Gabby Garcia's Ultimate Playbook

by Iva-Marie Palmer

  “So?” I said. The words had had enough time to wash over them.

  “It’s definitely a poem!” Molly said, and I hoped she wasn’t threatened by my talent or interesting words or creativity in being the ball. “Let’s hear it for Gabby.”

  The table clapped for me, and I imagined their applause multiplied by at least 100. I imagined the internet breaking as people tried to vote for me.

  This was going to be so great!

  I took a little bow, because I’d earned it.

  WINS: 8

  (five in a row—total streak territory!)

  LOSSES: 8 (I’m .500 again!)

  REHEARSAL RHYMING

  Goal: WIN the talent showcase!!!

  Action: Practice, practice, practice.

  Post-Day Analysis:

  May 15

  In sports movies, a lot of times there’s a montage of people training to get ready for a big game, and now, with the talent showcase officially less than a week away, all our individual time working was coming together in a practice run of our talent show lineup.

  The field hockey team had—no surprise—not made the playoffs, so from here on out, we’d be working on the showcase.

  THINGS LESS SURPRISING THAN THE PIPER BELL FIELD HOCKEY TEAM NOT MAKING THE PLAYOFFS

  •The earth remaining round

  •The sky being blue

  •The night being dark

  •Baby sloths being adorable

  Coach Raddock was more pepped up than I’d ever seen her as she told us about how the showcase would work.

  “Okay, squad! We have our lineup set. For the show, you’ll each perform your act. Five minutes per! Max! Otherwise, people at home start getting restless. And we want them to vote! And they will!” She was not Calm Yoga Coach anymore. She was Go-Get-’Em Coach now. “The Preteen Talent Showcase website will be live-streaming everyone’s act, from our school and the competing schools. We’ll have a monitor backstage so we can watch our votes add up.”

  Our region had four competitors, and voters at home would be able to select and flip between the streams to award points per act. So it was really all about stage presence.

  “If you’ve got their attention, you’ll probably get their votes,” Coach Raddock said. “And we have some big personalities, so I’m not too worried.” She smiled at me when she said that last part.

  She, unlike Coach Hollylighter, appreciates my big personality!

  I wasn’t nervous about this at all. Years on the mound had given me confidence when it came to being out in front of lots of people. I wondered if my teammates were up for it. I hoped they were better at being onstage than they were at the field hockey pitch.

  But, it turned out, I had nothing to worry about!

  So, to go back to what I started with, we were entering the training montage part of our ramp-up to the showcase. In movies, especially sports ones or anything where people are preparing for a big event, there is always a great song and lots of scenes where everyone has a ton of energy and they look unstoppable and THEY ARE THE MOST EXCITING SCENES because even if things are a little predictable, those scenes are the part of the movie when I think, “THEY’RE GONNA WIN!”

  Even if that’s not always the case, I love a montage.

  BEST MOVIE TRAINING MONTAGES EVER

  •Rocky

  •Major League

  •The Karate Kid

  •Mulan

  •Matilda

  •Pitch Perfect

  Our montage went something like this:

  Molly brings us to tears reading a sad scene from her book! Marilyn lights up the stage—almost literally—with her terrifying but actually educational chemical reaction demonstration. (Yes, she does almost set herself on fire, but it’s exciting.) Arlo makes such a great case for why twelve-year-olds should get to vote that I wish he were running for president! Colin’s tap routine makes my heart do a little dance along with his rhythm. Dominic projects giant photos across a screen and I feel like I could step inside each one! Grace spray-paints a mural as Sophia does half-pipe skateboard flips in midair. And then Katy practically bursts off the stage with her dancers and we’re all singing along to “See the Day.” And Lisa Clover . . . well, she makes a rabbit float! It’s impressive.

  And, somewhere in there, I read my poem and felt 100 percent certain . . .

  We had talent!

  So much!

  “That was a great rehearsal, gang!” Coach Raddock said. “And, Gabby, how lucky we are to have you!”

  “You’re our good luck charm, G!” Katy said, with a hug.

  Yup, a good luck charm. Not a JINX!

  NEW YORK, GET READY FOR GABBY GARCIA!

  WIN! WIN! WIN!

  WINS: 9

  LOSSES: 8

  (hey, hey, hey, good-bye LOSING STREAK!)

  THINGS I’M GOING TO DO WHEN OUR TALENT SQUAD GOES TO NEW YORK

  •Rent a paddleboat in Central Park

  •Visit all the museums and feel my brain expand three sizes

  •Eat pizza in Little Italy

  •Smile and wave at everyone I see, because I bet New Yorkers aren’t THAT rude

  •Go to the top of the Empire State building and look for Yankee Stadium

  •Eat a lot of hot dogs from carts

  •Eat a hot dog at Yankee Stadium

  •Eat a hot dog at Citi Field

  •Eat a baseball-helmet sundae at Yankee Stadium

  •Eat a baseball-helmet sundae at Citi Field

  •See a Broadway show

  •Actually, scratch the Broadway show in favor of more baseball games

  •Probably get another hot dog . . .

  •At a baseball game

  THAT’S THE WAY THE MUFFIN CRUMBLES

  Goal: Feel completely at ease with my decision to leave the playoff-bound baseball team.

  Action: Prove to myself that I’m in the right place by assisting the talent squad as we raise money for our showcase.

  Post-Day Analysis:

  May 20

  I’m sick in my bed, writing this, which shows how it all went.

  Not well.

  I thought, I really thought, that if I just put my Gabby-Garcia-all into being on the field hockey team, or the talent squad, and into being a poet, and if we could win the showcase and go to New York and be on TV and everything that went with that . . . well, I thought I would feel like a winner again.

  But today I figured something out: it was never just about winning. It was about being on the baseball team. It was about being a baseball player.

  This is how I figured it out. Not that there’s anything I can do about it now.

  Today, the talent squad had to sell things in the school cafeteria. Just a little fund-raiser to pay for our banner that would hang during the showcase. We were selling gluten-free health muffins.

  THINGS TO SELL TO MIDDLE SCHOOLERS IF YOU REALLY DON’T WANT TO RAISE MONEY

  •Socks freshly removed from the feet of your uncle who plays squash

  •Pickled beets in Ziploc bags

  •Bonus visits to the dentist

  •Itchy dress-up clothing grandmas think is “darling”

  •Gluten-free “health muffins”

  THINGS TO SELL TO MIDDLE SCHOOLERS IF YOU REALLY DO WANT TO RAISE MONEY

  •Custom-created ice cream cookie sandwiches

  And, yup, that was what the baseball team was selling at the table next to ours. Our table with health muffins.

  I was so angry. And sad. And hungry for an ice cream cookie sandwich.

  I’d just started to feel really good about my choice to be part of the talent squad, and now this happened!

  Devon, Mario, Bobby, and Madeleine—who still eyeballed me like I might just come running at her nose with a hammer—were behind their table. “Be Sweet! Help Us Get Playoff Ready!” was written on the sign they’d made. Johnny was helping the team give change to all its customers. He seemed to be avoiding eye contact with me as much as I was with him.
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br />   But I was trying to avoid it with everyone. Because there we were—me, Katy, Molly, and Arlo—working a table with a sign painted by Grace Chang that said “Our Goodness Depends on Your Goodness!” It looked beautiful, but it wasn’t very clear what it meant.

  And, of course, no one wanted a HEALTH MUFFIN, goodness or not. Molly and her mom had made them and each one seemed to weigh twelve pounds. Not good, muffin-y pounds. More like someone had poured sand into a muffin tin and sprinkled it with rocks.

  Meanwhile, the baseball team’s ice cream cookie sandwiches were custom-made—you chose your cookies and the flavor of ice cream you wanted. And then they bundled it in a little bag with the Penguin baseball logo on it so that it wouldn’t drip on your hands. They were melty, dreamy goodness. Almost ice-cream-sundae-in-a-little-helmet caliber.

  “Whoa, Gaggy, you really took some steps down in the world,” Mario said as I tried to use ESP to lure people away from the baseball team’s never-ending cookie line. The only kids in our line were a few members of the Ecology Club and some of Katy’s fans, who were only buying cookies out of true devotion to her.

  “Mario, you don’t have to be a jerk,” Devon said, and caught my eye. I looked away from her. I didn’t want to jinx the cookie creations, even if I kind of did. And I definitely didn’t want Devon’s pity.

  Let her be a winner. I was a good luck charm. And a poet. And not a jinx. I told myself these things, in my head, on repeat.

  Still, my stomach was aching again. And I hadn’t even eaten one of the muffins. It was just, seeing our food side by side with the baseball team’s food made me feel like maybe I’d made the wrong choice, that I wasn’t getting my winning streak back after all.

  But it wasn’t even that.

  Devon was oiling her mitt. Baseball mitts need to be oiled so they stay nice and bendy for wrapping around a ball. I missed the smell of that oil. Even though I’d been wearing my mitt while I wrote, I hadn’t been oiling it. I’d been neglecting my mitt.

  They’d decorated their table with a baseball bat laid horizontally and two brand-new baseballs on each side of it, and I wanted to pick up one of the balls to feel the red stitches along its seams.

  Then I saw a grass stain on the back of Mario’s jersey. And I’d gotten plenty of grass stains on my clothes during field hockey, but this was a BASEBALL FIELD grass stain. Why did Mario get to have a grass stain and I didn’t?

  And, okay, the ice cream cookies looked delicious compared to the muffins. The ice cream cookies were the dessert I’d have chosen. (Okay, so everyone would have.) But still . . .

  They were just desserts, but all the poetry I’d been reading had started to make me feel like this was symbolic. And then my stomach clenched up and I started to breathe too quick and I just wanted to get out of there.

  “I, um, gotta go. To the nurse’s office.”

  “Are you okay, G? You look kinda green,” Katy said, putting a friendly hand on my shoulder.

  I felt kind of green. With envy.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said, not knowing if it was true.

  And I ran out of the cafeteria.

  In the hall, Johnny caught up with me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I lied, again. I was lying all over the place.

  “It’s not a big deal if you don’t sell many muffins,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll still have a talent show.”

  He wasn’t getting it. But why would he? I’d told him I’d made the right choice. I’d been lying to everyone.

  “Look, you don’t have to be so nice to me,” I snapped. “You should get back to the baseball team, where you belong.” And I don’t, I thought.

  “You could probably still come back,” Johnny said. But I was already walking away from him. From baseball. Where I belonged, too.

  It sounded perfect. And so simple. I was meant to play baseball; why would I not? It wasn’t even about the winning. I just wanted to PLAY. Baseball. Even if I had to ride the bench most of the time, I wanted to be there. Losing at baseball would be better than winning at poetry. I wished I’d realized it sooner. But besides the fact the team didn’t want me, I had a team that did. Full of friends who’d probably be disappointed if I just gave up on them now. So didn’t I belong there even more?

  I started this playbook because I really believed you could turn anything into a win if you thought about it the right way. For maybe the first time in my life, I couldn’t even see a way to turn this into a win.

  Win. That word again. Was I winning?

  The nurse called my dad and I went home from school early. I barely got out the fake “I’ll be fine” when my dad asked what was the matter.

  I’ve been lying in bed since then.

  And I’ve turned down all the things that usually cheer me up—pitching practice with my dad, watching the Braves game, chatting online with Diego, talking to Louie in her office—none of them sounded good at all.

  The only good news is, lying around in bed feeling like I’m having a crisis feels very poet-like. I know I have to rally. I can’t go back to the baseball team. Those days are long behind me. But if the talent squad doesn’t win, then everything I’ve done will have been for nothing.

  It almost makes me wish I’d never experienced such an amazing win streak, because no matter what I do, I don’t feel like I’ll ever quite get it back. And even if I am getting it back, is it the WRONG win streak?

  WINS: 9

  LOSSES: 8

  CONFUSING CONUNDRUMS THAT MAKE ME QUESTION EVERYTHING: 1

  (feels like more, though)

  REPLAY: DON’T-MAKE-PLANS PLAY

  Post-Day Analysis:

  May 24

  This is another surprise play. Or just a surprise.

  I’ve tried to keep my playbook about strategy and goals, but maybe by recording some of the surprises, I’ll learn from them in the future. I can only hope, anyway.

  There I was, minding my own business in algebra. Like really minding it. There were only a few more weeks of school left, so I needed good grades and I needed to just, maybe, get this year over with. I wanted to be excited so I was trying my best to do that. But I’d been in crisis mode since the fund-raiser and doubting everything. I knew what I wanted to do—play baseball. But I also knew what I didn’t want to do. (Disappoint the talent squad.)

  I wanted a sign.

  Instead, I got a note. It was definitely for me, because my name was right on the front of it. In really lousy handwriting.

  I looked around, wondering who might have passed it to me. My first thought was Johnny, who I was still avoiding. Maybe he was apologizing. It was possible, even though I knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d just been echoing that little voice in my head that told me I never should have left baseball. Even for the potential glory of winning the talent show.

  But when I turned behind me to look at him, his head was bent over his book.

  And then I saw Devon, with her arm all slinged up. “Read it,” she mouthed, pointing at the note.

  I unfolded it. She must have written it with her bum arm because the handwriting was super-wobbly and she’d only fit about four words on each line.

  My first thought was, it was almost like a poem. A really weird poem by a robot or something, but still a poem.

  Second thought? Whoa.

  It was kind of what I wanted to happen all along. Not the part where Devon sprained her arm. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Especially scooping ice cream. How did THAT happen?

  But I had wanted the team to come to me, to say it needed me and my winning ability. And here it was.

  Plus, Coach signed off? How did that happen?

  I spent the rest of algebra feeling very antsy.

  Because I wanted to hear what Coach had said about me. Did she admit she was wrong about me all along? Was it a dramatic moment for her?

  Because the game is Saturday. The talent showcase is also Saturday!

  Because I could do a lot of things but I couldn�
��t be in two places at once.

  Finally, the bell rang, signaling the end of class, and I almost jumped out of my chair. Actually, I kind of did and smashed right into Johnny Madden, sending his books and mine flying everywhere.

  “Careful,” he said. “Or you’ll sprain your arm, too.”

  It took me a second to realize he was talking about Devon’s arm and also expressing concern for mine.

  “What?”

  “To pitch. No, never mind. Just talk to Devon.”

  Did he have something to do with this? Probably. But he was being strange. Everything was strange.

  He picked up his things and hurried out the door. I jogged to catch up with Devon, who was already in the hall.

  “I got your note,” I told her.

  “I know,” she said, with several blinks and a look like she didn’t have time for me. Even though she wrote the note. “I saw you read it.”

  Devon and I didn’t exactly have that rapport thing yet. Maybe we wouldn’t ever.

  “Are you gonna do it?” she asked me. “You’d better say yes. It’s the playoffs.”

  I took a deep breath. OF COURSE I wanted to do it! But I had the talent showcase. And, if we won, New York. But who knew if we’d win? I had no idea what we were up against.

  Bob: Wow, this is big, Judy! Big! Who’d have thought the baseball team would come to Gabby, after all her struggles to find her place with them? She must love this!

  Judy: But she has a place, Bob! The talent squad! She can’t let them down.

  Bob: But Gabby is baseball. Baseball IS Gabby.

  They were both right. And it was killing me.

  “I thought you thought I was a jinx,” I said.

  Devon stopped blinking to roll her eyes. “Whatever. I was being a jerk. I was angry.” She didn’t say more and I didn’t ask. Because I knew I had been a different kind of jerk by quitting the team so quickly. I had wanted to be the most important, most valuable, most EVERYTHING on the Penguins from the second I stepped on the field, and I’d let it get in the way of being true to myself. I’d been so focused on getting back the perfect life that I hadn’t stopped to wonder if it was the RIGHT life.