Team Players

by Mike Lupica

  “Dad said that we need to have our guard up, especially when it comes to our body language and facial expressions,” she said.

  She pushed her plate to the middle of the table, having only eaten a couple of bites, and lowered her voice.

  “Don’t any of you repeat this,” Cassie said. “But maybe it is too much, having her on the team.”

  “Won’t repeat it,” Teddy said, “because we all know you don’t mean it.”

  “But Greta’s right about something, as much as I hate admitting that,” she said. “We don’t need her to be great.”

  “But won’t it be greater if you’re great with her?” Gus said. Then he grinned and nodded at her plate and said, “Don’t mean to change the subject, but do you mind if I finish that?”

  Cassie couldn’t help it. She smiled. “Good that all this stress hasn’t made you lose your appetite.”

  “I need to keep my strength up to be a good wingman,” he said.

  Cassie nodded her head toward Greta and Kathleen and Nell.

  “Isn’t that supposed to be their job too?” she said.

  “None of this is supposed to feel like a job,” Jack said.

  “Then how come it’s starting to feel like that already?” she said.

  They decided not to walk up the street and get ice cream. Teddy texted his mom, who was picking them up, and told her they’d finished eating. On her way out Cassie stopped at her teammates’ table, smiling a smile she really didn’t feel, and said, “C’mon, you guys. There must have been times when one of you wanted to give me a good shove.”

  Kathleen smiled up at her. “You mean like now?” she said.

  Cassie forced a laugh out of herself, thinking, Yeah, big joke. But she was the only one who laughed. Only when she was in the front room at Fierro’s did she hear a big shout of laughter from them.

  She didn’t turn around. It had been a long enough night already. She hoped it wasn’t the beginning of a long season.

  All of a sudden Sarah wasn’t the only one on the team who seemed alone.

  SEVEN

  Sarah and her parents were coming over to Cassie’s house the next night after dinner.

  It gave Cassie some time to think about everything that had happened to the team so far, and also to ask herself why it was so important to her to have things work out with Sarah.

  She kept coming back to the autistic boy in fifth grade, Peter Rizzo.

  She had never been one of the kids, boys or girls, who had made fun of him behind his back. It had only been a handful of them, and they never did it to the boy’s face. Looking back on it now, Cassie didn’t even think they were being malicious. They were ten-year-olds, and were acting like ten-year olds.

  None of Cassie’s friends, at least none that she knew about, had an autistic brother or sister. For most of the kids in the fifth grade, it was likely that this was the first time they’d ever been around an autistic boy or girl. So no one was sure how to act. Maybe some of them were just acting the way they usually did, about almost everything, thinking they were being funny when they weren’t.

  But what Cassie did know is that she had never told anybody to stop when they were making fun of Peter Rizzo. She definitely knew that. And she definitely knew, in her heart, the one her dad said he knew so well, that she hadn’t made enough of an effort to make things easier on Peter, whether she could have done that or not. Oh, she told herself she wanted to fix things. To her that meant making Peter feel more welcome in the classes they shared, and in their grade. But when he left after the school year ended, she was honest enough with herself to know that she hadn’t done enough. It had bothered her ever since. It wasn’t just that she’d let this boy down. She felt as if she’d let herself down.

  She hated letting herself down.

  In anything.

  Maybe, she thought, lying on her bed after dinner and waiting for the Milligans to show up, it went back to something her grandmother—her dad’s mom—had told her not long before she’d died. The beautiful old woman whose name was Connie but whom Cassie had always called “Nonnie” from the time she’d mispronounced it as a little girl spent most of the last few months of her life in her bed, suffering from emphysema. But Cassie would sit there with her for hours and just talk to her. Mostly Cassie just listened. Until the end her grandmother, who’d read as much as anyone else Cassie had ever known, had a stack of books on the dresser next to her bed. One day one of them was The Great Gatsby, which Nonnie said she’d first read more than sixty years before.

  “I’m going to give you a piece of advice that Nick Carraway’s father gave him in this book,” Nonnie said to Cassie. “Not everybody in this life has had the advantages you’ve had already.”

  Cassie said that she wasn’t sure she understood, and her grandmother said, “Of all the talents God has given you, make sure the one you use the most is kindness.”

  Cassie promised her she would try. And Cassie wished she had tried harder with Peter Rizzo. Sometimes she wished the whole world was like one of her favorite TV shows, Speechless, in which the best character, and the funniest, was a boy suffering from cerebral palsy. Except, Cassie knew, that wasn’t even the best way to describe it. The character, JJ, didn’t act as if he were suffering at all. He just got on with things, often using humor like it was his greatest talent, being friends with whom he wanted, mostly with a friendly groundskeeper at his school.

  Maybe that’s who I should try to be like with Sarah, Cassie thought. A friendly groundskeeper.

  It just wasn’t working out that way so far. Maybe tonight could be a way to start over.

  “Don’t force it,” her mom had said at dinner. “Just let it happen.”

  “Not forcing things, Mom?” Cassie had said. “Not exactly my strong suit.”

  “Well, honey, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”

  Mrs. Milligan’s first name was Kari. “With a K,” she said. “Rhymes with ‘car.’ ” Mr. Milligan’s first name was Jim. They all went and sat in the living room.

  Let it happen, Cassie reminded herself.

  Sarah sat between her parents on the couch. She didn’t have her head down tonight, maybe because she had her parents with her. Her eyes, Cassie saw, kept moving from Cassie to Cassie’s parents, almost as if she were waiting to see which one of them would make the first move.

  But it was Sarah’s mom who spoke first.

  “Sarah would like to apologize to you, Cassie, for what happened yesterday,” she said.

  “She doesn’t have to, really,” Cassie said.

  “Yes, Cassie, she does.” Her manner was friendly and firm at the same time. It was as if she were letting Cassie know who was in charge, at least for the moment.

  “Sorry,” Sarah said.

  “Sorry for what?” Mrs. Milligan said.

  Cassie still heard the same tone from her, friendly but firm.

  “I’m sorry for shoving you,” Sarah said.

  Now she put her head down.

  Cassie was standing in front of the fireplace. There was a lot she wanted to say. But she knew this wasn’t about her right now. So all she said was, “I accept your apology, Sarah. I don’t want us to just be teammates. I want us to be friends.”

  Sarah didn’t respond, just clasped her hands in her lap and kept staring at the floor.

  “Okay,” Sarah said.

  Then everybody was silent for what seemed like an awkwardly long time, until Cassie couldn’t take it anymore and said, “Sarah?”

  Sarah looked up.

  “Would you like to see my room?” Cassie said.

  For a second Cassie thought she saw fear in Sarah’s eyes, or maybe uncertainty, as if she hadn’t signed up for anything other than the apology, maybe thinking that as soon as she had apologized that she and her parents could leave.

  “Why don’t you?” Sarah’s dad said. “While the grown-ups get to know one another a little better, you and Cassie can do the same.”

 
; Sarah turned to look at her dad, then turned back to her mom, as if one of them would change their mind. But they both just smiled at her until Sarah said, “Okay, I guess.”

  “Follow me,” Cassie said.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  She didn’t sound okay, but she followed Cassie out of the living room.

  At least, Cassie thought, I cleaned my room today, so the mess won’t make her even more afraid. But once they were in there, Sarah just stood next to the door, as if so she could make a fast getaway if she needed to.

  “Why don’t you just grab the chair next to my desk,” Cassie said.

  Sarah hesitated slightly, walked quickly to the chair, sat down, clasped her hands back together in her lap.

  Cassie hopped onto the bed and sat facing Sarah, cross-legged.

  “My room’s not usually nearly this neat,” Cassie said, “not gonna lie.”

  There was no response.

  “I’m usually kind of a slob,” Cassie said. “How about you?”

  Sarah didn’t respond to that, either, and Cassie was starting to wonder how many more inane comments she was going to have to make, when Sarah blurted out, “You don’t have to be my friend!”

  Cassie was the one startled by a loud noise.

  “I know I don’t,” she said, keeping her own voice low. “I don’t think I have to. I want to.”

  Sarah was staring down again, clenching and unclenching her hands now.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” she said.

  “But I’d like to.”

  Now Sarah picked up her head, her eyes intensely focused on Cassie, almost fiercely.

  “Why?” she said.

  The question stopped her, and not just because she had no answer for Sarah. It was because Cassie had never asked that question of herself. Cassie realized in that moment that she had never spent much time, or any time, looking at things from Sarah’s point of view, or trying to understand why Sarah might be suspicious of someone she hardly knew suddenly trying to act like her guardian angel.

  As serious as Sarah was, Cassie couldn’t keep herself from smiling.

  “You got me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I can’t explain why.”

  For the first time, Sarah smiled back at her.

  • • •

  It wasn’t like an episode of Speechless, or any other television show that Cassie watched. They didn’t work everything out in the next half hour. They weren’t friends by the time Sarah’s parents called her from downstairs and told her it was time to go.

  The conversation between them didn’t get a whole lot easier, but Cassie was fine with that. She’d stopped thinking that any of this was going to be easy. Her parents always told her that the things that made you work the most meant the most.

  They talked about basketball, because Sarah had played basketball before she’d played softball. Sarah asked Cassie if she played basketball. Cassie said she did.

  “I even played on a boys’ team last season,” Cassie told her.

  Sarah’s eyes got big. “They let you do that?”

  “They kind of didn’t have a choice,” Cassie said. “If you’re good enough at something, nobody should be able to hold you back.”

  Sarah frowned and said, “But why did you want to?”

  “I guess to show people I really was good enough.”

  Sarah was still frowning. “Did people treat you differently?”

  “Yeah,” Cassie said. “Yeah, they did.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  It was a question Cassie had asked herself all season long and was still asking herself, even though the Warriors had won the league championship, and she’d played a big part in their doing that.

  “It was worth it,” she said finally.

  “Why was it worth it?”

  Cassie said, “At first I thought it was just proving a point to the other boys. But it ended up being about me proving something to myself.”

  “On my team,” Sarah said, “I guess . . . I guess I proved something.”

  “That you were better than they first thought you were?”

  “I guess.”

  They were still talking, Cassie and the girl who had complained about people talking, a girl who paused before she said something and then spoke slowly when she did, as if somehow weighing every word, or afraid she might be about to use the wrong one.

  “Even though I was on a team, and even though I pride myself on being a team player,” Cassie said, “I was also playing for myself.”

  “I never thought about it that way,” Sarah said.

  “It’s about having pride in yourself,” Cassie said.

  Sarah nodded. “I guess.”

  Sarah’s mom called her then. Sarah jumped out of the chair, and walked out of the room ahead of Cassie, and down the stairs without saying a word.

  Good talk, Cassie wanted to say, but didn’t.

  She just said good night to Mr. and Mrs. Milligan and said she’d see Sarah at the Red Sox opening game on Saturday.

  “Same,” Sarah said over her shoulder, already walking quickly toward their car.

  When the Milligans were all in the car, Cassie’s mom said, “Well, did you learn anything tonight?”

  “I did, actually.”

  “Care to share?”

  “Maybe Sarah and I aren’t as different as I thought,” Cassie said.

  Cassie wasn’t getting carried away by tonight. But maybe this was a new beginning for her and Sarah, with the season about to officially begin on Saturday.

  It definitely beat a good, hard shove to the chest anytime.

  EIGHT

  The opener was against the Hollis Hills Yankees at Highland Park. The weather in Walton was so perfect on Saturday that Cassie thought it would have been a crime not to be playing softball today.

  In the morning Cassie called Jack and asked if he and Teddy and Gus were coming to the game.

  Jack laughed. “Is that what we’d call in English class a rhetorical question?” Then he said of course they were coming, their practice at Walton Middle in the morning with their All-Star team, the Cubs, would be over by ten o’clock, and Cassie’s game wasn’t until eleven.

  “I’m actually glad you’ve got a game, especially for Teddy and Gus,” he said. “It’ll take their minds off all the drama we’re having now with our team.”

  Neither Teddy nor Gus liked their new coach. His name was Ken Anthony, and he was new to Walton this year, along with his son, Sam, who was expected to be one of the Cubs’ star pitchers. Sam didn’t go to Walton Middle. He was actually attending Hollis Academy, the private school in town. But because his family lived in Walton, he was eligible to play for the Cubs. And his dad had been asked to coach the team. Ken Anthony had been a minor-league pitcher before a shoulder injury ended his career. But according to Jack, it was clear that Coach Anthony thought his son was going to be the one in the family who did make it to the big leagues.

  That wasn’t the problem they were having with their new coach, though. The problem was that Mr. Anthony acted as if he were managing the real Cubs. He was loud, for one thing. Teddy said that not only did the guy act as if he’d invented baseball, he treated summer baseball as if it were military school, actually making them drop and do push-ups if they threw to the wrong base, or made a mistake on the bases.

  “So he hasn’t lightened up?” Cassie said.

  “I don’t think he’s going to lighten up,” Jack said. “It doesn’t make me as crazy as it does the other guys. I just sort of try to tune him out. But Teddy and Gus aren’t having any fun. Teddy’s even talked about quitting, and I don’t think he’s joking.”

  “All this drama on both our teams,” Cassie said, “and neither one of us plays a real game until today.”

  “We’ll be there,” Jack said. “And, Cass? Good luck.”

  “Hope I don’t need much.”

  “You pitching?”

  “L
ook at you,” she said, “with another rhetorical question!”

  As soon as she got to the field, she could feel the excitement inside her. And even after what had happened at Fierro’s the other day, she could see that Greta and Kathleen and Allie and the rest of her teammates were just as excited. Maybe they’d all figured that if any one of them did well, they all did well. You didn’t have to like all of your teammates. It didn’t change the fact that you were all in it together. Cassie knew it would probably sound lame if she actually said that to them. But she honestly believed it.

  Nothing that had been said about Sarah at Fierro’s mattered today. Nothing that had happened at the end of that scrimmage mattered. The game mattered. Beating the Hollis Hills Yankees mattered today. Everything else was just noise.

  She sought out Greta and Kathleen after they’d finished batting practice and infield practice, and bumped fists with both of them.

  “We are not losing this game,” Cassie said.

  “We’re not losing any games,” Greta said.

  “Well, you know what they say,” Cassie said. “We can’t win them all if we don’t win today.”

  Kathleen smiled at her, as if things were the same as they used to be between them. “Just hope our starting pitcher still has it,” she said.

  “Are you serious?” Cassie said. “Have you seen that Cassie Bennett pitch? I love her.”

  “Tell us about it,” Greta said. But she was smiling too.

  From the time Sarah arrived at the field, there was just something about her body language that made it seem as if she were keeping even more distance from her teammates than usual. Something that told Cassie to keep her distance. Sarah looked more anxious than she had at tryouts, more locked in to her routines. She set her bat bag in the same place she always did under the bench. She stood in her spot in the outfield during batting practice. Cassie’s dad made sure that everybody hit in the same order during BP as they had at the last couple of practices, the same batting order he was going to use in the game. Cassie was ahead of Sarah, with Brooke Connors behind her.