by Nick Lake
Me, I can feel energy crackling down my arms already, the excitement of being here. Because this is my treat, you see. My special day of the week. Every other day is the same: I get up, I watch TV, I chat online, I work with Mom when she finishes her shift. Then we eat in, trays on our laps: Mom’s idea of a kitchen is a fridge and a microwave.
And at the end of it, I go to bed and while I’m sleeping the stage hands of my life rebuild the set exactly the same, the layout of my room, the apartment, so that when I wake up everything is the same, repeating seamlessly.
Except for today, because today is baseball, ice cream, and library day.
Every Friday, without fail.
I frown. So actually today is part of the sameness, because it’s always baseball, ice cream, and library on a Friday, always the same routine. But I don’t really care. I like it. At least it’s not homework.
Today, I head to lane eight while Mom goes to the café, then I unzip my bag and take out my bat. It’s a DeMarini CF4 ST with a composite handle and barrel, and it’s approximately 3,904 times more awesome than your average baseball bat, mostly because it flexes to reduce recoil and hand-shiver when you hit the ball.
Hand-shiver is not a technical term, BTW. I made it up. But you know what I mean.
If you are familiar with bats, then you know that the CF4 ST runs pretty expensive and so maybe you’re thinking that we’re rich, but let me tell you, court stenographers do not take home mad money, do not build up fat stacks. Here’s how you buy a bat like that if you’re me:
You get five dollars allowance a week.
You wait for a hundred weeks and you don’t buy shit.
That’s it.
There are a few kids waiting in the concessions area, because they know when I come, and they can see my lane from there—the eighty mph lane, which is the whole reason we come here, as it’s a full ten mph faster than anything else in the state. I don’t nod to them or anything; that would be weird. But they nod to me.
There’s a guy in there, but I check the sheet and see he’s only got another couple of minutes. He’s showing off in front of his friends—gym-rat type, muscles stretching his sleeveless tee. But his strength doesn’t give him speed, it seems like, because as I watch, the ball sails past his bat and smacks the back wire behind him. He curses.
Lame, says one of his friends from outside the cage.
Yeah? Watch—
Bang.
This time he swings just right, and the bat connects with the ball and it skitters along the ground past the throwing machine.
Sweet, says the friend.
The kids have walked over now. They’re, like, ten but they’re wearing lo-slung jeans and chains, as if they’re gangsters.
One of them says, You think that was sweet? You have no idea.
What’s that, loser? says gym rat’s friend. He’s got a tattoo of a chili on his bicep and a diamond in his front tooth.
Wait till she gets in there, says the kid. Then you’ll see.
That right? says diamond tooth, turning to me. You good?
I shrug. My DeMarini is light in my hand. Mom looks over at me from the cafeteria, where she’s drinking some kind of coffee or something from a paper cup. Her whole body is a question, but I shake my head a little.
She don’t speak, says the kid.
What, never?
Never has, says another kid.
In the cage, gym rat misses another ball, then he steps out. His time is up. I go past him and shut the wire door behind me.
The cage is long, like seventy feet. At the opposite end to me is the throwing machine, a squat thing the size of a clothes dryer with at the top of it the end of a pipe, a circular hole: O.
A light goes from green to red above it, and I settle into the stance.
The trick is:
You don’t swing when the ball comes out of the cannon. Reaction time from your brain to your hand is, what, one-sixteenth of a second? You wait to see the ball and you’re swinging at empty air, while the ball barrels into the chain-link fence behind you.
What you do:
You swing before you see anything, and half the skill of it is knowing when to start. It’s also the beauty of it, for me. The thing that made me save for two fricking years to buy this bat. Mom gave me this book once, about Zen archers—how monks would train by firing an empty bow at a target for years, before being allowed to use an actual arrow. Because the point isn’t to fire the arrow into the target, it’s to imagine that the arrow is already in the target. To make the act of shooting more like meditation than action.
Yeah—my education is kind of eclectic. Two days a week, Mom goes to her job, and I do homework, mostly. Cook myself lunch—Mom is big on Learning Self-Sufficiency. Sometimes I cook dinner for Mom too when she gets back, if she texts me to remind me. The weekend I have off, and the other three days, Mom teaches me. She gets books from the library, on all kinds of topics, and we go through them together. She gives me math problems, essays to write—you name it. You’d think it would be boring, but it isn’t. I don’t have friends to hang out with, but I get to learn about Zen archery.
Anyway, the eighty lane is like that. Like a kind of Zen thing. You’re swinging at NOTHING. Your bat describes this curve in the air, swatting at emptiness …
… the ball gets from the cannon to you in, literally, half a second …
… and your bat connects …
… and something magic happens.
The ball, which has been moving at eighty mph toward you, that’s about one hundred and twenty feet a second, contracts in on itself:
And then it pretty much explodes off the bat, as you continue your arc, and it flies like a bullet to the other end of the batting cage.
Except that all this happens like:
that.
As I shift my head, getting in the stance again, I catch gym rat’s eyes. He mouths, holy crap. He has this look that I recognize: it means he’s going to ask me out when I leave the cage. He’ll say something like, you feel like hooking up? This is how guys are: half of them hate it when I hit the ball. The other half want to do me.
I ignore him and concentrate on sending the next ball straight down the cage. I mean straight: like a beautiful flat line. Whoosh. I can feel gym rat’s gaze on me. I don’t think anyone knows whether they’re hot or not, I mean, not really. Not unless you’re some kind of model. But guys do look at me sometimes, I guess, so I’m not repulsive evidently.
Of course, the guys who check me out, they don’t see my scars to begin with, because of the jeans. They don’t see my scars ever, actually, because I’ve never gone out with any of them. My mom would freak out. And anyway I’d be too scared.
Another ball flies back; this one hits the machine and pock, it flicks up into the top of the cage, ricochets.
I get them all: I never miss. A couple of times, scouts have been at the batting cages, and they’ve asked me to play for teams. One guy talked to Mom and offered me a full scholarship to Arizona State, as long as I passed my SATs. Mom said no. She says I wouldn’t be safe at college, that people would take advantage of me. I don’t mind, too much, that she says no. I mean, I would like to go to college. To study and make friends. But I know my mom is looking out for me—she always has.
Anyway: I’m not interested in playing baseball. I’m just interested in the fast batting cage, the feeling of connecting the motion of the bat with the motion of the ball, of reversing something fast and inevitable. This is the lesson of the baseball cage: everything can be vanquished; everything can be beaten; everything can be turned around.
The ball’s going like that, quick as snapped fingers:
And I make it go like that:
It’s like, in that cage, I can beat anything.
Even time.
Even death.
Chapter 4
Gym rat doesn’t say, You feel like hooking up? but he does say, You feel like hanging out? so I was close.
I shake my
head as I walk past, and I see his mouth say, bitch, silently.
So yeah, sad face. I really missed out there.
I make a gesture that leaves him standing with his mouth open, and I go over to Mom. She’s, it turns out, got one of those patterns in her bag, because she’s doing the antlers of a stag standing in a glen when I get up to her.
I roll my eyes when I see it. I mean, she’s obsessed. But then, I think, there are worse things to be obsessed with. And it’s not like she drinks anymore, I mean, hardly ever. And I guess it’s kind of cute, the stitching thing. Also crazy! But a little bit cute.
Those antlers are huge, I say, because I can’t think of anything else.
Beautiful, isn’t he? says Mom. She looks up. I ever tell you my dad’s family came from Scotland?
No, Mom, I say. I don’t think you ever mentioned it.
Oh, well, they were from—
She catches my eyes. Then she shakes her head. Very smart, Shelby Jane Cooper, she says.
I was wondering, I say. I was wondering if you could tell me about how cold it is in Alaska. I don’t think I’ve heard—
Ha-ha, she says. She gets up. Coming?
I nod and we leave the batting cages and go to the ice cream place. It isn’t hard: it’s right next door, within this parking lot square, which is about as close as Scottsdale gets to a downtown. There’s a family restaurant too (ten kinds of burgers!) and a bookstore that’s surprisingly good. Sometimes we go in there, but Mom can’t afford to buy too many books, and unlike the library they get pissed when you read stuff and don’t buy anything.
We pull up stools at the counter, and Mom orders the usual, talking to the barstool of course instead of the girl with the pink hair and piercings who nods blandly as she scoops the ice cream. A mint choc chip cone for Mom, and a cup for me, with one scoop butterscotch and one scoop cookie dough. I reach over to the toppings rail and hit mine with chocolate sprinkles, popping candy, chocolate sauce, edible glitter, M&Ms, the works.
Mom says, You’ll give yourself a stomachache, as she does every time, but it’s like a ritual, or an actor saying lines in a play, because I always have the same, and I never get a stomachache. Mom told me once that I got my sweet tooth from my dad—it’s one of the only things she ever said about him. I mean, I know that he died when I was very young, and I have this dim memory of him hugging me in a room somewhere, wood paneling on the walls, so I guess maybe this was some cabin in Alaska or something; the way he smelled of pine trees. But that’s it. His face isn’t there in my memory. Mom doesn’t even have any photos of him.
Sometimes I think: I’d like him to come back, not because I miss him, but just to see what he looks like. Mom hates talking about him so much, it’s almost like he never existed, and I’d like to undo his death just so I can know that he really did exist, once. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, the problem: in the baseball cage, you feel like you can turn back time. But you can’t. Not really.
Mom’s smiling as she watches me destroy my ice cream, so I figure it’s a good time to mention my birthday again.
Mom, I say. You know I’m going to be eighteen soon.
Mom flinches, like I’ve just pulled out a knife. Yes?
I was thinking, you know, about what we talked about before. Me taking my SATs, maybe. So I can study.
She sighs. It’s not safe, Shelby. College! Think of all the young men. Think what they’d do to you.
I nod. I’ve seen the news. I’ve seen the films, with Mom. I know what young men do. Even if there’s a tiny bit of me that would like to find out for myself. With Mark from the library, for example. Sometimes I think about him, late at night. I mean, he doesn’t seem like a serial killer or a rapist. Of course Mom would say that you can never tell.
What about, like, training to be a librarian? I say. That would be mostly girls and you can’t get safer than a library.
We’ll discuss it later, says Mom.
Later when? I’m eighteen in a couple of months.
Just later, Shelby, she says, and I know the conversation is over. Her face has gone all weird, like a shadow has come across it. Now I feel bad for making her worry so much.
When we’re done Mom calls a cab. We go out onto the street and she walks on the outside of me, like always, as if a car is just going to jump up onto the sidewalk and hit me. I don’t know if she even knows she’s doing it—the habit of protection is so deep inside her, like oil rubbed into wood.
At the corner, our cab pulls up. Then she reaches out and turns my face toward her as the car idles by the sidewalk. Okay, honey, I’ll see you at eight, sharp, she says. The judge will want to wrap it up. It’s Ricardo: he likes to get to his cabin at weekends.
Okay, I say.
And you’ll go straight to the library?
Yes, Mom.
She kisses my forehead. My little princess, she says. I love you …
… all the way to Cape Cod and back, I finish.
She smiles, and more or less shoves me into the cab. She tells the cab driver to take me to the library, then starts to walk toward the courthouse. I love you too, I think. I don’t know why it gets harder to say that as you get older, but it does.
I do love my mom, though, even if we’re really different. I mean, everything: our personalities, our hair color—she’s a redhead—our physique, our eyes. It’s like we’re not even related at all. Plus she is officially the most nervous person in the world and I’m, as she puts it, reckless. So when I was younger, I thought for sure, because of all the fairy tales and kids’ stories she used to tell me, that I was really a princess, put here with my mom by accident, that my real mother was a queen who lived far away in a beautiful castle.
Now I figure that every kid thinks this kind of thing. Me and my mom, we may be different, but she looks out for me. She keeps me safe. She teaches me. And yeah, sometimes I feel stifled, but that’s life, isn’t it?
The driver pulls away. After two blocks he stops.
He turns to me. Here you are, he says.
I can tell from his expression that he thinks it’s weird, me using a cab to go, like, half a mile. I mean, people don’t walk here, but people dressed in Walmart clothes like Mom don’t blow ten dollars on a pointless cab ride either. I shrug at him, like, what do you want me to say? It’s like he’s never had a mother. I count out the money Mom gave me and hand it to him, then get out.
The library is just in front of me. If you’re imagining something with columns, like on TV, then stop. Pretty much everything in Scottsdale and most all of Phoenix is just flat, single-story: bungalows, malls, offices. Every building, including the library, just looks like an unbranded Rite Aid, for real. The only variation, I guess, comes from a few fake adobe things, made to look like old Mexican houses.
Fake, because Scottsdale is new. Really new—since the silicon boom in the eighties, mostly. A whole patch of desert just turned into city, in a decade. Mom says, the thing about the silicon boom is that before that, there were all these kids in Phoenix with no future and a meth habit.
Now there are still kids with no future and a meth habit, but because of the companies making computer chips, now they have people to steal from.
Then, she will wink and say, hey, it keeps me gainfully employed.
Chapter 5
I go in and the AC settles around me like a cocoon of coolness. I have a tingly feeling that I get when there are books all around me. The library! I know it’s geeky but I love it. Just sitting between the shelves of books, reading—it’s the safest feeling.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved the place. Mom used to bring me here, ever since we moved to Scottsdale, would read me stories from the kids’ section, mostly fairy tales. I’d sit on her knee—she’d be cross-legged on the floor—and she’d tell me about princesses and curses and old crones making magic spells, and little girls who could outwit wolves.
It was like a doorway into another world. Just, you know, a doorway that smelled a bit like old ladi
es. Now, still, I love coming here to read, while Mom’s working. I’m safe here, inside, with the books—she knows where I am, and so neither of us has to worry. And anyway, I can just pick up a book and be anywhere I want, even if we don’t ever physically leave Phoenix.
Although …
Although, there is another reason I love the library.
There is the Boy too.
I don’t see him at the desk as I come in, and my stomach clenches with disappointment. I walk farther into the library, not really aiming for anything in particular. At the rear, there’s a Native American section. It has a colorful rug on the floor, photos on the walls of people dancing, wearing masks. A drum sits on a shelf.
I’ve never been in this part of the library, fiction is more my thing, but on the table in the middle, there’s an open book. I stroll over, meaning to pick it up and put it back on the shelf. When I get close, I glance down at the page. I see a line that says:
If Coyote crosses your path, turn back and do not continue your journey. Something terrible will happen—
But just then I sense movement behind me and I turn. It’s the boy, Mark, and he reaches past me to snare the book, flips it shut with one hand—and smiles at me as he puts it back on the shelf. It says Navajo Ceremonial Tales on the cover.
Hi, Shelby, he says.
Hey, I told you don’t do that, I say, my heart racing. Don’t sneak up on me like that.
Sorry, he says. My bad.
He’s from somewhere in South America, I think. He has an accent, a different cadence to the way he moves, a different rhythm to his hands. Not that I care: he’s pretty much the only person I’ve spoken to properly, apart from my mom, since I used to play with a girl in our old house in Albuquerque—the one other place I remember living—when I was five years old, giving tea parties to our dolls in the dust of the backyard. So he could speak entirely in curse words, and I wouldn’t mind.
I mean, I love my mom. But she is pretty literally the only person I ever speak to. It’s nice to have a change.