Biggie

by Derek E. Sullivan

  So many sports were periods of embarrassment. Bowling, lacrosse, golf, floor hockey, dodgeball, and tennis were exercises in bobbling, falling, slipping, and sliding. I started to hate gym once again. The memory of the perfect game faded. It had been months since I, one-by-one, set down every kid in my class, some twice.

  Coach Phillips’s announcement that “on Tuesday, we will play Wiffle ball” has kept me awake for days. All of the ridicule and embarrassment of gutter balls, unintentionally launched tennis balls, swinging and missing golf balls have led to this day.

  Nearly nine months ago I threw a perfect game. I did it while I was massively obese. I did it hating gym. I did it under a burning sun and over boiling concrete. I did it with zero confidence and little knowledge about Wiffle ball. The fact that on September 4, I could possibly get a Wiffle ball from the pitching mound—well, it’s more of a spot—to a bat would be deemed impossible by any athletic academic. Yet, it happened. It happened, and no one reached base.

  Is it dumb for me to look at that thirty minutes as the greatest half hour of my life? Maybe, but I do. My perfect game is my favorite memory, from Jet’s groundout to Michelle rubbing my shoulders to Annabelle telling Coach to put me on the baseball team.

  As I return to the makeshift Wiffle ball field in the school’s parking lot, I can’t wait to hold that plastic ball again. My fingers tingle as they wait for the openings on the white globe. I can only imagine the future as I walk to the field. I am now seventy pounds lighter than the last time I did this. Over the past nine months, I have thrown hundreds and hundreds of pitches, mastering fastballs and changeups. Then, there’s the Wiffle ball—a slider-curve-knuckleball, which Maddux says is unhittable. If I can make a baseball dance in midair, imagine what I could do to a real Wiffle ball, a toy build specifically to flutter.

  I calmly ask Coach if I can be all-time pitcher again. He nods and places a yellow plastic ball in my hand. What happened to real Wiffle balls? The yellow ball feels smaller and slimier. It feels cheap and flimsy. This ball feels fragile, like an egg—like one flex of my wrist and the ball will shatter as confetti of yellow plastic floats in the air.

  I take the mound with 100 percent confidence. Yellow ball or no, Wiffle ball is my game. Michelle steps to the plate and I look her in the eye. My teeth and lips are locked, and my eyes squint to see her wave her bat and shoulders like a metronome. She seems at ease. Oh, this girl has no idea what’s coming at her.

  Just like the white one did months ago, the yellow ball hovers, slices, dives, and floats. However, she swings the bat and the ball loops to right field. Kyle runs out and Becky runs in, neither giving the kind of effort I would like to see. The ball bounces between them and then high into the air. Becky bobbles it like a hot potato, and Michelle runs to second.

  What was that? I think to myself. Kyle easily could have caught that, but he had to let his girlfriend get a hit. Damn chivalry.

  Up next is Ben, a short kid who specializes in cross country. He doesn’t play baseball, so I feel at ease. I snap off a pitch and the ball moves like a firefly. Ben swings and drives the ball to center field. Annabelle runs under it and catches it.

  “That’s my girl,” I say out loud. Now I’m back on track.

  Up next is Jet, Finch’s best hitter. Like the first day of school, he taps the concrete with his bat and licks the humid spring air.

  I quick pitch him. No glance, no long, deep breath, no windup. I just throw. He swings and pulls the ball to left field. The ball slices air like a bullet. It doesn’t soar. It doesn’t drop. It just speeds past us like a Roman candle before bouncing off the mud brick of Finch school.

  “Home run!” Jet screams. He runs around the bases like it’s a victory lap.

  “What’s happening?” I question.

  Chapter 28

  SignatUres

  How did Jet rocket my magic pitch over the school’s brick wall? Something doesn’t feel right and I don’t know what it is. In desperation, I have started to stare at my hands, more specifically my fingers. They aren’t skinny, like the digits on a skeleton, but they aren’t casings of sausages anymore either. I have no idea how much of the seventy pounds I lost came out of my fingers, but some must have. It’s also possible that my fingers look the same now as they did last fall. I have no idea. I’ve never really stared at my fingers before.

  Why my infatuation with my appendages? Well, a week after getting lit up by classmates during a Wiffle ball game, I’m still puzzled, confused, and speechless about what happened. I don’t really believe in bad days. Somehow, the game has changed. The variables of my and Maddux’s perfect game plan have changed. The theory is that if I can throw a perfect game with a lot of extra pounds and little baseball knowledge, I can also, in turn, get everyone out after losing weight, gaining strength, and acquiring knowledge. Yet, almost nine months after Maddux and I scratched out his plan to shock the Finch baseball world, I’m not able to make people look silly in the box. And tryouts are twenty hours away.

  In desperation, I have turned to staring at my fingers. After hours and hours of twisting and turning my wrist, after days and days of playing peekaboo with my palm, I have only one hypothesis: It is easier to throw a Wiffle ball perfect game with fat fingers. Do the plump tips of fat fingers make the ball dance with more vigor than skinny ones? Maybe. Maybe not.

  I don’t know, but I better come up with an answer quick. If I get roughed up tomorrow on the diamond like I did last week on the playground, my yearlong quest to throw a perfect game will end before I even put on a uniform. My goal is to do something Aaron never did, and I don’t mean getting cut from the baseball team.

  “Biggie!” Kyle catches me staring at my palms and fingertips before I place my textbooks into our locker.

  “You working tonight?” Kyle asks.

  “Yeah. Till eight,” I say.

  He leans in to share a secret. “Get off tonight. We’re going to Cedar Rapids, and we need you to drive.”

  “Kyle, I work in four hours. There’s not enough time,” I claim.

  “Biggie, are you going to play ball or not?”

  “Yeah,” I say with little confidence. He apparently has forgotten my horrific performance in Wiffle ball.

  “Well, there’s a tradition here at Finch. Before the first game, players pound a few beers, head down to the opponent’s field, and piss our names in the infield.”

  “Sounds fun, but I really have to work.” I walk away before Kyle makes one last attempt to get me to drive them an hour south.

  “Courtney will be there,” he screams down the hall.

  I hadn’t spoken with Courtney since the fight. I lost any desire to remain friends with her the second her older sister coldcocked me in the face. Plus, she’s really bad at texting. After the fight, she called my phone, but my rule with girls hasn’t changed. Don’t call me ever.

  “C’mon, you want to see Courtney. She’s cute.” Kyle continues his sales pitch.

  “I don’t know. Her sister did sucker punch me.”

  “Really, did that girl hurt you? You have like a hundred fifty pounds on her,” Kyle says. “I promise you that she won’t hit you tonight.”

  My eyes open so big that they almost fall out. A grin lights up my face, and I ask a very, very, very important question.

  “Will Jenna be there?”

  “That’s the rumor,” Kyle says. “Don’t you dare say anything to Annabelle or even Michelle, but they ran into each other at a George Strait concert and they’ve been talking every day. He just told me about it yesterday.”

  I almost want to scream “Yes!” at the top of my lungs. Killer said at the rest stop if things worked out between him and the Coe College sophomore, he would dump Annabelle. Changing Annabelle’s relationship status would be worth an ass-chewing from my boss.

  The guys are drunk. In the eight months we have been hanging o
ut, I have seen them pretty tipsy, but tonight they are full-on drunk. Apparently Jet’s older brother told him that you need to drink one bottle of beer for every letter of your name or you won’t have enough stored piss to finish the signature. It’s ridiculous, but the guys are having fun, so I let it go.

  It’s about 10:30 p.m. when we pull into the parking lot at Rapids South High School. The high school was just built in 2008, so even in the dark I can see the state-of-the-art, three-story glass and brick building.

  For being new, the baseball stadium looks pretty blah. The stands can only hold a hundred people, and the outfield fence is a boring eight feet tall all the way around. Whoever the architect was, he didn’t have much imagination.

  Jet doesn’t waste any time. He flips himself over the fence like he’s a felon escaping a state penitentiary. He lands shoulder first on the ground, but bounces off the grass like it’s a trampoline. As if he’s stumbling through a hurricane, he finds his way to second base, unzips, and starts peeing. We can’t hear him write, but we do hear, “Now, that’s the stuff.”

  “You guys are really going to pee, huh?” a girl’s voice asks.

  Killer, Kyle, and I turn around and see Jenna and Courtney walking toward us. Both are in summer attire: tiny shorts, tight shirts, hair combed straight down to their shoulders.

  Courtney is almost unrecognizable, especially with only the moonlight’s help. In November, she seemed boxy with squared shoulders and a barrel of a body. Now, her body seems more of an hourglass. Jenna still looks like a pencil compared to her thick marker of a young sister, but Courtney has definitely lost a few pounds since the party.

  “It’s a tradition,” Killer says.

  “You boys.” Jenna chuckles.

  Kyle squeezes my shoulder, while saying, “Ladies, let me introduce you to the new Biggie.”

  “Wow!” Jenna walks around me like I’m a steer she’s looking to purchase. “How much weight have you lost?”

  “Well, I lost eighty-two pounds, but I’ve recently put some weight back on while training for baseball, so, I don’t know, seventy-something,” I say.

  “Are you guys going to pee or not?” Jet screams from first base.

  With the girls hanging back, we scale the fence and find a spot on the infield. I pick the pitcher’s mound, but I really don’t have to pee. Unlike the guys, who were emptying beer bottles like there was no tomorrow, I was sipping on a twenty-ounce Diet Mountain Dew.

  There is no way I’m going to be able to pee Henry or Biggie, so I just plan to pee my initials. As I reach down for the top of my zipper, Killer screams, “Lights!”

  With one hand on my penis, I fall awkwardly off the pitching mound and cheek-first to the grass infield with my little guy half inside my pants and half inside beads of grass. So cold! Lifting my hips, my hand skims the grass to shove it back in.

  As we regroup by my truck, Jenna smiles and stares at Killer. I just don’t get it. Her violent tendencies aside, she really is cute and out of Killer’s league.

  As the unlikely couple takes off for a walk, Kyle says, “Hey, Jet and I are going down the road to Taco Bell. You want some tacos?”

  “Can’t we come?” I say.

  “Nah, Jet’s got some personal stuff he needs to talk about. It’s all hush-hush,” Kyle says. “Hang here.”

  As I watch Kyle and Jet stumble off to hopefully get me some tacos, Courtney stands just under my shoulder. If I turn my neck at all, I will be looking at her. Even staring at the guys, I know her eyes are on me. She has to be thinking, Is he going to look at me?

  Am I? Not really sure. My neck tightens and stiffens. One slight twist and a rush of uneasiness will shoot down my spine and scatter throughout my body.

  “Hey,” she says.

  I look at her. There she is, just looking at me. Her eyes wide open. Her lips curled slightly. I can’t tell if the fruity smell is shampoo or perfume.

  “You don’t talk much.” She pulls me out of my internal shampoo-perfume discussion.

  “No, not really,” I reply. “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  That’s a good question. I’m not sure. I guess, I’m thinking about how uncomfortable I am, yet I have zero desire to run away. What would I type online? If a girl said I wasn’t talking enough, what would my response be?

  “I’m really just a listener. I’m different that way.” Oh, I like this. “If you want to talk about something, I’ll listen.”

  “Oh! You’re the strong and silent type.”

  “Yeah, I am.” I stand up straighter, stretching farther away from her glowing nose ring and shimmering smile.

  “We could talk about how much I hate Taco Bell,” she says.

  “I don’t think they took our order.”

  “It’s okay. Their food is gross. Have you ever been to Chipotle?”

  “No,” I answer.

  “I love Chipotle,” she says. “If you want to make me happy, get me a chicken burrito from Chipotle. Yum!”

  “All of this talk about Mexican is making me hungry,” I say.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I could talk about how much I hate Jenna and Brian hanging out all the time.”

  All the time? “Yeah, I would love to hear about that.”

  Kyle is passed out when we pull into his driveway. I rattle his shoulder to wake him up. He squints his eyes and moans a little.

  “What time is it?” he mumbles.

  “Three thirty,” I say.

  “You ready for tryouts tomorrow?” he asks.

  “I think so,” I say. “I’m a little worried about my best pitch, but what are you going to do?”

  “Well, good luck.” He starts to climb out of the truck.

  “I don’t mean to be a jerk, but I think we should say something to Annabelle about Jenna.”

  He hops down, but leaves the door wide open. “She knows.” He rubs a little more life into his bloodshot eyes.

  “She doesn’t know,” I say.

  “Yeah, she knows. Maybe not about tonight, but she does.”

  “How could she know, and I wouldn’t?”

  Kyle exhales a deep breath and balances himself by placing his hand on my shoulder.

  “Biggie, Killer swore me to secrecy. You can’t tell anyone this.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “After the fight at Jenna’s house, Killer kept seeing her. Maybe for a few weeks. Then, he told Annabelle about Jenna. He told her everything and broke up with her. Annabelle wouldn’t have it. She fought for the relationship. She forgave him, and they got back together.”

  “Yeah, but she won’t forgive again,” I say.

  “Maybe not. Maybe she’ll dump him. Maybe she’ll go out with you. But she’ll always be in love with him. They’re neighbors. When they were kids, they practiced kissing. She loves him. You understand? Annabelle may someday be your girlfriend, but she’ll never be your girl.”

  Kyle’s words don’t shock me. Deep down I knew she loved him. After all, they flirt with each other by my locker every day. At the moment, I feel bad for Annabelle. She deserves better.

  “Biggie, you need your own girl—someone who will love you like she loves him.”

  Chapter 29

  1,000 Friends

  As I log into Twitter, I still debate whether to rat Killer out. When I pull up Annabelle’s page, there she is squeezing Killer’s torso in her profile picture. I scan throughout her recent pictures, and I see one after another of her and Killer hanging out, hugging, smiling, and laughing. There must dozens of them.

  I grab my lamp and try and throw it at my wall, but the cord stays plugged into the outlet, and the lamp only falls off the desk and hangs there, swinging by its cord. If I had a bat, I would smash the shit out of it, but I just stare at it swinging. Without a bat, I just calmly repositio
n it on my desk.

  When I lean back in my chair, my butt almost slides off. My eyes, half closed from a night on the road, barely focus through the closing slits. I scroll through her photos until I see one after another captioned Prom Night.

  In every picture, and there must be a hundred of them, Annabelle smiles or grins or laughs or makes some type of funny face. How can she be happy? Why isn’t she pissed off at him? He cheated on her, dumped her.

  I used to think she was so tough. If a guy pissed her off, she dumped him. When we had dinner, she called me out for being a recluse. In that parking lot, she ripped me a new one for peeking at her poetry. But she’s not tough. A tough girl would have kicked Killer in the balls and gone with someone who would treat her right.

  I can’t count the nights I have sat up and talked online to some girl in some state who was mistreated by her boyfriend or husband or “live-in lover,” a term I learned from Patty in Michigan.

  Those girls are my friends, but I never fully respected them. I would tell them how wonderful they were and how they deserved better, but they never left the jerk. They, instead, talked to me.

  As I flip through the prom photos, I think off all the conversation I had with Felicia about her husband. I remember how Karissa’s boyfriend would leave for an entire weekend and not call to let her know he was safe or even where he was. Carolyn, an eighteen-year-old from next-door Illinois, became a home wrecker when she fell for a married twenty-seven-year-old, who in the span of seven months dumped her, took her back, and then went back to his wife, who actually took him back. Some guys can do whatever they want. It doesn’t matter. Not guys like me. I’m a guy who can’t get a girl, not a guy who no matter how hard he tries, can’t get rid of one.