Gabby Garcia's Ultimate Playbook

by Iva-Marie Palmer

  Devon sighed and looked irritated. “He said you wouldn’t be sure,” she said.

  “Who said that?”

  “Johnny. It was his idea. After I sprained my arm, he told Coach Hollylighter you were our best chance to win the playoff game. He said you just needed the right encouragement.”

  It was a metaphor of the first degree because the news hit me like a ton of bricks.

  Oh, wait, that was a simile.

  I didn’t totally understand why Johnny seemed to be my biggest fan after knowing me for such a short time period, but the why wasn’t important. He’d been pulling for me for a while now. And also nagging me, but it wasn’t like he was wrong. I DID miss baseball.

  “And Coach Hollylighter was excited about the idea?”

  “As excited as she gets,” Devon said with a smirk. “She pretends to be all business but she likes to win. So do I.”

  I guessed Coach Hollylighter and Devon and I had that in common.

  I didn’t really know what to say to any of this, but when I closed my eyes, I saw myself . . . on the mound, folding my glove in and out, waiting to throw the first pitch of the game. Not at the talent show.

  Nope. I wanted to be back in the game. A big game. Gosh, any game.

  The squad had been good before I came along. They’d be good without me. And wouldn’t Piper Bell herself want me to pursue my true talent? My true love?

  “You know you want to say yes,” Devon said, reading my mind.

  So I did. And I couldn’t wait for the game. But that didn’t make anything else easier. The talent squad had become my friends, and I was going to let them down. We have rehearsal in just under an hour. (I’m sweatily writing this in the empty atrium, but I think I’m sweating for other reasons.)

  This was definitely a no-win scenario.

  THE EXTRACTION

  Goal: Quit the talent show. By telling the truth.

  Action: Make the announcement at the exact right time so that it causes the least damage to the team/squad.

  Post-Day Analysis

  May 24, Part Two

  TIMING.

  IS.

  EVERYTHING.

  Especially when it comes to bad things. Or that’s what I was telling myself. Not that being in the game was a bad thing: it was the right thing. It was the being-true-to-me thing. But that didn’t make quitting the talent show any easier.

  In baseball, when you have to pull a player from the roster—for an injury or a family crisis or a case of the yips—you usually have someone else on the roster to substitute for them. In the case of the talent show, there was no one to sub for me—and I was the good luck charm. If I lost my good luck charm before a big game, I’d be really freaked out.

  But I’d also rather learn that a great player or my coach was going to be out of the game right before the game—or as close to right before the game as possible—because the less time I had to think about it, the less time I would have to worry about it.

  LESS WORRY = BETTER.

  Which works, because there is only one night before the talent showcase and the playoff game. At Coach Hollylighter’s office, I poked my head in the door.

  “Coach Hollylighter?”

  She looked up from her own playbook, where I could see she was making a lineup for Saturday.

  I saw my name next to the words “Starting Pitcher” and my heart leapt around happily. Imagining taking the mound again made me think of a thousand poems, all at once.

  But I tried to act casual. I was afraid of seeming like I had a big ego or bad rapport or whatever else Coach Hollylighter worried I might have. I also felt really guilty for how happy I was. I was counting on the talent squad to understand.

  “Hi, Gabby, good to see you,” she said, and smiled.

  It threw me. It wasn’t like she’d ever been happy to see me before.

  “Hi, I’m, um, playing Saturday. I’m here for my uniform.”

  She pointed to a chair where a uniform was folded up. “That’s the same size as your old one,” she said. As I picked it up, she added, “So did you work everything out with your talent squad? They understand?”

  Gulp.

  “Yup!” I said. “All taken care of.”

  “That’s great. You wouldn’t want it hanging over your head before the game. Or at all, really. It’s considerate you told them right away.”

  Ugh. More guilt rumbled in my belly. I took my uniform and thanked her, trying not to show how anxious I was about this.

  By the time I got to rehearsal, the lump in my throat was about the size of a baseball. The woozy feeling in my stomach was worse than ever.

  “G, you’re here! I was all, ‘We can’t start without our good luck charm,’ and then you show up!” Katy shouted from the stage.

  Everyone said hi to me in a chorus and then Coach Raddock even came up to me and added, “How amazing is it that if it hadn’t been for that day in algebra, none of this would have happened? It’s such great fate.”

  Oh no. All their happiness was just making it worse.

  Coach Raddock called everyone to order and we took places backstage, waiting to rehearse our numbers. Maybe I could just practice this one last time and THEN tell them?

  But suddenly I just blurted it out.

  “Um, I won’t be here tomorrow . . .” I said it fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid, except it was like when a little piece of the scab comes off with it and starts to bleed again.

  “Wait . . . what?” Katy asked. Her voice was loud and sharp and she spun around to look at me. “You won’t be here? And you’re just telling us now? You don’t look like you’re dying. So what’s the deal?”

  Everyone looked at me. None of them looked happy anymore.

  “It’s complicated. It’s, well, I’m a baseball player and the team needs me to pitch. For the playoff game,” I said. “Their best pitcher hurt her arm and pitching is kind of my thing—my real thing—and . . .”

  “Wait, so you’re going to bail on us for the baseball team?” Molly asked, sounding more hurt than angry. She trailed off as an “aha!” look sprang to her face. “We should have known after that poem! You’re in love with baseball. Not poetry. No wonder you were all teary-eyed reading it! You lied and now you’re BAILING on us.”

  This was all going even worse than I imagined. “Yes. But not bail. I mean, it’s just that the game is the same time as the talent showcase and I just can’t be both places at once. And I didn’t lie . . . I just—I was trying something new.”

  “You lied. Plus, instead of sticking with the team you’ve been on for the past month, you chose the baseball team,” Sophia said. “Total bailfest.”

  “Wow. This is cuh-lassic. Who does that? Just ditches her friends? Or maybe we’re not her friends. NOT. AT. ALL,” Katy said. “I wanna be a star, too. We all do. But, what, you just leave because you can be a bigger star there? The baseball team can have you. I mean, until someone better comes along.”

  She stormed off and I thought the worst was over until I saw Molly’s face. Her angry, angry face.

  “Whatever, guys, let’s just let Gabby go,” she said. “I mean, isn’t she kind of the weakest link anyway?”

  Molly said that. Molly, who seemed like a big sister to me.

  “What? I thought you liked my poem.” My voice was little. Katy had stopped walking and was looking at me again.

  From across the stage, she said, “Yeah, I called you the good luck charm to be nice. Anyone who listens knows you’re not much of a poet. I mean, ‘Life’s a Ball’? I’ve read better grocery lists.”

  “Team, let’s not be so unkind,” Coach Raddock said, even though her eyes looked disappointed, too.

  “I wanted to be part of the talent showcase,” I said. “I never really wrote poems before. But I really was trying.”

  “Why would you lie?” Marilyn asked, her eyes widening.

  “I was on a win streak at my old school because before I came here I played baseball and I was good and then he
re I was a Luther Polluter and I was a jinx on the baseball team and then I met you guys and the talent showcase sounded so great like I could get my life back on track and win something great and . . .” I trailed off, out of breath, because I knew whatever I said wasn’t going to make things better. Sometimes I can read the way a game is going to go and know when there’s no saving it. But still, in a soft voice, I added, “And baseball is just my thing . . . my real thing.”

  But no one heard me, or they didn’t care.

  “Come on, guys, Gabby probably needs to get back to her REAL team,” Katy said. “We were just temporary friends on her brief losing streak.”

  And I almost said, “They’re not my team! You are!”

  But the truth is, I didn’t know if I was ever on either team, not all the way.

  And I did want a win. I wanted everything to make sense again and to know I was in the right place, doing everything just perfect.

  This did not feel perfect.

  As everyone turned their backs on me, I tried to remember that I had turned my back on them first.

  Then it got worse.

  Dad picked me up from school. I was about to tell him how awful the last hour had been when he said, “The Collinses had to take Dumpster to the hospital today. He started retching this morning and was still sick around lunchtime. He’s at the vet’s.”

  Uh-oh. I tried to think of what I gave Dumpster to eat this morning, but I couldn’t see why it would have made him sick. It was chicken mole from last night. It didn’t smell funny or anything.

  Then Dad added: “The interesting thing was, they said that it looked like Dumpster had eaten some mole sauce, like we had for dinner last night. There’s cocoa in it. Dogs shouldn’t have it.”

  We were at a stoplight and Dad turned to look at me and it was clear he knew THE UGLY TRUTH.

  “Where would a dog get mole sauce? I didn’t throw away our leftovers,” he said. “They were in your lunch.”

  I was quiet.

  “How many lunches have you fed to Dumpster?”

  “Um . . . ,” I started to answer.

  “This is why we keep running out of peanut butter and turkey so fast, isn’t it?” My dad hit the steering wheel. “I thought Peter was having a growth spurt.”

  “I . . .” There was absolutely nothing good to say to this.

  “Gabby, was my food embarrassing you?”

  “No,” I said. My voice was little and thin; the voice I got when I lied. Dad knew the voice. And he knew better than to believe it.

  He was really quiet. I was really quiet.

  So I whispered a tiny “I’m sorry,” but Dad was looking straight ahead.

  “I try hard to make you feel like you can tell me anything,” he said, eyes still on the road.

  I didn’t know what to say, but I knew he was right. I’d always told my dad and Louie everything. I thought about what Diego had said when I started going to Piper Bell and wanted the baseball team to come to me, how sometimes it was okay to ask for things, or to admit what you wanted. I hadn’t wanted to ask Dad for new lunches because I worried about making a problem, and solving the problem on my own had seemed like what a winner would do. But I was learning in too many ways that I didn’t have all the answers.

  I think it’s time to stop tallying wins and losses now. I just want to feel like me again.

  SEVENTH-INNING STRETCH

  No, I haven’t skipped anything.

  This seventh-inning stretch is a METAPHOR.

  (I guess I have learned something from my poet days. Days that seem so far behind me now that I almost expect to see them turn up again on the horizon. Even though they were just earlier today. Also, yikes, that is bad. Maybe I am a bad poet.)

  But with the seventh-inning-stretch thing, I’m totally on base.

  Casual fans, the kind of people who want their team to win, sure, but who won’t be knocked out if they lose—well, they think the seventh-inning stretch is fun. Everyone gets up and sings and sways and the song mentions peanuts and everything! Peanuts are fun, right? (Except for people who are allergic, in which case, not fun.)

  But to me, if my team is the losing team—and especially when I’m losing and playing at HOME—the seventh-inning stretch is nothing more than long minutes of torture set to a cheerful song.

  There’s even a line in it, “ROOT, ROOT, ROOT FOR THE HOME TEAM / IF THEY DON’T WIN IT’S A SHAME.”

  But if I’m the home team, down several runs and having a thousand or so people singing that? (Or even a hundred or so? Or twelve?) That I’m going to be a SHAME for losing? Yeah, it stinks.

  So, if I’m the home team right now—and I am, it’s my playbook—this is the seventh-inning stretch . . .

  And I’m LOSING BIG TIME.

  It is a shame.

  Everything is my fault.

  I have no friends left.

  I’m to blame for my neighbor’s sick dog.

  I have a dad who thinks he can’t really trust me to tell him stuff. And that I’m embarrassed of him.

  And maybe I’m going to be pitching in a baseball game soon, as a starter, in a big game, and that’s what I wanted from the beginning, but with all this other stuff around it, I’m really worried. It’s not even a yips kind of worried. It’s a worse, sick feeling that’s burrowed in my stomach and that makes me want to hide under my covers forever.

  But tomorrow’s game could cost the Penguins their whole season.

  And it’s already cost me my friends.

  So everyone else can go ahead and sing and eat peanuts but I need to figure something out, and fast.

  THE PICKING-UP-THE-PIECES

  Goal: Fix EVERYTHING.

  Action: Do EVERYTHING.

  Post-Day Analysis

  May 24, Part Three (Late Edition)

  I did hide under my covers for a few minutes, clutching this playbook, hoping for the right ideas. I let my mind wander. And of course, it wandered onto a ball field.

  In baseball, when all hope was lost for me on the mound (and it didn’t happen often but it had happened), I knew that a reliever could come in and—hopefully—reverse the bad.

  It was called a save.

  I really needed a save now.

  The problem with life versus baseball is, I can’t just have someone take over for me when things are awful.

  Darn, why couldn’t life be like baseball?

  HOW LIFE WOULD BE BETTER IF IT WERE LIKE BASEBALL

  •People to cheer for you when things were going well

  •People to cheer for you when things were not going well

  •Cool furry mascots to pep you up, no matter what was going on

  •Rain delays to put things on hold when conditions weren’t great

  •Relievers to take over for you when you had an off day

  •Mostly, rules that made sense ALL THE TIME

  The only one who can save me is me. But a better me, who won’t make the same mistakes.

  Hmm. A BETTER ME WHO WON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES . . . How can I do everything while also being just one person? Maybe be the better me?

  Bob: Judy, I think Gabby is onto something here.

  Judy: Bob, she’s so close. I think she can save things.

  Bob: It’s going to take a lot of work.

  Judy: Work, yes. Plus inner strength, and a lot of apologizing.

  Bob: She doesn’t have much time!

  So wait, maybe I do have a reliever . . . and it’s me?

  As Bob and Judy hashed things out in my head, my little Gabbys were a disorganized mess, jumping around under my skin, trying to decide what to do first. Mostly, they were just crashing into each other, making me a sweaty mess.

  It was my body’s way of telling me that I could only do one thing at a time.

  Sigh.

  But I can be the better me. I’d been so focused on getting a win FOR ME, and doing everything just right FOR ME, that I forgot there was a whole TEAM to consider. Not just my talent show team. But
everyone I’d sort of ignored or overlooked because I’d been so concerned with getting MY LIFE PERFECT.

  It was like Johnny had said (and he was one of the people I’d ignored): if you’re actually playing the game, there are no perfect seasons. And maybe no perfect lives. Just good ones where everyone you knew wasn’t mad at you. And where you didn’t worry about being perfect but about being true to yourself. ’Cause what was the point of being perfect if everything you did was for some fake version of yourself? Fake perfect wasn’t worth it.

  Okay, what would better me do? I was trying to answer that when Diego called. So I got derailed as I unraveled the whole story for him, but he understood (because he’s my best friend) and did say one thing that made sense: “You have to start at home.” Just like in baseball? Get it?

  So, yup, first I needed to patch things up with my dad.

  I didn’t really know what I could do besides apologize again.

  It wasn’t an exciting play but it was the right one.

  My dad was in the kitchen, making dinner. But not the way he usually made dinner, where the counters were an explosion of spices and bowls and creative chaos and music or a ball game playing in the background.

  It was quiet as he opened the oven and slid in a dish of enchiladas. He looked sad and not like himself. It was my fault.

  I sat at the counter in the same stool where I always sit when we’re having a talk. I waited for him to look up.

  When he finally did, I said, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  It wasn’t enough at all. It was like a pitch that doesn’t even reach the plate. Saves-the-Day Gabby didn’t have the tricks up her sleeve that I needed.

  But then my dad surprised me.

  “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have been paying more attention. I knew something was up when you left the baseball team. Have you been having a hard time at Piper Bell?”

  I thought about this, and the answer—at least for the past few weeks, since I joined up with the field hockey team/talent squad—was more or less no.