by Mike Lupica
“Are you back-talking me?” Mr. Anthony said.
His face was suddenly pretty red too.
Watching it all play out, Cassie thought the coach was acting as if Jack had taken him deep, not his son.
She didn’t realize it, but she’d stood up, thinking: Please drop this, Teddy. Please don’t say one more thing.
But it was Mr. Anthony who felt he had to add, “Maybe you need to ask yourself whether or not you want to play on my team.”
“It’s not your team,” Teddy said, “any more than I’m your son’s catcher.”
“I’m gonna say it again,” Mr. Anthony said, his voice rising, if such a thing were even possible. “You need to ask yourself whether you want to play on my team.”
“Maybe I don’t,” Teddy said.
Then he turned and walked back to his bench and slowly began taking off his equipment, while Mr. Anthony yelled out to the players behind Sam that it was time for everybody to call it a day.
It was when Teddy was in the parking lot with Cassie and Jack and Gus that he said he wasn’t just done for the day, he was done for good.
“If it’s not fun, what’s the point?” he said.
Cassie told him there was a lot of that going around.
TWELVE
You’re not quitting,” Cassie said to Teddy. “It would make your melt worse than your coach’s melt.”
“Watch me,” Teddy said. “I’m not playing for that guy.”
They were on Teddy’s back patio, which faced the ball field at Walton Middle School. Mrs. Madden had made iced tea for them, brought out the pitcher and glasses, and even some sliced-up lemons, then gone back into the house. She knows we have stuff to talk about, Cassie thought. Mrs. Madden was cool like that.
“You haven’t said much,” Teddy said to Jack. “What do you think?”
Actually, Jack hadn’t said anything. It was one of the things Cassie liked the best about Jack Callahan. He never talked just to talk.
And if there was a captain of their crew, it was Jack. Even Cassie knew it. He was the same kind of natural leader with them that he was on every sports team on which he’d ever played.
Cassie knew why Teddy was asking. Not only did he want to know what Jack thought, he wanted Jack’s approval, especially when it came to sports. They all knew they wouldn’t even be here, having this conversation, if Jack hadn’t stood up for Teddy in seventh grade when he was being bullied by some of the other kids at school for being overweight and out of shape, back when some of those kids had nicknamed him Teddy Bear. But Jack had helped him get into shape. Then Teddy and everybody else had found out that there was an athlete inside him, a good one. And a tough one.
But now it was as if he were being bullied all over again, by Coach Anthony.
“I think Cassie’s right,” Jack said. “You can’t quit. And you’re not going to quit.”
“You’re there every day!” Teddy said. “You and Gus know what a jerk he is.”
“Not arguing that with you,” Jack said. “I bet even his own son knows what a jerk he is.”
“I’m not getting picked on all summer,” Teddy said. “If I want to do that, I can just hang with Cassie more.”
She reached over before he could move his arm, and pinched him.
“We’re trying to help you, and you take a shot?” she said. “Seriously?”
“That was seriously funny,” Teddy said.
“Moderately,” she said.
Teddy nodded. “I can live with that.”
Okay, she thought. There’s hope. He was still trying to use humor, as hurt and angry as he clearly was. Maybe he was still set on quitting. But Cassie remembered a line her mother liked to use, one she said she’d read in a book about the movies written by William Goldman, who’d written one of Cassie’s all-time favorite books, The Princess Bride.
Maybe Teddy wasn’t set-set.
“If you quit,” Jack said, keeping his voice even, eyes on Teddy, “then that guy wins.”
Before Teddy could respond, Jack added, “And what I’ve found out being your teammate is that you hate to lose as much as any of us.”
“I managed to survive losing the championship game in football,” Teddy said.
He had survived. It had been his first season of organized football, and once he’d made the team, he was supposed to be their tight end. But then Jack had gotten hurt, and it had turned out Teddy had the best arm of anybody else on the team, and he’d turned out to be a terrific quarterback, all the way to the championship game, when the other team just ended up with the ball last.
Cassie said, “That was different and you know it.”
“How was it different?”
“Because you didn’t quit that day.”
“You’re right about that,” Teddy said. “I didn’t quit. We just ran out of time.”
“It was like the other team got the last word,” Gus said.
Jack said to Teddy, “You can’t let Coach Anthony, or Sam, get the last word on you.”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“Yeah,” Cassie said, “it is. And it’s about you being better than them.”
Teddy took a long drink of iced tea, put his glass down, put his head back, closed his eyes, and shook his head. No jokes from him now. Cassie could just tell from his tone of voice. He was speaking from the heart.
“He makes me not want to go to practice,” he said. “It’s not just that he yells at me. He’s yelling all the time, like he’s always got the volume turned all the way up. Sometimes, swear, the last thing I hear when I close my eyes at night is the sound of his stupid voice.”
“Same,” Gus said.
“I think it might happen to me tonight too,” Cassie said. She tried to imitate Coach Anthony, making her voice deeper. And louder. “Game of inches!” Then she was back in her own voice, saying, “I almost laughed when he said that, but I was afraid if I did, he’d call me out of the bleachers and make me run some laps.”
“Maybe on his days off from us, he can come bark at your team,” Gus said.
“And you know what another crazy part of this is?” Cassie said. “His son’s not even that good!”
“Tell me about it,” Teddy said.
They sat in silence then. They could do that sometimes when they were together, even Teddy, who out of all of them was the one who liked to talk the most. Cassie didn’t want to push him right now, just because he’d calmed down so much in the past few minutes.
Finally Teddy said, “You know it’s not just baseball, right? You wait the whole school year, even when you’re having fun playing other sports, waiting for summer. And I don’t want this guy to ruin mine.”
Cassie turned to him, and started to speak, but Teddy put up a hand. “Let me finish,” he said. “I think a lot about stuff like that. I think about how good we have it, just having each other. But guess what? Before long we’re going to be in high school. I mean, what the heck? That means we’ve got five more summers, counting this one, before we’re in college. We’ve got to make all of them count, is all I’m saying.”
“Teddy’s right,” Gus said. “I think about stuff like that too. I just don’t talk about it as much.” He grinned. “But then, I don’t talk about anything as much as Teddy does.”
“Hey,” Teddy said. “You’re one of my wingmen, remember?”
“But I can’t lie, Cass,” Gus said. “I feel the same way about Coach as Teddy does.”
“Then we gotta find a way to power through,” Jack said. “We’ve all done that with teammates we didn’t like.”
“They were teammates,” Gus said, “not the boss of us.”
“You’re the boss of you when it comes to baseball,” Jack said. “Same with Teddy. Same with all of us. Nobody can make us not love baseball.”
“I’ve been trying to explain the same thing to Sarah,” Cassie said. “I can see how much she wants to be a good softball player, how much she wants to be a part of a team, and belon
g. I told her that she can’t let some of the girls on our team make her forget that.”
“You’re not playing for Coach,” Jack said to Teddy. “You’re playing for you, and for us. Not him.”
“But what about Sam?” Teddy said. “He’s no better than his father. And I’m supposed to catch him and act like I want him to do well?”
“Yup,” Cassie said. “Because it’s not about him, either. It’s about the team.”
Teddy pointed at her first, then Jack, then back at Cassie. “You two know how much you sound alike, right?”
Cassie smiled. “Yes,” she said. “And I just hope Jack appreciates how lucky he is to sound like me.”
“So, so much,” Jack said.
Jack looked at Teddy again. As always, when Jack had as much to say as he did today, it wasn’t just Teddy paying attention to him. They all did.
“You’ve come too far in sports to quit now,” Jack said to Teddy. “Baseball’s gotten too important to you, and you’re too important to our team to walk away.”
“Basically,” Cassie said, “it’s not about asking if you want to play for him. It’s asking yourself why you want to play in the first place.”
Teddy was quiet again. Cassie knew this look too. It was as if he were having a conversation with himself that only he could hear. Finally he nodded, got up, opened the sliding door to his kitchen. When he came back a couple of minutes later, he was holding a Wiffle ball and bat.
“I’m not making any promises about sticking it out with this meathead,” he said. “But I will for now.”
“Okay, then,” Gus said.
“Okay,” Jack said.
“I hate it when you guys are right,” Teddy said.
“We know,” Cassie said. Then she told the boys to pick sides for home-run derby, she didn’t care what team she was on.
But she was batting first.
THIRTEEN
Cassie’s dad scheduled an extra practice on Monday night that he told Cassie wasn’t really going to be a practice at all. It was going to be a team meeting instead, he just wasn’t telling the rest of the girls beforehand.
“We need to get this thing with Kathleen and Sarah squared away,” he said, “so we can go forward as a team.”
“Kathleen’s the one who turned it into a thing,” Cassie said when they were in the car and on their way to Highland Park.
“I know.”
“And you know I believe Sarah,” Cassie said.
“You have made that abundantly clear, kiddo.”
“What about you?”
“Between you and me?” he said. “So do I.”
“But that means Kathleen is lying.”
“Know that, too.”
“I just don’t think Sarah has it in her to lie,” Cassie said. “I really don’t.”
“My job is finding a way to keep the peace without calling Kathleen out on her lie,” her dad said.
“Good luck with that,” Cassie said.
“Kathleen’s not a bad kid.”
“She’s still being an idiot.”
“She’s being a kid,” her dad said.
“You make it sound like the same thing?” Cassie asked.
“Only sometimes,” he said. “And not just with kids, by the way.”
She thought of the way Coach Anthony acted. “I hear you,” Cassie said to her dad.
“Now let’s hope the rest of the team does too,” her dad said.
They rode the rest of the way to the field with the inside of the car completely quiet.
When the whole team was there, Cassie’s dad told them to leave their gloves and bat bags at the bench, that they might do some soft-tossing later and a few fielding drills, but he’d really gathered them here to talk.
Chris Bennett walked the entire team out to left-center field, where all the action had taken place at the end of Saturday’s game. The players on the Red Sox arranged themselves in a circle around him.
“So,” he said, “we all know what happened in our first game, and I’m pretty sure that nobody is happy about the way things ended.”
Cassie looked around at her teammates. Her dad had their full attention. Sometimes Cassie saw a little bit of her dad in Jack, the way there was just something about his manner, the way he naturally presented himself, that made people pay attention to him when he was talking. Cassie knew because she felt it all the time, whether they were in the car on their way to practice, or at the dinner table, or when she and her dad were watching a ball game together.
“It’s not my intent,” he continued, “to go over the whole thing again, moment by moment. Because it’s a funny thing when things are happening in a moment. People can see them completely differently. When I was in college, I took this course on the movies, and one of the movies we studied was called Rashomon. It was actually Japanese. But the point of it was about this crime that was committed in the woods, and how four different people saw it four different ways.”
Cassie glanced across at Kathleen. She was glaring at Cassie’s dad, as if somehow she knew where this was going and she already didn’t like it.
“That’s what might have happened with Kathleen and Sarah,” he said. “And maybe the truth is just somewhere in between them, the way that softball was out here.”
Sarah was sitting next to Cassie. She hadn’t said a word to anybody, had barely looked at anybody, since she’d arrived at the field. For now, Cassie was just happy that Sarah had kept her part of their deal. She was here, even if she didn’t much look as if she wanted to be.
“But whatever happened,” Chris Bennett said, “we need to find a way to put it behind us before we can move forward as a group, and as a team.”
He slowly made a full circle, as a way of looking at every face.
“And I honestly believe that the only way for us to be able to do it is to clear the air right now,” he said. He stopped his turn and looked at Kathleen. “Kath,” he said, “is there anything you’d like to say to Sarah?”
There was no hesitation from her. None. And no change of expression.
“No.”
“Well,” Cassie’s dad said, “there’s something that I’d like you to say to her.”
Kathleen crossed her arms in front of her.
“What?” she said.
“I’d like you to apologize to Sarah for calling her a liar,” Chris Bennett said.
“Sorry, Mr. Bennett,” Kathleen said. “But I’m not doing that.”
Cassie turned slightly so she could see Sarah’s face. She wasn’t looking at Kathleen. She was looking at Cassie’s dad and had crossed her arms too. But with her it was almost as if she were hugging herself. She looked as if she were afraid in that moment that she might fly apart.
Kathleen said, “So you’re taking her side?”
She pointed at Sarah. And before Cassie’s dad could answer, Kathleen then pointed at Cassie and said, “And that must mean you are too, right?”
“This isn’t about Cassie,” Chris Bennett said. “This is between you and Sarah.”
“Oh, we all know this is about Cassie, too. Her and her new friend. Maybe I should push you to the ground, Cassie, to get in better with you.”
Keeping her voice calm, Cassie said, “Kathleen, when have you ever not been in good with me?”
“Well, if we’re so tight,” Kathleen said, “then who do you believe, me or her?”
There it was, right in the middle of the circle. And Cassie knew that whatever answer she was going to give wasn’t just about Kathleen and Sarah Milligan and a ball that had fallen between them. In this moment she was being asked a question about character. Her parents, both of them, had always told her that character was character even if you were alone in a room. It was about making the right choice, even when the right choice was the hardest.
“Okay,” Cassie said. “Even though I don’t think it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened in the world, I believe you messed up on that play and felt so badly afterward that
you blamed it on Sarah.”
Kathleen sprang to her feet. “So you’re saying I’m the liar? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I just don’t think you told the truth,” Cassie said.
“It’s the same thing!” Kathleen said.
“Kathleen,” Cassie’s dad said, “what happened on that play happens all the time in baseball. The real truth is that sometimes it’s just miscommunication. The only two people who really know what happened out there are you and Sarah. But what I know is that it’s my job as the coach of this team to not let one blown play blow up our season after just one game. Over a ball that maybe neither one of you could have caught anyway.”
Kathleen turned now to look at Greta, and Allie, and all the girls who were sitting closest to her. “Do you guys believe them too?” she said.
Greta and Allie gave quick shakes of their heads.
Kathleen turned back to Cassie’s dad and said, “Since I’m such a horrible person, do you even want me on this team?”
“I never said you were a horrible person, Kath,” Cassie’s dad said. “Come on.”
“Well, do you?”
“You’re a very good player, and I’ve always enjoyed coaching you. And you know what everybody out here knows, that we’ve got a chance to be great this season, and one loss doesn’t change that. I very much want you to be a part of all that. And I can’t force you to apologize. But I still think it would be better for everybody if you did.”
Kathleen was talking again to Greta and Allie and the girls next to them. “Do you believe this?” she said.
When she turned back to the rest of the group, she pointed at Sarah again and said, “She’s the one who should be apologizing. To me.”
Sarah spoke for the first time, her voice barely more than a whisper. “No,” she said, almost as if talking to herself. “No, no, no.”
Kathleen said, “I’m not listening to this anymore.”
To Cassie’s dad she said, “Do I have to stay?”
“No,” he said, his voice sounding sad as he did. “No, you don’t.”
“Do any of us have to stay if we don’t want to?” Kathleen said.