“They kind of didn’t have a choice,” Cassie said. “If you’re good enough at something, nobody should be able to hold you back.”
Sarah frowned and said, “But why did you want to?”
“I guess to show people I really was good enough.”
Sarah was still frowning. “Did people treat you differently?”
“Yeah,” Cassie said. “Yeah, they did.”
“Was it worth it?”
It was a question Cassie had asked herself all season long and was still asking herself, even though the Warriors had won the league championship, and she’d played a big part in their doing that.
“It was worth it,” she said finally.
“Why was it worth it?”
Cassie said, “At first I thought it was just proving a point to the other boys. But it ended up being about me proving something to myself.”
“On my team,” Sarah said, “I guess . . . I guess I proved something.”
“That you were better than they first thought you were?”
“I guess.”
They were still talking, Cassie and the girl who had complained about people talking, a girl who paused before she said something and then spoke slowly when she did, as if somehow weighing every word, or afraid she might be about to use the wrong one.
“Even though I was on a team, and even though I pride myself on being a team player,” Cassie said, “I was also playing for myself.”
“I never thought about it that way,” Sarah said.
“It’s about having pride in yourself,” Cassie said.
Sarah nodded. “I guess.”
Sarah’s mom called her then. Sarah jumped out of the chair, and walked out of the room ahead of Cassie, and down the stairs without saying a word.
Good talk, Cassie wanted to say, but didn’t.
She just said good night to Mr. and Mrs. Milligan and said she’d see Sarah at the Red Sox opening game on Saturday.
“Same,” Sarah said over her shoulder, already walking quickly toward their car.
When the Milligans were all in the car, Cassie’s mom said, “Well, did you learn anything tonight?”
“I did, actually.”
“Care to share?”
“Maybe Sarah and I aren’t as different as I thought,” Cassie said.
Cassie wasn’t getting carried away by tonight. But maybe this was a new beginning for her and Sarah, with the season about to officially begin on Saturday.
It definitely beat a good, hard shove to the chest anytime.
EIGHT
The opener was against the Hollis Hills Yankees at Highland Park. The weather in Walton was so perfect on Saturday that Cassie thought it would have been a crime not to be playing softball today.
In the morning Cassie called Jack and asked if he and Teddy and Gus were coming to the game.
Jack laughed. “Is that what we’d call in English class a rhetorical question?” Then he said of course they were coming, their practice at Walton Middle in the morning with their All-Star team, the Cubs, would be over by ten o’clock, and Cassie’s game wasn’t until eleven.
“I’m actually glad you’ve got a game, especially for Teddy and Gus,” he said. “It’ll take their minds off all the drama we’re having now with our team.”
Neither Teddy nor Gus liked their new coach. His name was Ken Anthony, and he was new to Walton this year, along with his son, Sam, who was expected to be one of the Cubs’ star pitchers. Sam didn’t go to Walton Middle. He was actually attending Hollis Academy, the private school in town. But because his family lived in Walton, he was eligible to play for the Cubs. And his dad had been asked to coach the team. Ken Anthony had been a minor-league pitcher before a shoulder injury ended his career. But according to Jack, it was clear that Coach Anthony thought his son was going to be the one in the family who did make it to the big leagues.
That wasn’t the problem they were having with their new coach, though. The problem was that Mr. Anthony acted as if he were managing the real Cubs. He was loud, for one thing. Teddy said that not only did the guy act as if he’d invented baseball, he treated summer baseball as if it were military school, actually making them drop and do push-ups if they threw to the wrong base, or made a mistake on the bases.
“So he hasn’t lightened up?” Cassie said.
“I don’t think he’s going to lighten up,” Jack said. “It doesn’t make me as crazy as it does the other guys. I just sort of try to tune him out. But Teddy and Gus aren’t having any fun. Teddy’s even talked about quitting, and I don’t think he’s joking.”
“All this drama on both our teams,” Cassie said, “and neither one of us plays a real game until today.”
“We’ll be there,” Jack said. “And, Cass? Good luck.”
“Hope I don’t need much.”
“You pitching?”
“Look at you,” she said, “with another rhetorical question!”
As soon as she got to the field, she could feel the excitement inside her. And even after what had happened at Fierro’s the other day, she could see that Greta and Kathleen and Allie and the rest of her teammates were just as excited. Maybe they’d all figured that if any one of them did well, they all did well. You didn’t have to like all of your teammates. It didn’t change the fact that you were all in it together. Cassie knew it would probably sound lame if she actually said that to them. But she honestly believed it.
Nothing that had been said about Sarah at Fierro’s mattered today. Nothing that had happened at the end of that scrimmage mattered. The game mattered. Beating the Hollis Hills Yankees mattered today. Everything else was just noise.
She sought out Greta and Kathleen after they’d finished batting practice and infield practice, and bumped fists with both of them.
“We are not losing this game,” Cassie said.
“We’re not losing any games,” Greta said.
“Well, you know what they say,” Cassie said. “We can’t win them all if we don’t win today.”
Kathleen smiled at her, as if things were the same as they used to be between them. “Just hope our
