Chapter 22

Monday's baseball game was against our arch-rival, McKay Academy, at their lush, nicely appointed home field. Coach Torianni reminded us that our league playoff game with them last year had been a nail-biter. Mo Perra's two-run homer in the eighth had been the only scoring in the game. This year, they were supposed to be even better, and their record going into the game was a league-leading 8-3. With Marshall standing in seventh, with a league record of 4-5, it was unlikely that McKay was thinking of us as their arch-rival. We were more likely just a slow possum on their road to a league title and the state playoffs beyond that.

I would have loved to have pitched, but it was Cary's turn in the rotation. He pitched very well through the first three innings, mixing just enough fastballs in with his wicked curveball to keep the McKay batters off balance. Jesse was home with a cold, so this was the first time Tommy had called one of Cary's games. I remember thinking that Jesse would be lucky to have a starting position when he got back if Cary kept pitching this well. Meanwhile, Matt hit a two-run homer in the second, and Cary bunted home another run in the third.

The pivotal moment in the game came in the bottom of the fourth, when their number three hitter sent a grounder screaming toward Matt at third. Everyone on the team held their breath. And we kept on holding it as the ball ricocheted off his glove, then off his knee, and straight up into the air. He managed to grab the ball with his bare hand on its way back down and looked immediately to first. He was just as surprised as the rest of us to find that he still had a play there. Tommy, who had hustled down the first base line to back up Mo and was probably the only guy on our team who wasn't watching Matt, told us that the batter had taken two steps out of the batter's box, dropped the bat, and then tripped over it. It didn't matter. It was still an out, and when we got back to the dugout, Cary made a point of high-fiving Matt.

After that, McKay seemed to lose a little of its focus. We ended up scoring three more runs to only two for them, and went home with a well-earned, if somewhat surprising, 6-2 league win. I had done my part, singling in a run in the fifth and scoring another run in the seventh after a two-out triple.

The day's real good news, though, came that evening, when I got a call from Uncle Ted, the UVA history professor. He said that Coach Rogers had told him about my interest, and that they were very interested in me. Uncle Ted had a friend with a small plane, and he was willing to fly up and fly me back down to UVA on Friday evening. I would spend the night at Uncle Ted and Aunt Helen's, watch a game and take a tour of the campus on Saturday, and maybe hang out with some of the guys on the team on Saturday night. Then the guy would fly me back on Sunday. It sounded great to me.

Jeanne and Jill were still feuding, of course. At least Jeanne was still feuding. Around nine o'clock she barged into my room to complain that Jill wasn't taking any of her rehearsals seriously.

"She shows up, sings her song, and then skips off to flirt with the guys in the stage crew."

"And she should... ?" I asked.

"She should pay attention to everything else that's going on in the play, so she knows what everyone else is doing."

"So it is sort of like baseball," I smiled.

"Yeah," she said savagely, "and you know who she reminds me of?"

I shrugged.

"You," she stormed off again.

That threw me for a loop. Coach hadn't complained about my practice routine. It was true I probably didn't take as much outfield as the other outfielders did, but I had to get in my throws, too. So I wondered what she meant. I shrugged again. Maybe I would get a chance to ask her the following night.

On Tuesday afternoon, though, I suddenly remembered that I had a history paper due on Friday, something about the first two decades of the twentieth century. I spent the afternoon in the school library, and the evening at the public library. By the end I had done a little research and had, at least, decided upon a topic: Theodore Roosevelt's 1906 trip to Panama, the first time a sitting American president had traveled abroad. It was a nice, compact little topic, but it offered plenty of other stuff about the Panama Canal that I could throw in if it proved too compact.

Wednesday was another baseball game, a non-league match-up at home against Thorn River High. The game started off horribly and never got much better. After I struck the first batter out, the second guy hit a sharp line drive to Matt that skimmed his outstretched glove and deflected down the left field line. By the time Bobby could get to it, the batter was already on third base. I told myself that it was a tough chance, and I couldn't blame Matt for it. Rabbit would have had it easily, of course. The next batter grounded out to second, easily scoring the guy from third. We put two runs across in the bottom of the inning, but they had figured us out. One batter after another started to try to hit the ball to Matt. He actually handled most of them. But the ones he didn't cost us big. And I made it worse by trying to throw all my pitches to the first base side of the plate, hoping that the left-handed hitters would try to pull the ball into right field and that the righties wouldn't be able to get around on the ball fast enough to pull it toward Matt.

But that got me away from my kind of pitching, which involved mixing up my locations to confuse the hitters, and mixing my fastball with the occasional change to keep them honest. Once I got away from that, I was a fairly ordinary pitcher. By the end of the third inning, I had been charged with my second earned run of the game, only my third of the year. Matt had been charged with three errors that lead to four unearned runs, and we were in a five-run hole.

It turned out to be too much to overcome. I doubled and Mo drove me in, but our clutch hitting was still largely absent. It went in the books as my first loss of the spring. Afterward, I stopped by Coach's office to let him know about my upcoming trip to Charlottesville.

"You realize we have a league game on Saturday," he said.

"Yeah, I know. But Tommy's hitting pretty good, so he can catch and Jesse can take my place."

"In the outfield," he said. "Not as captain."

"Captain," I scoffed. "Those guys don't listen to me any more than they listen..."

"To me?" Coach smiled. "Trick, they listen to me. If I tell them to change their stance, they change it. If I tell them to run more laps, they run laps. But it's true, they're not gonna listen to me tell them they need to become a better team. That kind of stuff has to grow from the inside out."

"Yeah," I nodded. "I'll do what I can. But this UVA thing really means a lot to me, Coach."

"So I gather," he smiled. "I don't think I've ever seen you run as fast as you did that day when their coach was in the stands. He's got a pretty good team this year. Top ten. You'd be a good addition."

"Thanks, Coach."

Damn right, I would be. Plus they'd have a real goddamn third baseman playing behind me. I could play the rah-rah cheerleader from now until the end of the season, and it wouldn't change how many errors we made in the field. Or how poorly we hit when we were up at the plate.

Tanya and Jeanne had both been at the game, but they were gone by the time I got out of the locker room. That was probably a good thing. Between the game and the A-minus I had received on the astronomy quiz that Carruthers had handed back today, I wasn't in a very good mood. I spent most of the first part of the evening sitting on my bed, stewing about the lack of defense and run support. It wasn't until around ten o'clock that I remembered that I had only one more day to finish my history paper.

I stayed up until one, finishing the research on all the books I'd checked out of the public library. I started writing the next afternoon in my study halls and was most of the way done by the end of the day. Even so, finishing the last page, giving it a final polish, and typing it took me up until eleven o'clock.

I turned it in on Friday morning, put in my two cents in Mrs. Palmer's ongoing discussion of Captain Ahab, listened to Mr. Carruthers blather on about redshifts, and partook in a spirited debate in Religion on the book of Daniel.

Jeanne grabbed me on my way to lunch with Tanya and hauled me into an empty classroom.

"Do you know what that bitch is doing now?"

"Jill?"

"Of course, Jill."

"Well, I'm sorry, I just never heard you call your sister a bitch before."

That didn't faze her at all.

"Fine. I'm sorry," she said with a total lack of sincerity. "My lovely sister Jill has decided that she's such a little prima donna that she doesn't even have to come to today's rehearsal. And Collins, the stupid ass, says that's fine, I can just practice my part of the duet. Like Jill doesn't need to practice her part."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"What?"

"What did you mean the other day when you said she reminded you of me?"

"I meant that you did exactly the same thing in tenth grade. You thought you were God's gift to Marshall High School."

"You mean I didn't go to practice?"

"Trick, I don't have idea whether you went to practice. What I do know is that you walked around just like Jill, looking down on everybody who didn't kiss your ass. Or suck your dick."

"But I don't do that now!" I protested.

"No, maybe Jill remembers you from tenth grade. Or maybe she's just making this up on her own. Maybe she doesn't even try to imitate her big brother any more. God, she makes me so mad. She's going to ruin the play for everyone."

"Because she can't sing?" I ventured tentatively.

"She can sing fine," Jeanne suddenly deflated. "I can sing better, but she can sing fine. She's just not part of the cast, you know? Maybe you could, like, talk to her?"

"I can talk about baseball," I said defensively. "I don't know anything about plays. Plus I'm going to Uncle Ted's this weekend."

Jeanne was staring at me blankly.

"He invited me down to tour UVA," I explained. "They're flying a plane up tonight. I'm gonna need the car to go to the airport.

She took a deep breath and sighed.

"Well, thanks anyway," she said. She pivoted and stomped off.

Well, fuck you, too, Jeanne Sterling. Who died and appointed me captain of the Sterling family?

As I followed her to the cafeteria, I remembered that Jeanne wasn't the only person that didn't know I was going to be away for the weekend. I had told Dad, and I had told Coach. I had completely forgotten to tell Tanya. Shit. And as I was turning over in my mind the best way of doing that, I nearly ran her over. Apparently, she had been waiting for me to finish with Jeanne.

"God, I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know where I was."

Her look was much more serious than mine, so I quickly sobered up.

"Patrick, I know you wanted to get together this weekend to make up for last Friday," she began, a tear forming in the corner of her left eye. "But my grandma took a turn for the worse during the week, and I really have to go down to see her."

"That's fine," I said. "She's your grandmother. When do you leave?"

"Tonight," she said. "The plane's at seven."

My guy was arriving at seven-thirty.

"Can I bring you to the airport?" I asked.

She smiled and looked up and down the hall. With no one in sight, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek.

"You are so sweet," she said.

"When do you get back?"

"Tuesday afternoon."

"Wow. You're gonna miss two days of school."

She shook her head.

"Tuesday's one of those teacher service days, so it's only Monday. Gonna miss me?"

"Of course," I smiled.

Since I wasn't going to be at the game on Saturday, Coach had no objection to my leaving practice a little early. I raced home, showered, and threw a bag with a change of clothes in the trunk. I was at Tanya's house by five-thirty, and we put her suitcase in the back seat. We got to the dinky local airport half an hour later. I parked the car and she turned to me.

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