Out of Left Field

by Kris Hui Lee

  I let Prescott have the last word.

  I’ll just pray extra hard that his team loses at state.

  • • •

  Turns out, I don’t need to wait long for a reckoning.

  As we’re about to load the bus, Prescott and a couple of his buddies pass by. I hope they keep walking and let the hostilities of the evening die, but they stop, smirking like they’ve won the World Series.

  “Always next year, right, fellas?” Prescott says. “And hey, some advice: putting a pretty girl on your team as a distraction is a cheap way to try and win a game.” He smiles at me. “But, for the record, you are very pretty, and if you’re ever lonely…” He gestures at himself. Then he winks and heads toward the Charing East bus with his friends.

  “Fuck him,” Carrot says.

  I shake my head and start getting out the bus. But then I hear Cody go, “Joey, don’t—”

  I turn around and see Joey marching after Prescott. “Hey, douche face!”

  For some reason, Prescott responds to this name. He turns around, and Joey’s fist sinks right into his face.

  “Oh my God, Joey!” a bunch of us shout, running over.

  “Did the big, mean baseball player hurt your fucking face?” Joey shouts at Prescott, who’s now kneeling on the ground, blood pouring out of his nose.

  “Dude, get Coach!” one of Prescott’s friends shouts. “Get him fucking expelled!”

  “Don’t!” Prescott commands as he puts pressure on his nose.

  “Why?” his friend cries.

  “Because he doesn’t wanna admit that he got decked in the face ’cause he’s a dumb ass,” Joey answers.

  Prescott glares at him through his bloodied hand, but it’s clear that Joey is right.

  As Prescott gets to his feet and storms away, his friends follow like ducklings. We retreat to our bus.

  Chizz arrives moments too late, but he knows something’s up. He asks Joey, who stays behind to…lie? Tell the truth? Who knows with him.

  I watch out the window from my seat as Chizz starts going off on Joey. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but it’s obvious his words are admonishing.

  When Joey gets on the bus, I stare at him with awe.

  “Keep your pants on,” he says to me. “I didn’t do it for you.”

  He goes to the back of the bus. Outside, Prescott, with his nose pinched between two of his fingers, is getting tissues from their bus driver. Chizz comes toward our bus.

  I look over the back of my seat. Joey is opening a bag of Doritos. He looks up, and our gazes meet.

  All it takes is that one moment of eye contact to know that, yeah, he did it for me.

  22

  The bus ride back to school is a somber one.

  We’re all sitting bunched in the middle rows with none of the pregame excitement. All I want is to be home, in bed, making temporal distance from tonight. It feels like the bus ride from the softball sectionals two years ago. That was a shitty bus ride too. The sting of that loss hung around for months. Time is the only thing that will lessen the sting of this new loss.

  I’ve got my head rested against the window, a quiet acoustic song playing into my ears, when Chizz slides into the empty seat next to me.

  I lift my head.

  He holds out his hand to me. Why would he want to shake my hand after we lost? Shouldn’t he be turning that hand into a fist?

  “Good job,” he says as I hesitantly grip his hand.

  “Maybe you don’t really understand how baseball works,” I say, pulling out my headphones, “but we lost.”

  He laughs. “Yes, we did.”

  “I’m sorry we lost.”

  He shakes his head. “Don’t be sorry. Losing is a natural part of playing the game. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

  “I bet you wish you’d played a big guy instead of me.”

  “Marnie, the game could have easily gone the other way. If the ump had called interference when he should have, or if that huge foul that Joey hit had been a little to the left and became a home run, if T. J.’s throw to home had been a few degrees more accurate…”

  “If anyone but me had been covering home.”

  “Beat yourself up over it if you want, but know that if I could go back, you would still be my first choice to pitch.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “I’m not. I have no regrets about who I put on the field or how we played.” He lowers his voice. “My only regret is that Joey didn’t punch that little shit harder.”

  My eyes widen. Did he really just say that?

  “Look,” he says, “people were expecting you to fail. So you surpassed that by miles and miles. By light-years.”

  He gets up. “Believe me, Marnie, you’ve got nothing to kick yourself for.” He starts for his seat at the front of the bus but then backtracks. “And,” he says, “there’s a spot on the team for you next year. If you want it.”

  I mull this over, taking in all that it means.

  And I can’t help but smile.

  • • •

  “Want a ride?”

  I look up from my phone. My finger hovers over the call button, about to dial my dad to see where he is. He said he would meet me here at school to drive me home.

  “Sure,” I say, sending a text to tell Dad that Cody will give me a ride.

  I follow Cody to his dad’s car, which is parked in front of the school. Other guys are hitching rides together or getting picked up by their parents.

  They wave to me as they leave, and I wave back. Joey passes, his duffel bag hanging off his left shoulder, and he punches Cody in the arm. He’s about to punch me too, but then he stops, his fist suspended in midair like he can’t figure out whether I’m allowed to get the bro-punch or not.

  I decide to help him out. I make a fist and bump it against his, right into the knuckles that decked Prescott in the face.

  Without another word, he continues on to his car. It’s then that I see someone is waiting for him—Sara. She’s leaning against the trunk, phone in her hand. She looks up when Joey approaches, and Joey stops.

  “Uh-oh,” Cody whispers. The two of us, idiots that we are, stand there and watch.

  Joey slowly goes to her, and Sara slides her phone into her back pocket. They start talking. I’ve never wished for supersonic hearing more than I do now.

  “We should go,” Cody says.

  He doesn’t move. I don’t move.

  They keep talking, neither of them smiling, but they’re not shouting, either. If they were fighting, there’d be shouting. Neither of them know how to fight without shouting. Probably none of us do.

  When they step closer, I gasp, thinking they’re going to start kissing right here in the parking lot, but they just hug.

  “Calm down, Marnie,” Cody says. “Don’t hyperventilate.”

  “Shut up.”

  Their hug doesn’t last long, but the fact that they hugged at all is a step in the right direction. I mean, I know they’ve been way more intimate, but it seems…meaningful. Not the chaotic spontaneity Sara described.

  “Is she going to get in his car?” Cody asks. “Place your bet.”

  “Shut up.”

  Joey goes around to the driver side of his car. Sara doesn’t get in. Instead, she goes to her car, parked a couple of spots down.

  “Damn,” Cody says.

  “You think they’ll ever tell us what they said?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you think they’ll still hook up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think they’re together?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I punch his arm. “You’re useless.”

  “Come on,” Cody says, opening his passenger door for me. “Get in before I decide to le
ave you here.”

  I toss my bag over the seat and slide in.

  We drive in comfortable silence, right up until he makes a left instead of a right where we’re supposed to turn toward our houses.

  “Whoa, where are we going?” I ask.

  “Detour.”

  “Detour where?”

  “A place.”

  “What kind of place?”

  “A place with things you like.”

  And he is still completely useless.

  There turns out to be Walker’s.

  He pulls into a parking spot right in front, and I say, “What are we celebrating? Why do I have to keep reminding people that we lost?”

  “Not everything is about baseball,” he says. “We could be celebrating the end of school. Or the end of today. Or we could just be getting ice cream.”

  I almost say, But that sounds like a date, but I don’t want to complicate the moment, so I follow him inside. The tables are empty except for one in the back, where a dad and daughter share an ice-cream sundae.

  We take our ice cream to go this time—mint chocolate chip for him, coffee ice cream for me. He leads me across the terrace to the fountain. Which makes me think about the guy Davis dared me to make out with, the guy who was standing here with his girlfriend.

  This is so totally a date.

  Shut up, Marnie.

  I sit down on the edge of the fountain, trying to (1) forget that this might be a date and (2) forget the entire semifinals game. But trying to forget something is the same as thinking about it.

  “You are thinking really loud right now,” Cody says, sitting next to me.

  “I’m trying not to think about anything.”

  “Think about this.” He pushes the cone in my hand so the top scoop almost smashes against my nose.

  I shove his chest. “Dude, get away from me.”

  In retaliation, he scoots next to me, so there is literally no space between us. All the nerves in my body leap in excitement. I would not be surprised if the whole frigging world could hear them squealing, Cody! Cody! IT’S CODY!

  I wonder what we look like, sitting side by side on the edge of the fountain. I’m in my sandy Corrington uniform, shirt untucked and unbuttoned, my hair falling out of its braid. I must look like a complete wreck. Me, the girl pitcher fallen from grace, next to Iron-Arm Kinski, in his jeans and faded red T-shirt, looking super normal but also devastatingly attractive.

  We’re together but not together. What a pair we are. What an odd friendship we have.

  Cody eats the rest of his ice-cream cone, and then his phone buzzes. He looks at it and then says, “My dad wants me to let you know that he’s sorry we lost, and he wished he could have seen you play.”

  “Oh…thanks,” I say lamely. I think about my mom and how she didn’t come to the game. Even if she couldn’t make it, I wanted her to be proud of me, to congratulate me, to wish me luck. It would be nice to know she likes me for who I am, rather than being disappointed I’m not the perfect daughter she’s always wanted.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks when I go quiet. “Besides the fact that we lost.”

  I sigh, and without thinking twice, I tell him about my mom.

  “You are not a failure,” he says. “Trust me. Losing one game doesn’t make you a failure. And neither does not liking to shop for dresses, for that matter.”

  “I know. It would just be nice to know my mom likes me because I’m me, and not because she’s obligated to as a parent.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Your mom loves you.”

  “I know,” I say, and without thinking, I lean my head against his shoulder. The last play of the game keeps playing over and over in my mind. I can feel the bruises forming on my arm and hip where Prescott collided with me. I imagine if my mom had been there, she would’ve destroyed Prescott even more so than Joey. And it would have solidified her whole argument against sports. So was it better or worse that she wasn’t there? Better that she didn’t see me botch the entire game?

  Cody puts his hand on my knee, and I’m in so much misery that I can’t even respond.

  “I know nothing I say will make the loss feel better,” he says.

  “I don’t need to feel great. I just need to not feel this sucky.” I need to get this game behind me. Make it a distant, distant memory.

  “It goes away,” Cody says.

  That’s nothing I don’t know. But waiting for it to go away will be agonizing.

  His phone buzzes again. He reads the text with extreme intensity and sighs.

  “What?” I ask.

  He brushes the crumbs of his cone off his hands. “I’m playing on a summer team,” he says. “And going to a camp where all these college coaches will be scouting.”

  Before, I would’ve been happy for him, but now that I know what’s been on his mind, I’m not sure.

  “Is that bad?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, I want to keep playing in high school, but…it feels like actively seeking out these college coaches and trying to impress them means that I’m going for it. And if I go for it, then I’m all in.”

  Cody sent videos to colleges and played on a summer team last year, but this is his junior year, which means he’s entering the serious part of it. Honestly, I can’t imagine him not playing baseball in college. I feel helpless giving him advice, the same way I did with Sara. Both of them make supporting me look so easy, and I can’t seem to do the same for them.

  “I think you should go for the pros,” I say. “Then I can be like, ‘Yeah, I know that guy.’”

  He laughs. “That would be in, like, ten years.”

  “You don’t think I’ll still know you in ten years?”

  “That’s a long time from now,” he says quietly.

  “Hey, if in ten years, you’re a pro pitcher or a marine biologist or a space cadet, I’ll still be your number one fan.”

  I mean this in a joking way, but as soon as it comes out of my mouth, he looks down to hide the blood rushing to his face. We both know it’s the absolute truth.

  The truth is simple: I’m in love with him, and when I say that I’m cool with us just being friends, I’m lying. And when he says he can move on from his feelings for me, he’s lying.

  We are horrible, horrible liars, but that’s not the crime. The crime is that we’re both still too afraid to admit it.

  A silence creeps between us. We’re thinking the same thing. I know it. But neither of us voices the obvious. Instead, Cody stares at the hundreds of coins covering the bottom of the fountain, and I finish my ice cream.

  I want to ask why he brought me here. Just to get me ice cream? To make me feel better? Because he’s trying to take me out on a date without either of us saying it out loud? I can hear myself asking him. The words are on my tongue, and I repeat them over and over in my head, Why did you bring me here? But it’s like there’s cement holding my jaws shut.

  I finish my cone. Cody stands and says, “Ready?”

  I nod. “I’m gonna use the bathroom before we go,” I tell him.

  “I’ll wait for you in the car,” he says as I head back into Walker’s.

  On my way out of the bathroom, I pass the table with the dad and daughter, and the guy stops me. “I noticed your jersey,” he says. “You wouldn’t happen to be Marnie Locke, would you?” He points to my back, which has my last name.

  Who is this man, and why does he know me?

  “Uh…yeah…” I say. “I am.”

  He smiles. “My daughter Ling goes to school with you. She told me how you pitch for the boys’ baseball team, how you’re shaking up the school with your boldness.”

  “Oh…” I say, surprised that one of Joey’s ex-girlfriend’s dads knows about me.

  “You guys celebrating a win?”

 
“No. Unfortunately.”

  “Too bad. I was rooting for you.” He puts his hands on the young girl’s shoulder. “My seven-year-old here, Xiao, was begging me to take her to the game after Ling told her about you. We couldn’t make it, but look,” he says to his daughter, “this is the girl who plays on the boys’ baseball team.” To me, he says, “She wanted to pick up a baseball the moment she heard about you.”

  What? I’ve been shaking up the school, and I’ve inspired a little innocent kid?

  “Oh…” I wonder, if I could go back in time to tell my younger self how many days of my life I would spend at the sandlot, how many injuries I would get horsing around with the guys, how disappointed I would feel after losing the softball sectionals and then this semifinals game, what would I tell her? Would I tell her to pick a different hobby?

  “Baseball is awesome,” I tell Xiao. “Sign up for Little League.”

  And then I go, pushing out the door, the tiny bell overhead chiming behind me.

  23

  It’s late when I get home. But my mom, who normally goes to bed at 9:00 p.m., is awake, sitting in the living room reading a book. No one needs to tell me she’s waiting for me.

  “Where were you?” she asks, setting the book down on the coffee table beside her.

  “Getting drunk. Doing drugs. Running into traffic blindfolded.”

  “Marnie.”

  I sigh. “I was good. Don’t worry.”

  “Dad said Cody was bringing you home. I didn’t know it took an hour to drive from school to our house.”

  “We went to get ice cream.”

  She props her reading glasses on top of her head. “And you couldn’t have told me that when I texted and called?”

  “Moooomm.” I flop facedown onto the sofa. I haven’t even looked at my phone since I last texted Dad. “You don’t have to worry about me all the time,” I say, my voice muffled by the leather seat cushions.

  She sighs, and the weight of the sofa shifts as she sits down by my feet. For a while she doesn’t say anything, and I think maybe I’ve convinced her with my smothered whine of protest.

  Then she goes, “Marnie, do you know how frightening it was for me every time you came home with bleeding, scraped-up kneecaps or a bloody nose or a broken finger? Sara or Cody or Joey would come ringing the doorbell, asking for you to play, and you’d run out the door, and I would never know if you’d come back in one piece or five.”