Biggie

by Derek E. Sullivan

  Then there’s Maddy from Colorado. She loves to take pictures. She sends me tons of photos of mountains, animals, friends, or herself in a new outfit (or sometimes in nothing at all) and waits for my opinion. Sometimes she sends them to my email and sometimes to my phone. No matter where she sends the pictures, I have at least ten minutes to construct the perfect answer. I can’t just say, “That’s a cool picture.” She can see right through that. I need to give interesting, deep answers—I’m the thoughtful one.

  Last week, she sent me a picture of her dog standing in front of a red hatchback car. After an hour, I realized that the dog’s black eyes matched the color of the worn-out tires on the hatchback. I wrote back that I loved how the smoky color of the dog’s eyes matched the rips and tears of the beat-up tires. She texted back a smiley face and later sent me a picture of her boobs as a reward for understanding the importance of backgrounds in photos.

  I wish all the girls I talk to loved their bodies as much as Maddy loves hers.

  Other than Don’t show up at my doorstep someday, the only real rule I have for my online girls is—don’t call me, ever! This may seem like a dumb rule and maybe it is, but if I let a girl call me, I’m no longer having a comfortable conversation. I need the moments between what she types and texts to prepare my perfect answer. Talking to them on the phone is no different than me talking to Annabelle at school: a situation destined for laughter, weird looks, and ridicule. Plus no one calls anyone. Everyone texts. Slowly but surely, my dream is coming true. The world is turning into a chat room.

  Only one online girl calls me: the already discussed, newly seventeen-year-old Lucy from Kansas City, Missouri. She’s the only girl to break the rule, to defy me, to do what I told her not to do. See, I give out my number to girls with the stipulation that they only text and send me hot and sexy pictures. No phone calls. And with the exception of Lucy from Kansas City, they obey.

  One night about four months ago, my phone rang at three in the morning. Caller ID said Restricted. Mostly out of it, I answered and mumbled, “Hello.”

  “Henry,” a female’s voice said.

  “Who is this?”

  “Lucy.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “My car died and I’m stuck on the side of the road waiting for AAA,” she said. “Will you talk to me while I wait?”

  “Okay” seems to be the only word I can mutter with my eyes closed and my face shoved into a pillow.

  We really didn’t talk. She went on and on about how horrible her 1982 Ford Escort was acting. Then, she ranted about how this guy who invited her to this college party tried to get her drunk and when she lied to him and said she doesn’t drink, he ignored her and talked to another girl. Partway through the story, I fell asleep.

  The next morning she called me and said, “Hey, what’s up with you passing out on me?”

  I wanted to rant and rave about the no-calling rule, but I felt bad about dozing off with her stranded on the side of the road, so I let it slide and opened Pandora’s box.

  Now she calls a couple times a week, mostly in the middle of the night. It’s not that big of a deal because she only expects consciousness from me. She talks and talks and talks and talks. When she calls now, I just balance the phone between cheek and shoulder bones and let her roll. I guess someone could say she’s the closest thing I have to a real girlfriend.

  “Biggie, let me in!” Maddux pounds on the door.

  I quickly send an email telling Lucy how much I love the birthday pictures before unlocking the door.

  “What are you doing in here, whacking off to porn?”

  “Shut up. You don’t even know what whacking off or porn is,” I say.

  “Yeah, I do,” he says. “The hotels have porn on Channel 1.”

  “Fine,” I say. “So why are you here? Do you wanna play some Minecraft or something?”

  “We need to practice the knuckleball some more,” Maddux says.

  “We’ve been practicing for two weeks. I need a break,” I say. “Not tonight. It’s Friday, and I’m talking with my friends.”

  “Who?” He sticks his head between me and the computer monitor. His hair smells like day-old milk from constant batting practice and zero showers. “Invite them over to be pretend hitters.”

  “You need to shower,” I tell him.

  “I will tomorrow.” He pulls his head back. “Can your friends come over?”

  “My friends don’t live here,” I say. “They live in other states.”

  He reaches for the mouse. “Just click off then. They aren’t real friends if you can’t hang out.”

  I pull his arm away. “Maddux, get out of here. I’m not in the mood to pitch.”

  “You know, maybe if you join the team you’ll get real friends,” he says.

  “Screw you. What do you know? I’ve never seen you with anyone,” I say and regret it immediately. This is another reason I hate face-to-face talking—I always end up with my foot in my mouth.

  “I don’t care. I’ll make friends this summer when I play ball,” he says. “Then I’ll have lots of friends, real friends in Finch, and you’ll still be all alone here. If you don’t want me to help you, fine. Have fun talking to the screen.”

  I grab the back of his T-shirt to keep him in the room. “Calm down. I’ll get my glove,” I say.

  “Awesome,” he replies and I start to think he just got one over on me. “We need to practice because there’s a baseball meeting and open gym tomorrow night at school.”

  “What meeting?” I ask. “The season doesn’t start for nine months.”

  “Do you not know where you live?” Maddux knows very well I do, but that question isn’t expecting an answer. “It’s Finch. Baseball’s a year-round sport.”

  Chapter 7

  No Room for Me

  My relationship with my step-dad remains complicated. I don’t hate him. He loves my mom and my brother, and they are the two most important people in my life. I cannot be mad at someone who makes the rest of my family happy.

  I know he doesn’t hate me but I also know he hates everything about me. I know he’s embarrassed by my weight and doesn’t understand why I don’t love sports.

  When he married my mom, he knew the offspring of Aaron Abbott came with it. He must have thought I was the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box. I was only four then and didn’t hate sports like I do today. I’m sure it didn’t take long before he found out that sports weren’t the be-all and end-all for me like they were for most kids in this town, his hometown. He must have been pissed when I didn’t dominate T-ball. He probably still is.

  I guess it comes down to this: I put up with him and he puts up with me. I’m his tenant, and he’s my landlord.

  When I see him talking with Coach Phillips at the baseball meeting Maddux told me to attend, I cringe. With his blue eyes frosted and frozen, he watches me slowly climb to the fifth and final row of the bleachers in the gym. He says nothing. There are no waves or nods. I’m assuming he thought Maddux was kidding when he mentioned my upcoming pitching debut.

  The more he stares, the more determined I become to prove him wrong. Yes, I’m at a Finch baseball meeting, I want to yell. My little bastard of a brother says he’ll teach me to throw this magical knuckleball that will help me pitch the first perfect game in school history.

  Even though I’m determined, I still feel stupid and out of place. Stupid for believing Annabelle was serious when she told Coach Phillips she wanted to see me pitch.

  Three rows ahead of me, the rest of the natural baseball players are talking and laughing with each other. Kyle keeps adjusting his blue-and-gold baseball cap. Killer tells a joke with the arm movements of a mime. Everyone belongs here but me. As usual, I’m in the back of the room, quietly sitting by myself and praying that no one will notice me.

  Coach Phillips talks, tells
bad jokes, and hands out paperwork. As Jet hands back a pile of papers, I shake my head and wonder why I would ever pick a baseball meeting over hanging out in my bedroom. I miss my room so much right now. I love my king-size bed, my twenty-six-inch flat screen mounted on the wall. I love my MacBook. I love my online friends, 215 novels, and 127 comic books.

  While I hate baseball, I do understand how it works. As I look down the bleachers, I see so many good hitters. And if—or when—I do take the mound against some other high school, they will have amazing hitters just like Finch does. What am I thinking? There’s no way I can throw a perfect game. The idea sounded so interesting, fun, and, most of all, possible when I was talking about it with my brother in the comfort of my house. Now it sounds like a delusion created from hitting my head on the asphalt in gym class. If it wasn’t for the forty guys sitting shoulder to shoulder and creating three rows of man-made barricades, I would sneak out. My love of the back row has done me in.

  After sitting for an hour, the boys jump up and huddle around Coach Phillips. They chant, “Yellow Jackets,” and walk out. A few of them look over at me on the bleachers. They probably think I’m early for a meeting of the nerds or geeks or loners. Wait. Do loners have meetings? I think I’m losing my mind or having my first panic attack.

  Coach Phillips breaks my trance. “Biggie, get down here.”

  I keep sitting there, afraid that if I stand, I’ll faint and fall to my death.

  “Henry, come here.”

  Suddenly death doesn’t sound so bad, although I would prefer to die in a much cooler way than falling down the bleachers in the school gym. I lift my ass off the seat and wobble down the steps, clinging to the railing for balance. By the time I reach the gym floor, my heart is beating out of my chest.

  “Are you here for a reason?” Phillips asks with Laser looking over his shoulder. Both terrify me.

  “Pitching” is all I can say.

  “I heard,” Laser says.

  “You must have had fun in gym class, huh?” Coach Phillips asks.

  I nod my head slightly. Sweat rolls down my cheek, cold sweat that normally teams with tears. But as of now, I don’t feel like crying. Let me repeat. For now, I don’t feel like crying. I’m out of my element, my comfort zone. I should want to go home. I should want to sit in my room, but for some reason I can’t explain, I say something loud enough for Phillips and the Laser to hear. “I like pitching. I’m good at it.”

  “Have you ever played baseball before?” Coach asks.

  “Maddux, my younger brother has taught me how to pitch.” I look right at Laser. “We invented an unhittable pitch.”

  I squeeze my lips as tightly as possible, look away, and nod.

  Coach Phillips walks over to a big, black bag and pulls out a catcher’s mitt that he tosses to Kyle and a clean, white baseball. He rubs the ball with his hands as he walks up to me. As he places the ball in my hand, he says, “Show me this unhittable pitch.”

  Every night for the past two weeks, Maddux and I have sneaked down to the indoor diamond to work on pitching. At first I didn’t own a glove, so Maddux had to softly toss the ball back to me. Eventually, I bought one off Craigslist for three dollars. Slowly but surely over the past few nights, I’ve been able to throw the secret pitch, nicknamed “the Wiffle ball” by Maddux, over and over again for strikes. Maddux says the pitch is part knuckleball, slider, curve, and change up.

  I will need that smorgasbord of a pitch if I’m going to get through tonight. As I slip my three-dollar glove on without sneaking a peek at Laser, I try to imagine Maddux catching instead of Kyle. Maddux is a hell of a coach and I know I can throw strikes. I hold the ball in my left hand and put my forefinger firmly on one seam and my ring finger firmly on the other. My bird finger gently rubs the center of the ball and my thumb and pinkie hold the ball tight at the bottom. After a deep breath, I throw the pitch. The ball floats in the air, zigzagging left to right, north to south, and lands in Kyle’s glove. His wrist barely moves. Laser gives me a small smile, which helps me breathe easier. At least I know I’m not in trouble.

  Kyle throws the ball back. Once again, I put my fingers in the correct spots with the proper pressure and throw the pitch again. Perfect.

  “Kyle, roll it!” Coach yells.

  Kyle doesn’t throw the ball to me this time. Instead, he rolls the ball a few feet out in front of him. It’s déjà vu. I’m back in the parking lot playing Wiffle ball.

  “Go get it, Biggie,” Coach Phillips commands.

  I run as fast as I can, pick up the ball, and race back to Coach Phillips. Then, like a professional bowler, he rolls the ball along the basketball floor. Before it stops, Coach tells me to “chase it.”

  Confused, I turn and look at Coach.

  “Biggie, you’re pitching, and a throw got past our first baseman. It’s your job to back him up and grab the ball before everyone scores. Now go,” he says calmly, as if he knows how this story’s going to end.

  The ball settles against the bleachers on the other side of the gym. I run for it as fast as I can. When I reach the ball, my breaths are choppy, my legs are sore, and my hands shake. I turn and look at Laser. He seems a mile away.

  “Throw it in here,” Coach yells.

  I position myself and fire the ball as hard as I can. It slices and lands nowhere near Coach, Kyle, Maddux, or Laser.

  “Bad throw and it took forever,” Coach Phillips yells. “Everyone scored.”

  Shit. My butt lands with a thump on the bleacher.

  “Let’s try it again, Coach,” Kyle says with the ball in his palm.

  I can’t go again. I can’t even walk back to the spot. Saliva rolls out of my mouth and onto my chin like I’m three months old. I spit uncontrollably onto the gym floor. I feel like I’m going to die.

  Coach Phillips sits down next to me. “You know, Biggie, more than forty kids will try out for this team and two-thirds of them will hear what you’re going to hear, and they have played baseball every summer for a decade. I’m sure you would love to pitch, and for some schools you probably could. But here at Finch, we can’t have any rookies. We win championships; we don’t hold training camps. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “I can do this, sir,” I spit out.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Coach says, “but there’s no place for you on my team.”

  As Coach walks away, Kyle comes over and hands me a plastic water bottle. “You threw some nice strikes, Biggie. It’s just too bad you’re out of shape. Have you ever thought about getting a personal trainer?”

  I hand the cup back to him and lie, “I’m fine.”

  Later that night, I struggle to get to sleep. I keep thinking about the three perfect pitches. For a brief moment, I think a personal trainer may help, but then reality sets in. I can’t even run ten feet without almost having a heart attack. I’m way past a personal trainer. I’m a lost cause.

  My phone vibrates and Lucy’s picture appears with her crooked, cheerful smile, her tiny hazel eyes, and freckles.

  “Hey, Lucy,” I say.

  “I’ve been waiting all night to ask. How was the meeting? Did you show the coach your pitch?”

  Ignoring the question, I mumble, “Lucy, I have to tell you something about me. I’m really, really fat.”

  “Henry, I’ve seen your picture.” She chuckles.

  “No, it’s worse than you think. I’m not overweight. I’m not even obese. I’m something worse, off the charts. I can’t run, walk right, or throw a ball without falling to the ground to catch my breath. I’m really, really fat and I don’t deserve anyone.” I hang up on her and drop the phone onto the blanket. With the meat of my palms, I wipe the tears off my cheeks. The phone lights up again and there is Lucy’s crooked smile. I press the power button until the phone disappears into the black.

  Chapter 8

  Close Your Eyes
and Throw

  I can’t sleep. As slivers of Sunday morning sunshine pierce through open columns between my window blinds, I decide to give up on a good night’s rest. For the past five hours, I’ve gazed at the ceiling. My eyes are bloodshot from tears and lack of sleep. It’s no use. My body will not relax, my eyes won’t shut, and my brain won’t quit replaying what happened last night in the gym.

  I need to quit thinking about sports and get back to what makes me great.

  Lying on a shelf is my four-hundred-page government textbook with a backdrop of a bald eagle flying next to an American flag. As I stare at the book, calm comes over me. For the first time since I shut my bedroom door five hours ago, I feel like I’m home.

  As I read about city government ordinances, my mom turns the doorknob.

  “Are you okay?” She peeks inside.

  “I’m fine, Mom. Just studying,” I answer. Of course I’m fine. I’m sitting in my room. I’m studying for a test that I’ll ace. I’m in my zone. I couldn’t be happier.

  “Jim told me about the meeting.” She gives me a look like my grandpa died or something.

  I know she’s dying to ask me if I will go back again and beg for a spot on the team.

  “I just wanted to check it out,” I say. “Maddux talked me into it. It was dumb and I’m glad it’s over.”

  Ignoring me, she begins a sales pitch. “Jim said he would teach you how to play if you’re serious about being a Yellow Jacket.”

  “Well, I’m not, so it’s fine,” I interrupt. “Tell him that’s okay.”

  “I’d just like to see you two do something together,” she says. “You never hang out. It would just be nice if you and Jim could get along like he does with Maddux.”

  “Maddux is his son,” I say.

  “You’re his son too.”