Chapter 25

The following Monday marked the beginning of the last month of classes. Apparently that was the signal for our teachers to tell us their plans for the end of the semester. In Government, Mr. Kennedy, bless him, said that our final would be on Tuesday, June 12. If there was one thing I loved, it was Mr. Kennedy's government tests. Mr. Anson's history class would also end with a test, on Monday the 11th.

Mrs. Palmer had no intention of letting us getting away with something as simple as a test. Instead, we would have a final paper. That paper would be due on Friday, June 8.

"You have two options," she announced. "The first is that you can revisit the paper you wrote at the beginning of this class on Mr. Melville, where you discussed one fact from Melville's biography and how it influenced his writing. Now that you have read some of his work, you can let me know whether you were right or wrong."

"And the other option?" Missy chirped behind me.

"The other option," Mrs. Palmer said, stepping forward with a stack of Xeroxed papers that looked depressingly familiar, "is to do the same exercise with Mr. Sterling's paper. I passed it out early in the semester, although I doubt that many of you saved it. Even though it was probably the best piece of writing most of you saw all year. So here's another copy. Mr. Sterling?"

I could feel the glares behind me as I put my hand back down.

"What's my other option, ma'am?" I asked.

"Your other option, Mr. Sterling?"

"Other than using my own paper, ma'am."

"Your other option is an F, Mr. Sterling."

That set the whole class laughing. I just nodded.

Mr. Carruthers had already informed us how our final grade would be determined: partly by the quizzes but mostly by our lab notebooks and our final reports. The notebooks were due at the end of the last lab, this coming Wednesday, and the final reports on June 11.

Astronomy class, of course, was also the first time I had seen Cammie since I had dropped her off in the street after the Formal. She resolutely refused to look at me, and instead stared straight ahead for the entire class. So as the bell was ringing, I leaned toward her and said, not in her ear as much as it was so softly that nobody else could hear it.

"You know, if you act like this at lunchtime, they're gonna know something happened."

"What do you mean?" she said savagely.

"Well, Jeanne knows you slept in the same room as I did," I pointed out.

"You told her?"

"You told her. When you asked to switch rooms with Sammy. You told her there were no other rooms and you couldn't go home. What else was she gonna think you did? Sleep in the lobby? I told her we slept in separate beds."

"We did sleep in separate beds."

"I guess. For sleeping."

She glared at me as we started to make our way out of the classroom toward our next classes.

"Anyway, if you don't act exactly like you did last week," I continued, "she's gonna think we did more than that."

She continued to stare at me as I walked away.

Religion was almost as bad. Tanya kept staring at Mrs. Jenkins as she informed us that the final exam would take place on Friday. June 8. It would include an essay portion covering the entire year, and a short-answer portion covering the last third, on the prophets.

"So you wanna talk?" I asked Tanya when class was over and we started walking toward lunch. "I mean, we're still friends, right?"

She stopped and looked at me.

"I feel like we've just abandoned you," she said sorrowfully. "My parents adore Rabbit. It's like you were never there now."

"Oh, I think we both know exactly where I was," I smiled and nodded my head.

Tanya flushed a dark red.

I felt a twinge of pain when I entered the lunch room and realized that the seats that were awaiting Tanya and me were no longer together. Instead, Cammie had given up her seat for Tanya, and had apparently pushed Tommy into the seat next to me. So now I couldn't even look at her during lunch without appearing obvious.

The main topic of conversation, of course, was Tommy. He had looked very nice in his tuxedo, and of course everyone had admired his date. But he was a gentleman, insisting that after the Formal he had simply taken Jill home. He said not a word about his not having left for another seven or eight hours after he got there. It was a prudent decision. If we won our first league playoff game that afternoon, I would be firing fastballs at him on Thursday. Those protectors work well, but they're not perfect.

Despite our record and our sixth seed, the rest of the league was well aware that we were the defending state champions. And because we hadn't played the third-seeded team, Hillside High School, this year in league play, they were a little nervous about facing us. We exploded in the top of the third inning for four runs, including homers by Mo and Matt. But Cary didn't have his best stuff, and after five innings, the score was tied at 6-6. Then Eddie, hitting ninth, singled to open up the sixth. He was erased at second by a force out on Bobby's grounder to short, but they weren't quick enough to turn the double play on Bobby at first. Rabbit smoked the very next pitch right over second base, and we had runners on first and second with only one out. I stepped to the plate confidently, having already doubled in the four-run first, and having singled in a run in the third.

But I couldn't handle the curve. After working the count to 2-2, I popped up weakly to the left side of the infield and threw my bat on the ground in disgust. I watched in amazement as the Hillside shortstop closed his glove a fraction of a second too quickly The ball bounced off the closed glove and headed for the outfield, the shortstop and the third basemen in frantic pursuit. Bobby and Rabbit both took off. By the time the shortstop picked up the ball, he had no play on Bobby at all because the third baseman was standing next to him in the outfield. Instead, Bobby turned for home. Rabbit was already cruising into second base. The shortstop looked over at me standing at home plate, watching the play unfold, and with a big grin on his face, heaved the ball toward first. The Hillside first baseman scooped it out of the dirt, and the first base umpire screamed that I was out. Yeah, no fooling.

The first baseman threw home, and Bobby had to retreat to third. Mo struck out after that, and the inning was over. Throughout the rest of the game, I was getting dirty looks from various guys on the team, as if they were really disappointed that I had popped out. It surprised me a little bit. We had pulled together as a team recently, and it was kind of hard to believe that the guys would blame any one player for not getting the job done, even if we had had a runner in scoring position.

It wasn't until after we had won the game, scoring the winning run in the top of the seventh and then holding off a desperate Hillside rally in the bottom of the inning, that I realized that they were mad about something else entirely. As I stood at the bottom of the bus steps to offer my now-traditional post-game congratulations, Bobby Bunt muttered something as he approached me.

"Sorry, Bobby, I didn't quite catch that," I said.

"I said, nice base-running, Sterling. If you'd run out that pop-up, we would have had the bases loaded with one out."

He pushed past me onto the bus, taking a seat in the back with Hal.

"Can I say a word to the team, Coach?" I asked as Coach Torianni brought up the rear.

He smiled and nodded.

"Listen up, guys," I said. "Apparently some of you are upset that I didn't run out the pop-up, and I just want to explain why. Some of you probably remember that at the beginning of the year, Coach went over the infield fly rule with us. The one where the batter is automatically out. Guys, that was it. Runners on first and second, less than two out, a pop-up to an infielder. I was out as soon as I hit it."

"But he dropped it," Bobby said from the back.

"That's why the rule's there, guys. So if he drops it on purpose, they can't get a double play on the runners who are staying on their bases."

I watched comprehension dawn on a couple of faces. Bobby still wasn't happy, though.

"But he didn't call it," he pointed out. "He's supposed to call out 'infield fly, batter's out.'"

"He is," I agreed. "But it's an appealable play. And you can be damned sure that if he had picked up the ball and tried to force out Rabbit at second before throwing to first, I'd have been there screaming that there was no force play. Coach would have been right behind me, right?"

I looked behind me to see Coach grinning and nodding.

"And yeah, I know. Maybe they didn't know the rule either, and they wouldn't have appealed. There probably are coaches out there who don't. Maybe we could have had the bases loaded. Maybe you want to be on a team that can't play by the rules of baseball. I don't. I think baseball's the greatest game there is. I think that all of its rules have a reason. I don't want to win unless we can win under those rules. Any questions?

Rabbit raised his hand.

"So should we run there or not?"

I smiled.

"If he catches the ball, it's a tag-up play. If he drops it, you run if you know you can make it to the next base ahead of the tag."

I took a seat next to Rabbit and thanked him. He gave me a little grin and went back to his calculus textbook.

Jeanne knocked on my door a little after nine that evening.

"So," she gave me a big smile.

"So what?" I asked.

"So you and Cammie?"

"Me and Cammie what?"

"You and Cammie hooked up."

"Who told you that?" I demanded, my eyes widening in surprise.

"You did."

"I did not. When did I tell you that?"

"Just now," Jeanne giggled. "When you said 'who told you that?' instead of 'we did not.'"

"Very funny, Jeanne Sterling," I said soberly. "If you tell Cammie I told you, she's gonna castrate me."

"Well, you really just confirmed it," Jeanne sat down on my bed. "She's the one who told me."

"I'm quite sure she would have done no such thing," I insisted.

"Not so anybody else would know," she smiled at me. "But I'm her best friend. I could tell something had happened from the way she was treating you at lunch."

"She was ignoring me at lunch," I protested.

Jeanne smiled and leaned forward as if she were about to let me in on a great feminine conspiracy.

"After you broke up, she used to absolutely hate you," she said. "Her father still does hate you actually. But then this year, after you changed, she started looking at you a little differently."

"She still calls me an asshole every chance she gets."

By now I was interested enough in this conversation to put down my book.

"Yeah," Jeanne laughs. "But it was sort of like you had become just another guy at the table. But I could see the way she looked at you today when you weren't looking."

"How?" I prompted her.

"Like you'd gotten under her skin again."

"And that told you that we'd hooked up?"

"Either that or you'd done something really stupid again. And if you'd done something really stupid, she would never have even come to lunch. So something else obviously happened."

"Uh-huh," I agreed, reflecting that I had no chance when it came to understanding women. "You still can't say anything."

"Okay. So how was it?"

"Jeanne," I protested.

"Yeah, I thought it would be," she smiled.

Absolutely no chance whatsoever.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"How long did I date Cammie?"

She got a little grin on her face.

"Let's see, you kissed her at Christmas, and finally got up the nerve to ask her on a date in June, I think. You didn't break up until the next year, like March."

"After baseball season started?"

"Oh, yeah. That's when you became Mr. Bigshot. Oh my God, you don't remember breaking up, do you?"

I shook my head.

"I have a good idea how much it hurt her," I said. "But no, I don't remember it at all."

"So you're, like, still in love with her."

Tanya had said the same thing, but I hadn't put it in the context of my "memory loss." The last thing I thought about before I went to sleep on Christmas Eve last year was how much I was looking forward to Cammie Rowe — chubby, metal-mouthed Cammie Rowe — coming back from her trip. Jeanne's statement — not a question but an affirmative declaration — was like a physical blow.

"Well, you're going to make Mrs. Rowe very happy," Jeanne continued after it had become apparent that I was completely speechless.

"Mrs. Rowe?"

"She always thought you were meant for each other. She probably still has all the china patterns that she picked out for your wedding."

"Are you serious?"

Jeanne just smiled. Finally, with a very affectionate look at me, she pushed herself off of my bed.

"Thanks for the chat, big brother."

"Seriously," I reminded her. "Castration."

She just giggled and left. I looked down and thought I should go out and find somebody to have sex with. It might be my last chance.

But I was still intact on Thursday, when we traveled to Park Forest for our next playoff game. Park Forest was the second-seeded team, and had been given a bye to the second round of the playoffs just like McKay Academy. They had their number one pitcher ready and we had ours.

I gave Tommy a little grin just before we took the field.

"What?" he asked.

"Arm's feelin' heavy again, Tommy," I said, turning it in a slow windmill.

"Well, goddamn, let's get this game started."

By the end of the fifth inning, I had struck out ten batters. Two more had grounded out to Rabbit, and Eddie had made a flawless play on another. Mo made a beautiful catch of a foul ball for another out, and Hal made a flat-out dive in the bottom of the fifth on a blooper that I had been sure would drop in for the first hit of the game. It hadn't. There had been no hits, no walks, and no errors. The guys had started ignoring me just like they had during my no-hitter, but I wouldn't let them this time. I joked with each of them, threw bottles of water, and did my best to keep everybody loose.

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