the bag up. Ward walked toward me, his arms full as he headed to the equipment shed behind left field. But he stopped, watching me for a minute as I struggled to get the bag out. It had gotten twisted when a kind from the other team stole third earlier, and it wouldn’t come loose with just me pulling.
“Dude,” Ward repeated, dropping his bases to help me. “Does your girlfriend have to come to every game?”
I could feel my cheeks getting red, but I told myself it was because of the sun and the heat. I wasn’t embarrassed.
But still.
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s just my friend.”
“Who’s a girl,” Ward insisted. “Guys and girls can’t be friends.” We finally got the bag free, and he stood up straight, nodding his head like he knew what he was talking about.
I frowned. “Says who?” I challenged.
He shrugged, his shoulders slumping a little. “I dunno. I heard it on MTV.”
I shook my head. “Something tells me the Senator doesn’t want you watching that stuff.”
He rolled his eyes. “He hasn’t even been home in like six months. Who cares what he wants?”
That made me feel kind of sad for him. Ward’s dad was a state senator, and he was away a lot, all the way upstate in Albany. Ward still had his mom and his older sister at home here in South Bay, but I knew he wasn’t happy that he never saw his dad. He pretended he didn’t care, but we both knew that was a lie.
“Anyway, this guy on MTV said-”
I didn’t hear the end of his sentence, because all of a sudden there was a noise behind us, like something had just been thrown against the chain-link fence. I turned around to see what was going on, putting a hand over my eyes to block out the sun. Then my stomach twisted like I’d just eaten too many fundraiser candy bars.
Krista wasn’t alone in the dugout anymore. A bunch of guys in North Babylon uniforms were crowding her. One of the guys shifted a bit, and I saw her clearly. Her back was to the fence, and she was glaring at them like she was mad. But her face was even whiter than usual, telling me she was scared, too.
I glanced around. Everyone was in the parking lot, or gone already. There were no grown-ups near enough to break up whatever was going on over there.
“Come on,” I said to Ward, letting go of the bag and jumping to my feet. “We gotta help her.”
He hesitated, like he didn’t want to help.
See? Butthead.
“Come on,” I repeated, turning and taking off for the dugout without waiting for him.
He huffed as he followed along behind me, way slower than I was running. “There’s like five of them, and only two of us.”
“So?”
“So I don’t want to get beat up because of your girlfriend,” he whined. “I don’t even like her.”
But I ignored him, because Krista needed me. Nothing else mattered but that. When I reached the dugout, I pushed my way through those punks until I was facing them.
“What’s going on here?” I asked, glancing back at Krista to make sure she was okay. She looked terrified, and my hands balled in
to fists before I could even think about it.
Ward, I noticed, was standing off to the side, still looking like he didn’t want to help.
“This little girl thinks she’s so tough when all the grown-ups are around,” one of the jerks said. I think he was the shortstop.
He hadn’t looked so smug earlier, when my game-winning hit was sailing over his head.
“Yeah, but how tough is she really?” The pitcher, Tim, held up her book, which he must have taken from her. “Now that her daddy isn’t around to save her.”
“That was his dad, you dummy,” she replied, sounding braver than usual as she pointed at me.
“Yeah, right.” One of the other kids gave me a look like he was sizing me up. “He’s not even the same color.”
“My mom was from India, fart stain,” I told him.
Not that he even deserved to know anything about me. He was obviously stupid, if he thought it was okay to make fun of people for their weight or skin color. My dad said only small-minded people thought that way.
Tim shrugged like he didn’t care about me. “Doesn’t matter. Still no grown-ups here to help you.” His stupid face broke into an evil grin.
I stood up straighter, cracking my knuckles like I saw in a movie once. “She has me.” I pointed at Ward. “And him.”
Ward backed up a couple of steps, shaking his head, and I scowled at him.
Such. A. Butt. Head.
“Yeah,” Krista said, still sounding way too sure of herself, considering it was now just me and her against five kids who were way bigger than us. They all looked mean, too. “So give me my book back, and no one gets hurt.”
But Tim ignored her. He held the book up, running his thumb along the pages. “I got it from her so easily, huh guys?” The other boys laughed, and Tim smirked. “Like taking candy from a baby,” he added.
One of the other kids laughed. “Yeah right. Candy doesn’t last long enough around her to steal.” Then he oinked, just like he and his friends had done during the game.
That was seriously not cool. Who cared if Krista was chubby? She was smart and funny and she had awesome hair. I liked her freckles, and she always beat my score when we played Crash Bandicoot. And her eyes were this really cool dark blue color, like these sapphire gems we saw on our field trip to the Natural History Museum last year. And she always helped me with my math homework.
She was the best, and these jerks were gonna pay for making fun of her.
“Take that back,” I demanded.
Tim smirked, holding the book up again. “No. And I don’t think I’ll give this back either.”
Then he opened the book and started tearing the pages out.
Krista gasped. “That is a library book!” she yelled, like they were animals.
And they kinda were, because seriously, who tears up a book?
“How could you?” she asked, sounding more upset about the book than anything else.
And I guess I couldn’t blame her. I accidentally spilled soda all over a library book once, and my dad was mad about it for like a week because we had to pay to replace it. Library books were really expensive.
Krista lunged, trying to grab the ruined book from Tim. But he pulled it back, playing keep-away like we were still babies, making her jump up and down for it and laughing at how short she was. Finally, she was able to reach it, but when she tried to take it, she accidentally scratched his face.
I wasn’t too sad about that, to be honest.
“Ow!” Tim held his hand against his bleeding face. “You little bitch!”
Krista gasped again. All the other North Babylon guys stepped away, too, looking anywhere but Tim, like they didn’t want any part of saying a curse word.
I was right there with them, too. My dad had told me that curses were just not okay, especially when they hurt someone else. I stepped forward, ready to defend Krista’s honor, but before I could, Ward grabbed his arm and spun him around.
“You don’t talk to girls like that.” His face was flushed all the way up to his blond hair, and I thought his head was going to explode for a second.
But then he reached back and punched Tim in the jaw.
Then everyone went crazy.
Tim launched himself at Ward, and the two of them started dirty fighting, falling to the ground as they punched and kicked. Ward had his arms locked around Tim WWF-style, and I decided right then and there that he would be my friend. He was still kind of a butthead, but anyone who jumped in to defend a girl he didn’t even like was cool in my book.
The other guys turned to me, and a couple of them looked like they weren’t sure what to do. One of them gave me an apologetic look like he didn’t want to hit me at the same time he punched me in the mouth. My lip immediately started bleeding, dripping down and staining my uniform, but I didn’t care. I would get bloody – I would fight – if I needed to.
But if we were going to fight, I needed to make sure Krista wouldn’t get hurt.
When I turned to where she’d been just a second ago, though, she wasn’t there anymore. A shout to my right made my head swivel like a Muppet.
“How dare you-” she yelled as she jumped on top of Tim, “tear up Harry Potter!” She wrapped her hands around his arms, scratching at his skin to try to pull him off Ward, I guessed so she could fight him herself. When that didn’t work, she leaned forward and bit his ear.
“Dang, girls fight dirty,” one of the North Babylon kids whispered as she continued to claw at him like a cat.
Slowly, I nodded. I was kind of shocked at what I was seeing. Krista was not an aggressive person, and I’d never even seen her defend herself against someone making fun of her, let alone in a fist fight.
She must have really loved that book.
“Where did she even learn to do that?” another punk asked.
I shrugged. “She has three sisters.”
The other guys looked at me, then down at their cleats. Then they stepped away like they were done with the whole fight. I wasn’t too surprised by that. Tim was the real bully here. They were just the idiots who followed him. Besides, I wouldn’t want to go up against Krista right now, either. She was like that girl in The Exorcist, all possessed or whatever. I was half afraid her head would start spinning around.
Also, please don’t tell my dad I watched that on HBO one night when I couldn’t sleep. He would cancel our cable if he found out I was watching R movies.
And speaking of Tim, he was now on his feet, glaring at all of us in turn as he held his bloody ear. His uniform sleeve was torn, and he had dirt matted in his sweaty hair. Behind him, Ward struggled to his feet. He had a huge bruise on his cheek, and his right eye was swelling up like he’d been stung by a bee. Also he was missing a cleat, for some reason.
“Stupid little pig,” Tim spat, walking up to Krista like he was going to hit her.
I stepped forward, fist raised to stop him, but after a second of thinking about it, he shook his head.
“Never mind. You’re not even worth it.”
Then he put a hand to her shoulder and pushed her out of his way.
Before I could even blink, she was on the ground. She landed on her right side, and I heard a weird sound as her hand twisted the wrong way underneath her. It was only when she howled in pain that I realized the weird noise was her bones breaking.
I didn’t stop to think about my next move. I couldn’t think. I just saw red.
“You freaking turd!” I screamed as I charged at him.
I got a running start, so I was able to tackle him pretty easily. And then I just wailed on him. Or at least, I tried to. I didn’t really know what I was doing, since I’d never been in a fight before. I was pretty sure most of the time I punched the dirt, but I think I managed to land some hits. Plus I tore the rest of his sleeve off, so at least it looked like I beat him up some.
“Seth Hanuman Holt!”
My fist stopped mid-air, and I closed my eyes, knowing it was all over but the crying now. When
I stopped to think about it later, I was surprised it had actually taken that long for a grown-up to notice the rumble in the dugout. But in that moment, all I could concentrate on was the hand grabbing the back of my jersey. My head dropped in shame as my dad pulled me to my feet.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing, son?”
When I looked up, we were surrounded by grown-ups. My coaches, North Babylon’s coaches, and my dad were all glaring at us, waiting for us to explain ourselves.
At once, we all broke out into loud, confusing explanations, with Tim and those other punks saying Krista started it, Ward and me saying they started it, and Krista just lying on the ground, blinking like she was trying not to cry again. At some point during all the yelling, Coach Dr. Stewart kneeled in the dirt so he could take a look at her injury. But the rest of us just kept shouting.
“That is enough!” Coach Hale roared, and we all immediately shut up. “I don’t care who started it or why. You all messed up here today.” He looked at each of us in turn. “Big time.”
Then the coaches from both sides started handing out punishments, and we all stood and took it like men. I stared at my cleats, feeling like I deserved every single consequence they wanted to give me. I’d gotten into a fight, got beat up, and worst of all, Krista got hurt. A two-game suspension was getting off easy.
And the look my dad gave me like I’d disappointed him made me feel like I’d been beat up all over again. I couldn’t even lift my eyes, I felt so ashamed.
“I’m pretty sure the wrist is broken, but I’ll want you to come into the clinic for some x-rays,” Coach Dr. Stewart said to Krista.
Dad pursed his lips. “I’m sure Tom Summers will be just thrilled when I call and tell him his little girl got her bones broken on my watch,” he said, giving me another frown.
“What have I always told you about solving your problems, son?”
I sniffed. “That a good man uses his wits, not his fists.”