by Mike Lupica
“You don’t,” Chris Bennett said. “And it looks as if we’re done here, anyway.”
“Then I’m leaving,” Kathleen said. She looked around and said, “Anybody else?”
Greta stood up. Allie did. So did most of the other players on the team, surprising Cassie. Lizzie stayed put. So did Brooke. Cassie and Sarah. That was it. The rest of the Red Sox players followed Kathleen back toward the infield.
Cassie’s dad had come here tonight hoping he could bring the team together. Now the opposite had happened. And now Cassie’s dad was the one who seemed to be talking to himself.
“Well,” he said, “that went well.”
“This is all my fault,” Sarah said. “Allmyfaultallmyfaultallmyfault.”
By now Cassie knew that Sarah often repeated herself when she was under pressure.
In almost the exact same moment, both Cassie and her dad said, “No, it’s not.”
But Cassie was starting to wonder if that one stupid ball between two of their outfielders was ever going to stop rolling.
FOURTEEN
All of the players who had walked off with Kathleen the night before showed up for the Red Sox game against the Moran Mariners, another home game for them before they’d play their next two games on the road.
Anybody watching Cassie and her teammates warm up on this night might not have noticed anything different about them, during batting practice, during infield practice, or when Allie’s dad was hitting fly balls to the outfielders.
But Cassie did.
The players who had followed Kathleen weren’t speaking to Cassie, and were doing everything possible to ignore her. They were even keeping eye contact to a minimum. The only time Kathleen and Greta and Allie and the rest of them did make eye contact, it was to see if Cassie was walking toward them, so that they could casually walk in a different direction.
Lizzie was still talking to her. She lived three doors down and had been Cassie’s friend since they were in preschool together. So was Brooke Connors, who had played softball and soccer and basketball with Cassie the longest, until Cassie had played on the boys’ team last winter. But Kathleen and Greta and Allie had also played on Cassie’s teams for a long time. They had all done a lot of winning together. Now, at least in Cassie’s view, they were acting like losers.
“What’s up with this?” Cassie said to Lizzie. “They’re acting like I’m going to play for Moran tonight.”
They were standing behind the Red Sox bench. Kathleen and Greta and Allie, and a new girl on the team this year, Maria Castellanos, had gone down the right-field line to play catch. But Cassie could see them occasionally staring in at her.
Lizzie said, “There was a group chat last night.”
“Were you on it?” Cassie said.
“Everybody on our team was on it,” Lizzie said.
“Except me.”
“You and Sarah.”
“She’s never been on our group chats,” Cassie said. She actually felt a smile coming up out of her. “And you know that I do everything possible to stay off them.”
“This wasn’t our old group chat,” Lizzie said. “This was a new one they started last night.”
“And the point of it was giving me the silent treatment?”
Lizzie said, “Pretty much.”
“Anything else?” Cassie said.
“Yeah,” Lizzie said. “They said that players on our team had to decide whether they were with them, or with you.”
FIFTEEN
What was happening went against everything that Cassie thought about teams and what they were supposed to be about.
Because there were two teams today:
Hers and Kathleen’s.
Like they’d chosen sides for a pickup game.
Except that Cassie had Sarah and Lizzie and Brooke, and Kathleen had everybody else.
But even with all that, even though their team had now splintered like an old wooden baseball bat, they were all supposed to have the same common goal, which meant trying to win the game, trying not to start the season 0–2, trying to keep their eye on the same prize, making it to Fenway Park, getting to play what would feel to them like a softball World Series, getting to play some games on TV. It suddenly seemed to Cassie like a pretty long time ago that they were worried about being the best team in their league, maybe even going undefeated the way they had last summer.
Cassie had always believed that one of the big keys in sports was just getting out of your own way. And even if some of her teammates couldn’t get out of their own way tonight, she wasn’t going to let them get in hers. If they wanted to obsess about stuff that had nothing to do with winning the game, let them. She wasn’t wired that way. She was here to do what she always had: Play her own game and try to win her team’s. That was it and that was all.
She was here to play, not talk.
If Kathleen and Greta and Allie and the rest of them didn’t want to talk to her, their choice. She wasn’t going to push it, or push them. She’d read somewhere once about an old Boston Celtics coach who talked about how different basketball and baseball were, starting with the fact that there were only five players on the court for your team in basketball.
“In baseball,” the coach said, “it doesn’t matter whether the left fielder knows the catcher’s name.”
Cassie didn’t agree with him. She loved being on teams, loved the relationships, hated what was happening with the Red Sox. But she understood what the guy was talking about. Once the game started, she just hoped that everybody would figure it out. If everything was less social than it used to be, well, they were all just going to have to deal.
Do your job, she told herself.
She told Sarah the same thing before they took the field. Brooke was pitching tonight, so Cassie was back at shortstop. Maria was catching. Other than that, their team looked pretty much the same, even though it wasn’t.
“I always try to do my job,” Sarah said.
“I know,” Cassie said.
“I don’t think of it as a job,” Sarah said.
It occurred to Cassie again how literally Sarah could take the simplest comments.
“Well, I’m giving you one job tonight,” Cassie said. “If there is a ball between you and one of the other outfielders, call for it so loudly, they can hear you in Moran.”
“Okay,” Sarah said.
They took the field then, Cassie leading them out the way she always did. When she took her position between second and third, Kathleen ran right past her, not looking at Cassie, not slowing down.
Cassie said to herself, “Go, team.”
Cassie had the feeling that before they went a lot deeper into the season, Sarah was going to become one of their starting pitchers, just having seen her pitch from the mound a few times in practice. And if she could bring it in a game the way she did in practice, it would just make the Red Sox stronger, because Brooke wasn’t just the best catcher they had, she was the best catcher in their league.
Brooke liked being a catcher more, but she was a pretty good softball pitcher, too, and through the early innings she was pitching beautifully, shutting out the Mariners through the third. Cassie’s dad had tweaked their batting order just a little tonight, putting Lizzie at leadoff, following her with Kathleen, then Cassie and Sarah and Greta and Brooke after that. And it worked out right away, bottom of the first. Lizzie singled, Kathleen walked, Cassie doubled home both of them, Sarah singled home Cassie. It was Sarah’s first hit of the season. When she got to first base, it was almost as if she didn’t know what to do with herself, or how to act, until Lizzie’s dad, who was helping out by coaching first tonight, reached over and gave her a low five. From the bench Cassie could only see Sarah’s face in profile. But she thought Sarah was smiling.
Just like that it was 3–0. After the way they’d struggled offensively against Hollis Hills, they’d come out swinging tonight. In the third Brooke helped herself by hitting her first home run of the season and the team’s
first home run.
For these few innings, this season looked an awful lot like last season. It just didn’t sound like last season, especially in the bench area. Everything was just much quieter than it used to be. When Brooke got back to the bench after her home run, only Cassie and Sarah and Lizzie were up to greet her. Before they went back out onto the field for the top of the fourth, Cassie’s dad pulled her aside and said, “Okay, what’s going on here?”
As softly as she could, Cassie said, “Some of my friends have decided to freeze me out. And freeze out anybody who’s still talking to me.”
“C’mon,” he said, “we can’t have that and be a real team.”
“Dad,” Cassie said. “Leave it alone. Or it will become a bigger thing than it already is. And they’ll think I went running to you because they’re being mean to me.”
“But this is ridiculous.”
“I know,” she said. “Let me handle it.”
It made him grin. “Gee,” he said, “never heard that one before.”
The Red Sox kept their lead into the fifth, but barely. Brooke walked the first two batters and then gave up back-to-back screaming doubles, and the 4–0 game was 4–3, in what felt like a blink. The Mariners finally ended up with the bases loaded, but with two outs Cassie dove to her left for a ball hit hard up the middle by the Mariners’ first baseman, somehow gloved the ball cleanly and flipped it to Allie for the final out of the inning.
Usually a play like that, one that saved two runs at least, would have gotten her a high five from Allie. Not today. All Allie did after the infield umpire signaled that the runner at second was out was toss the ump the ball and run off the field. But Allie did get a high five from Greta, waiting for her near first base.
Yeah, Cassie thought, because Allie didn’t drop a perfect toss that a five-year-old could have caught.
Whatever. They were still ahead by a run. That was the important thing. And they stayed ahead by a run through the bottom of the sixth until Cassie tripled home Lizzie, giving them a two-run cushion going into the last inning. Brooke was through for the night by then. She went back behind the plate, Maria went to second, and Allie came in to pitch the top of the seventh. Usually, after she finished her warm-up pitches and the infielders had thrown the ball around, Cassie would bring the ball into the mound and stuff it into Allie’s glove, maybe ask if she had all the runs she needed. She started to do that tonight, then stopped about ten feet from the mound and just tossed Allie the ball underhand, the way she had to end the fifth.
As Cassie ran back to short, she called over to Lizzie and said, “We got this.”
And Lizzie said, “Which ones of us?”
Cassie got into her ready position, hoping what she always did: that somebody would hit a ball to her. Not all of her teammates felt the same way in close games. They’d told her so, at least when they were still talking to her, admitted they never wanted the ball hit to them in a big spot. But Cassie did.
But she didn’t get her chance to pitch the seventh. The first Moran batter, Kelly Wasserman, who’d been the Mariners’ starting pitcher, hit what looked like a routine ground ball to Greta’s right at first base. Not routine. Greta booted it like the soccer player she was.
Cassie thought: Well, maybe we don’t have this after all.
Allie walked the next batter.
First and second, nobody out.
The Mariners were still down two but had a great big inning shaping up, because Allie looked as shaky now as she had in their first game. Cassie took one step toward the mound, and then stopped herself. Usually she’d call time and run over there and give Allie a pep talk. But she wasn’t doing that today, because she didn’t know what would happen when she got to the mound, whether she’d be adding more drama and more pressure to a situation that seemed to have enough already.
Allie managed to strike out the Mariners’ catcher, the girl getting overanxious and swinging at a 3–2 pitch up in her eyes. But the next batter ripped a single to left. Kathleen had no chance for a play at the plate but threw home anyway, the ball sailing over Lizzie’s head when Lizzie set herself up to be the cutoff. Brooke had to run into foul territory to catch the ball, and when she did, both runners advanced.
Second and third now, one-run game, still just one out. Tying run at third, go-ahead run at second.
“Just get an out,” Cassie yelled out from short now, the words just coming out of her. Or the ballplayer coming out of her. Allie was still her teammate, even if she and a lot of her teammates were acting like idiots.
Allie didn’t act as if she’d heard. Cassie didn’t care whether she had or not.
She thought: Get an out.
And keep the runner at third.
Allie got an out. The Mariners’ shortstop swung at a pitch that was too far inside, getting jammed, and badly. She made contact with the ball, hit a soft, looping liner over Allie’s head. Allie had no chance at the ball by the time she got herself turned around. But Cassie read the ball all the way. It still wasn’t an easy play, because she had to come a fair distance from short. She ended up going to her knees to make a sliding catch, her glove pocket-up, what her dad called a basket catch.
Allie had kept the ball in the infield. Kept the runner at third. Two outs now. And all of a sudden this felt like more than just the second game of the season. Cassie knew that the Red Sox getting their first win of the season wasn’t going to change anything except their record, at least not tonight. Wasn’t going to make things any louder around their team. But maybe, she thought, just maybe, if they could get out of this with a win, it could be the start of something. Maybe better days.
The Mariners’ best hitter, Karen Dale, their third baseman, was at the plate. Cassie had been playing against her since they’d both started playing softball. Karen could hit, could field her position, didn’t show off or chirp, and had always played the game right. It had always been big fun competing against her, especially when Cassie was pitching.
Now Cassie just wanted Karen to hit her the ball.
Only, she didn’t.
What she did was hit the first ball she saw from Allie high and deep to center field. You didn’t even have to track the flight of the ball. You could just hear the sound it made coming off Karen’s bat.
All Cassie could do was turn and watch.
This one wasn’t in the gap between Sarah and Kathleen. No, this one was directly over Sarah’s head.
Cassie thought it was gone.
Sarah Milligan clearly didn’t.
Cassie wasn’t sure how Sarah, having been on the team this short a time, knew the things she knew about being a softball player. Maybe you had to be born with some of them. Or all of them. Maybe it was the same for everybody, even if people thought you were different.
In this moment Sarah knew enough to run to the spot where she thought the ball was headed, run with her head down, looking up one time to see where the fence was, knowing that she was about to run out of space. Or time.
At the very last second, maybe ten feet from the sign on the fence that said WALTON MOBIL STATION, she turned back, looked up, and reached up with her glove.
The ball landed in it. And stayed in it, even as Sarah was reaching out with her free hand to stop herself from running into the fence. Sarah didn’t hit the fence hard but still lost her balance enough to end up sitting at the base of the fence.
Kathleen didn’t run over to help her up, or congratulate her. Neither did Ellie Evans, their right fielder in the late innings tonight. Sarah picked herself up, then held her glove aloft to show the umpire who’d come running out from the infield that the ball was still in it.
The woman put her own hand in the air, fist closed, pumping it as she made the out sign.
Ball game.
By now Cassie had gone flying past the ump, running in Sarah’s direction, Lizzie behind her. She reminded herself not to startle Sarah Milligan this time, or even try to high five her.
She just stopped a
few feet away, smiling, and said, “Well, that catch didn’t stink.”
Sarah didn’t seem to know how to respond. She just reached out and handed Cassie the ball, as if she were done with it.
When she and Lizzie and Cassie turned around, they saw all the members of their team who had been on the field for the last play of the game just staring at them, as if they were all frozen in place.
This time it was Sarah Milligan who allowed herself a small smile as she said to Cassie and Lizzie, “Now you guys know how I feel.”
SIXTEEN
Cassie invited Sarah over for lunch the next day, and Sarah accepted.
Cassie wasn’t kidding herself. She didn’t feel as if she and Sarah were getting a lot closer, or becoming friends, at least the way Cassie defined friendship. She wasn’t sure what they were, apart from being teammates. Maybe more like allies. But for now that seemed to be enough for both of them. Maybe it was all Sarah could handle. Another thing Cassie had read about kids with Asperger’s was how hard it was to earn their trust, as they did their best to keep the world at arm’s length.
Sarah rode her bike over. When she got to Cassie’s house, she made a big point of telling Cassie the exact route she’d taken, street by street. Then she explained how she’d be going home, giving Cassie the streets in reverse.
“I’m not sure I could remember that without GPS,” Cassie said.
“I know what GPS is,” Sarah said. “Do people use it when they ride bikes?”
“I was joking.”
“Oh. Right.”
They were up in Cassie’s room after lunch, Cassie on her bed, Sarah in the same chair she’d been in the night she’d come to the house with her parents. But today Cassie noticed her taking in the whole room. The first night here, she’d paid no attention to the big globe in the corner, but today she got up and walked over to it, almost as if drawn to it, and slowly turned it, moving a finger across it, as if she were trying to imagine the route she’d take from Cassie’s house to Europe, or Asia.