“Maybe,” she said, “instead of managing all the friends I have in my life, I just could lose three right now.”
“You know that is a big old no-can-do,” Jack said. “We’re a team.”
They’d always called themselves the “Home Team.” And they had been through a lot together, over the past year or so. The rest of them had helped Jack through the death of his older brother, Brad, who’d died in a dirt-bike accident. They’d all helped Teddy get into shape and overcome obesity, and also deal with his divorced dad coming back into his life unannounced. Then all four of them had survived what had happened between Gus and Cassie during the basketball season. It really was a lot. But they were a team.
More important, they were friends.
“You know what they say in sports every time a coach or manager gets fired,” Teddy said. “You can’t fire the whole team.”
She leaned forward again and said, “Watch me, funny man.”
“You know,” Teddy said, and not for the first time, “that look doesn’t scare me nearly as much as it used to.”
“But it still scares you,” Jack said.
“Oh, totally,” Teddy said.
“You know what your problem is?” Cassie said. “You just have no idea what it’s like to be a girl, do you?”
Jack looked at Gus. “Is there really a good answer to that question?”
Gus, mouth full of pizza, slowly shook his head from side to side.
“Wait a second,” Jack said. “Aren’t you the one always telling us that girls are smarter and cooler than boys?”
“I am,” Cassie said. “Just not all girls. It’s just that sometimes they can act dumber than, well, boys.”
“Hey,” Teddy said. “We’re doing the best we can.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s kind of sad.”
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Jack said. “When you do have girls acting even dumber than guys, when they’re worrying about stuff you don’t worry about, why do you worry about that?”
Teddy, frowning, turned to Gus and said, “You know, I think I actually followed that.”
“When you’re a guy and a girl doesn’t talk to you, it might upset you, but you deal with it,” Cassie said. “But sometimes with other girls, you just can’t avoid the drama, even if it’s something as small as not talking or even not nodding to one of them when I pass them in the hall at school. Or if one of them or all of them has decided that I’ve spent too many days in a row sitting with you guys at lunch and not them. I mean, like, get over it!”
“I get it,” Jack said.
“Like I said,” she said, “it’s not all girls. Just a small group of them.”
“But they’re still your friends,” Jack said.
“And if they are, they shouldn’t have to worry about me being there for them if they need me.”
Gus said, “Heck, I know that better than anybody now, even if I had to find out the hard way.”
She leaned over and pinched the upper part of his arm.
“I hate when you do that,” Gus said.
“If you didn’t hate it,” she said, “what fun would it be to do that?”
She took a bite of her own slice of pizza, then washed it down with some water. Then she frowned and shook her head.
“You know that expression our parents are always using about not sweating the small stuff?” she said. “I think they should change it to not sweating the stupid stuff. Girls or boys.”
She had no way of knowing at lunch that day how much truly stupid stuff she was about to encounter.
She had absolutely no idea that she was about to learn more about friendship—and who her friends really were—than she ever had before.
THREE
Her name was Sarah, and right away Cassie knew there was something different about her. But that was before anybody saw her run down a ball in the outfield, or throw, or swing a bat.
“She’s special,” Cassie’s dad told her before softball tryouts began that night.
“Are you talking about special needs, Dad?” Cassie said. “We’ve had a bunch of special-needs kids at school.”
“Just special,” her dad said. “Think of her that way, same as her parents do. You’ll see.”
“How do you know?”
“I met her parents and Sarah at the field yesterday,” her dad said, “and worked her out a little bit, and tried to get to know her.”
“You didn’t tell me,” Cassie said.
Her dad grinned. “Must’ve slipped my mind.”
“Dad,” Cassie said, “nothing ever slips your mind.”
“Trust me,” he said. “You’re gonna be happy she’s on our team. You and the other girls are just going to have to give her a little room at first.”
Cassie was sure that nothing, not even a new girl, was going to change how happy she was to be back on a baseball field again. She loved soccer and loved basketball, girls’ or boys’ basketball. She had always loved competing. And loved to win, whatever the sport. There was just something about softball, whether she was pitching or hitting or playing shortstop, that she loved most of all.
But it was hard not to notice the new girl, who’d been standing alone in the outfield, glove on her left hand, from the moment she’d taken the field, waiting for batting practice to begin.
She hadn’t spoken to any of the other girls yet. As far as Cassie could tell, she hadn’t even looked at any of them. Cassie wasn’t watching her every minute, but when she did look out there, Sarah was simply staring down at the outfield grass.
Until the first ball was hit in her direction.
Lizzie Hartong, who’d been the third baseman on last year’s team, the Orioles, and was expected to play the same position this year, was the first batter of the night. Cassie’s dad was pitching to her.
“Heads up, everybody. Good hitter,” Chris Bennett yelled.
Cassie saw Sarah pick her head up then, still in the same spot in right-center field, saw her react to the ball coming
