The Only Game

by Mike Lupica

  If he had ever done it, it was one secret that he’d kept even from Jack.

  “Pretty great, huh?” Cassie said.

  “I haven’t been here in a long time,” Jack said. “I forgot how awesome the view is.”

  “I come here all the time,” she said. “I tell myself this is our town’s version of Niagara Falls.”

  “That’s what it looked like to me the first time my dad brought me here,” Jack said.

  “I was afraid when my dad brought me here the first time,” Cassie said. “But I got through it.”

  “Shocker.”

  “It’s the only thing you can do when stuff is jamming you up,” she said. “You just gotta figure it out.”

  Jack wanted to tell her that sometimes that was easier said than done. But this wasn’t a day to be jammed up about stuff. It was a day to just enjoy being with this girl. He only wanted to think about that.

  “I don’t bring just anybody here, just so you know,” she said.

  “So I’m not just anybody?”

  She smiled and started to lead him across the bridge.

  “Maybe you are,” she said, “maybe you’re not.”

  SIX

  Jack and Cassie were sitting at the end of the dock a week later, having made their way back to the pond, legs dangling over the side, both of them having tested the water, still too cold to put their feet in, even on a warm afternoon that felt more like summer.

  It was the third time they’d been here like this together, almost like their friendship was settling into a routine.

  Jack knew that today’s practice had already started for the Rays at Highland Park. He mentioned it to Cassie, who said, “I know you think that’s where you should be. But where you’re at right now, with me, is where you belong.”

  “Was it Gus being mean, is that the only reason you stuck up for me the way you did? You were pretty mad.”

  “I don’t even like it when people are mean to each other on TV or in the movies. I’ve never watched that old movie Mean Girls—the title alone bugs me.”

  “Were you worried that people would think you might be coming down too hard on Gus?”

  “I was tough on him. There’s a difference. And he had it coming.”

  Jack popped up now, picked up a stone out of the pile she’d made between them, and went back into her pitching motion.

  This time the stone skipped.

  Not five times.

  But it didn’t die a watery death.

  When he sat back down, he saw her staring at him. “You hate looking bad, don’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Me too.”

  “But I don’t see how I could look any worse right now, not being at practice. That’s something I can’t fix by skipping rocks across a pond, though I wish it were that easy.”

  “Sometimes you sound like you’ve got rocks in your head, Callahan. You gotta stop beating yourself up, or I may have to beat you up.”

  They sat without saying anything for a few minutes, the water in front of them still, the only sound around them from an occasional bird. You couldn’t even hear cars from back here. He could see why Cassie liked it.

  “I told you I don’t know what it’s like to be you, with your brother, I mean,” she said finally. “But I know what it’s like when people are pressuring you to do something you don’t want to.”

  Jack waited.

  Cassie said, “My parents are always trying to get me to do things they think are good for me.”

  “Like in sports?”

  “Sometimes. They made me take tennis lessons, because my mom got it in her head that it was more of a girl sport than softball.”

  She put air quotes around “girl.”

  “And trust me, I could have been good at tennis—and I mean, like, great—but I wasn’t going to open that door. Same as when they made me try figure skating. I just want to play softball.”

  “You’re a ballplayer,” he said, “just like me. Or like I used to be.”

  “Stop,” she said. “But yeah, I’m a ballplayer.”

  “Only now you’re telling me,” Jack said, “that it’s all right for me to not be a ballplayer.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing. Go figure.”

  “But it makes sense to you?”

  “What, you want to have a debate about it?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She laughed. It was a good, loud laugh—nothing in her or about her was ever done quietly.

  Or halfway, as far as Jack could tell.

  “Just so we’re clear,” she said. “If anybody else gives you heat about not playing, you tell me and I’ll take care of it. Or them.”

  “So you want me to tell them there’s this girl I know who will beat them up?”

  She said, “You think I couldn’t?”

  He put his hands up, as if in surrender.

  “I can’t believe we weren’t friends before this,” she said, “even if you are a guy.”

  “Agree.”

  “We really do have that in common, knowing what it’s like to be the star of the team. Most kids don’t. Or they think they want to be the star and don’t know about all that comes with it. People watching every move you make.”

  “Like they are with me now.”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  She turned and put out her hand, straight out, for Jack to shake. “We are officially forming a club,” she said. “Two members only. The Jack and Cassie Club.”

  “I get top billing?”

  “You’ve had a rough week,” she said. “Just throwing you a bone.”

  Jack picked up one more stone out of the pile now, not planning to skip it this time. He pointed out a big old tree on the other side of the water and told Cassie it was his target. He cut loose with all the arm he had and hit it halfway up the trunk, the sound almost like the crack of a bat.

  “They’re right about you,” she said. “You really do have some arm.”

  “Made for baseball.”

  Then he said, “Not gonna lie to you. Even if it only has been a few practices, I miss it already.”

  “Been thinking about that,” she said. “Thinking about how much I’d be missing it if it were me.”

  Hands back on hips.

  “Soooooo,” she said. “If you decide you can’t live without some kind of baseball in your life, you can come help coach my team. Mr. Connors was gonna be the assistant coach, but he told us yesterday he’s gonna be traveling too much this month and next to give the team enough of his time.”

  “You’re joking,” he said. “Me? Coach a girls’ softball team?”

  She tilted her head to the side and said, “I’m going to forget I heard that attitude in your voice.”

  “I just meant you had to be joking about me being a coach,” Jack said.

  “We’ve only been friends for a week,” she said. “But is there some vibe I gave off that makes you think I would ever joke about something as serious as baseball, Callahan?”

  Then she said for him to think about it, they had to get going now, she didn’t want his mom worrying.

  “Look at how much has changed since that day when I took down Gus at lunch,” she said. “Now you’ve got me worrying about you too.”

  They walked back through the woods, and then he walked her to her corner. She asked for his phone and put her number in, checking his contacts to see if there were any As, then putting herself in as Bennett.

  “I like to be first,” she said.

  “I picked up on that,” Jack said.

  Then she was running down her street. Jack watched her and wondered how a week that had started this bad for him could have turned out this good.

  SEVEN

  For a change, neither of his parents brought up baseball or the team or practice or anything at dinner. Jack got the feeling that they’d decided in advance to leave it alone for at least one night.

  Or just give him some room.

  That
had been a big thing in their family after Brad died, how they all needed room to breathe.

  “One foot in front of the other,” his mom kept saying, until it was a month since Brad’s accident and then two, and then they were having their first Christmas without him and had now made it through most of a school year and were moving up on the first anniversary of the night it happened.

  He’d heard his mom about a week ago on the phone, talking to a friend, heard that word—“anniversary”—and his mom then saying, “How can you have an anniversary for something you live with every single day?”

  So they didn’t talk about Brad tonight, or baseball, and Jack chose not to tell them about the way Gus was acting, what had happened with Gus at lunch, him and Gus and then Gus and Cassie.

  They talked about Cassie instead, and his latest trip to the dock with her.

  His mom said, “I didn’t even know the two of you were friends.”

  “Neither did I,” Jack said, “until lately.”

  He almost told them about Cassie’s offer for him to help coach her team, still not sure if she was serious, even though she’d said she never, ever joked about baseball.

  But he kept that to himself. Like Cassie’d said at the pond, he didn’t want to open that door, at least not tonight. So he didn’t put the subject of baseball back on the table.

  “Homework?” his dad said when they were clearing the table.

  “History test tomorrow,” he said. “Woo-hoo.”

  “History was my favorite subject in school,” his dad said.

  “Good, you take the test,” Jack said. “You probably still remember more about the Civil War than I’ll remember first period tomorrow.”

  His dad said, “You’ll be fine. Tests are just another way of keeping score. Seems to me you always do pretty well when somebody’s keeping score.”

  Jack went upstairs to his room and studied for more than an hour. When he was confident he knew as much as he needed to know, he closed the book, happy that history was first period tomorrow. He liked to get tests and quizzes out of the way first thing.

  He thought about seeing if there was a good game on television and decided against it. He didn’t want to watch baseball tonight any more than he’d wanted to talk about it at dinner with his mom and dad.

  He knew they wanted to, of course. Knew how much they wanted him to change his mind, wanted this season to be a happy-making time for all of them, the way it always had been.

  But he couldn’t.

  That was the deal, no matter how much he missed baseball, before the Rays even played their first game.

  “People say there’s other games,” Jack had said to Cassie at Small Falls earlier that day. “But baseball’s the only game.”

  “I know.”

  In his room now, he reached under his bed and pulled out his bat bag.

  He unzipped it and took out the new Easton bat, the one he’d used last week to hit balls all over the field and finally hit one over the wall. Took his stance with it, but only after making sure that he’d locked his bedroom door, not wanting one of his parents, or both, to walk in and see him standing there in the middle of the room, like it was the top of the first of the first game of the season.

  Top of the season.

  Hands high, like his dad had taught him. Bat back, but not too far back. Wide stance but not too wide. The new grip on the bat felt perfect.

  Jack started wondering, How many hits would there have been in this bat this season?

  Then he put the bat down and sat on the bed with his Pedroia glove. A Wilson A2000. He had started last season using another Pedroia, an older model. But this one had been a Christmas present, and Jack had worked it in all winter, tying a ball into the pocket every night, putting it under his mattress, same as his dad had done with his new gloves when he was Jack’s age.

  Later on, watching TV at night, he’d sit there opening and closing it, loosening it up. When it was the first official day of practice a year ago, he was ready to start using it in practice, alternating it with his gamer. Until it became his gamer.

  It had been on his left hand in the championship game when he’d made one of the best stops he’d made in his life, a backhand play in the hole with the bases loaded, making the sidearm throw from his knees to get the runner at third and end the inning and keep the game tied at the time.

  Absently now, sitting there, he began to open it and close it the way he used to.

  In the quiet of his own room, he could hear himself saying what he’d said to Cassie on the dock.

  Only game.

  Then he put his bat away and put his glove away—his gamer—and zipped the bag back up and put it back where it had been under the bed. Like he was tucking baseball away.

  Unlocked the door to his room.

  He took out his phone and went to the top of the list. The Bs.

  Texted Cassie.

  HEY.

  She hit him right back.

  HEY YOURSELF.

  Jack typed.

  GOT A QUESTION.

  He thought he was fast. She was faster. Shocker.

  U GOT QUESTIONS I GOT ANSWERS.

  Jack paused now, staring at the phone in the palm of his left hand, where his Pedroia had just been. He shook his head before he hit her back, amazed at how much he’d already told this girl about himself, how fast he’d come to trust her. How much he wanted to be talking to her right now, more than anyone.

  Even talking to her like this, in what his mom liked to call the “weird shorthand of the modern world.”

  Then he was typing again.

  U SURE IT WILL GET EASIER???

  Her answer:

  I AM SURE!!!!

  Jack smiled. He should have known that Cassie Bennett would even text at the top of her voice.

  SEE YOU AT SCHOOL.

  Neither one of them had any idea that tomorrow at Walton Middle would be as eventful as last week had been.

  More, in fact.

  EIGHT

  They had gym class right before lunch the next day, in the new gymnasium at Walton Middle that was almost as big and fancy as the one at Walton High School, one that Gus had always called Walton Square Garden. Theirs was the middle school version of that.

  That was when things were a lot better and a lot different than they were right now between Jack and Gus. Now a long conversation between them, before a class or in the hall, went something like this:

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  Jack was sure that Gus wouldn’t stay mad. He had never known Gus Morales to stay mad at anybody for very long, even guys on opposing teams. So it was impossible for Jack to believe Gus would continue to act this way with his best friend. How could he be this dug in?

  But he was dug in for now, and everybody in their grade knew it.

  “Don’t let him get to you. That’s what he wants,” Cassie said between their history test and science. “He’s acting like an idiot, and he wants you to act like an idiot.”

  Jack said, “He wants to be mad right now more than he wants the two of us to figure it out.”

  “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other,” Cassie said.

  Jack’s head whipped around. “What did you just say?”

  “It’s something my mom says when she has a lot going on and starts to get stressed,” Cassie said. “Why?”

  “That’s something my mom says.”

  Cassie leaned close to him and whispered in his ear. “Moms,” she said. “It’s like some weird cult.”

  It was time for gym class now, for the seventh-grade boys. Their teacher, Mr. Archey, was always looking for different ways to make the class fun. Maybe it was so they wouldn’t notice how hard he was working them with his drills, or how tired they usually were when class was over.

  But no matter how hard he did work them, their hour with him was the part of the school day Jack most looked forward to. It was all loud and competitive, even when they were just competing ag
ainst themselves and the clock.

  Most guys looked forward to it, but not all of them.

  On their way from the boys’ locker room, Teddy Madden said, “The Teddy Bear hour . . . about to begin!”

  “Guys don’t call you that all the time,” Jack said.

  “You just don’t hear it the way I do,” Teddy said. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t anymore.”

  “Just keep doing your best,” Jack said. “Nobody can bust on you as long as you keep doing your best.”

  “Thanks, Coach,” Teddy said.

  “I bet you’re a better athlete than you give yourself credit for,” Jack said.

  “You mean for somebody who’s in worse shape than anybody in the whole school?”

  Jack grinned. “You are not in worse shape than Mr. Cardwell.”

  Mr. Cardwell was the assistant principal and the size of a school bus. Gus once joked that when he got on a scale, the scale would say, “Hey, one at a time!”

  “I meant students,” Teddy said.

  “Can I tell you something? You just need to get into better shape.”

  “Can I tell you something?” Teddy said. “The worst part of my day starts when I get into my gym clothes.”

  “C’mon, we just need to run that bad attitude right out of you.”

  “Are you kidding?” Teddy said. “I’m running right now, you just can’t tell.”

  Jack had never realized how funny Teddy was. It felt like a welcome change today, going back and forth with him like this, just goofing around, especially now that Gus had put up a no-fun force field. Jack started to think that maybe he should be spending more time with Teddy Madden, who didn’t seem to take himself too seriously, even if he refused to take sports seriously either.

  Teddy was an interesting guy, not just some overweight clown. Jack wondered if he really could get healthier if he wasn’t so down on himself about sports. He was overweight, no getting around that. But Jack could see that was at least partly because of the way he was built. He was never going to get skinny, even if he started working out now and didn’t stop until they graduated from high school.