At the very last second, maybe ten feet from the sign on the fence that said WALTON MOBIL STATION, she turned back, looked up, and reached up with her glove.
The ball landed in it. And stayed in it, even as Sarah was reaching out with her free hand to stop herself from running into the fence. Sarah didn’t hit the fence hard but still lost her balance enough to end up sitting at the base of the fence.
Kathleen didn’t run over to help her up, or congratulate her. Neither did Ellie Evans, their right fielder in the late innings tonight. Sarah picked herself up, then held her glove aloft to show the umpire who’d come running out from the infield that the ball was still in it.
The woman put her own hand in the air, fist closed, pumping it as she made the out sign.
Ball game.
By now Cassie had gone flying past the ump, running in Sarah’s direction, Lizzie behind her. She reminded herself not to startle Sarah Milligan this time, or even try to high five her.
She just stopped a few feet away, smiling, and said, “Well, that catch didn’t stink.”
Sarah didn’t seem to know how to respond. She just reached out and handed Cassie the ball, as if she were done with it.
When she and Lizzie and Cassie turned around, they saw all the members of their team who had been on the field for the last play of the game just staring at them, as if they were all frozen in place.
This time it was Sarah Milligan who allowed herself a small smile as she said to Cassie and Lizzie, “Now you guys know how I feel.”
SIXTEEN
Cassie invited Sarah over for lunch the next day, and Sarah accepted.
Cassie wasn’t kidding herself. She didn’t feel as if she and Sarah were getting a lot closer, or becoming friends, at least the way Cassie defined friendship. She wasn’t sure what they were, apart from being teammates. Maybe more like allies. But for now that seemed to be enough for both of them. Maybe it was all Sarah could handle. Another thing Cassie had read about kids with Asperger’s was how hard it was to earn their trust, as they did their best to keep the world at arm’s length.
Sarah rode her bike over. When she got to Cassie’s house, she made a big point of telling Cassie the exact route she’d taken, street by street. Then she explained how she’d be going home, giving Cassie the streets in reverse.
“I’m not sure I could remember that without GPS,” Cassie said.
“I know what GPS is,” Sarah said. “Do people use it when they ride bikes?”
“I was joking.”
“Oh. Right.”
They were up in Cassie’s room after lunch, Cassie on her bed, Sarah in the same chair she’d been in the night she’d come to the house with her parents. But today Cassie noticed her taking in the whole room. The first night here, she’d paid no attention to the big globe in the corner, but today she got up and walked over to it, almost as if drawn to it, and slowly turned it, moving a finger across it, as if she were trying to imagine the route she’d take from Cassie’s house to Europe, or Asia.
“I know most of the world’s capitals. Do you?” Sarah said suddenly, her voice rising in excitement.
Cassie had noticed by now that Sarah either couldn’t or wouldn’t modulate her voice. The girl who hated loud noises often got loud herself, sometimes right before her voice would almost drop to a whisper.
She began to recite some of the capitals now, Brussels and Paris and Helsinki and Budapest, London and Warsaw and Lisbon, almost as if Cassie wasn’t even in the room with her.
“That is impressive, Sarah, not gonna lie.”
Sarah ignored her and kept going. “Amsterdam,” she said. “Dublin. Athens. Reykjavik. Oslo.”
She paused, looking right at Cassie now, and said, “Do you know what Riga is the capital of?”
“Nope.”
Sarah nodded. “Latvia,” she said.
“The only thing I know about Latvia,” Cassie said, “is that one of the Knicks comes from there.”
“I know.”
“You do?
“He comes from Liepaja,” Sarah said, and nodded. “I had to look that up. I know a lot of different things. If I don’t know them, I look them up. I like to look things up and then memorize them. If I close my eyes, I can see all the streets I took here and the ones I’m going to take back. It’s very important. Very, very important.”
This was one of those times, Cassie thought, when Sarah looked more comfortable talking to herself, instead of going back and forth with somebody else.
Sarah carefully turned the globe now, as if she were afraid that spinning it too hard might break it.
“Do you think the other girls are being stupid?” she said. “I do. I think they’re being stupid.”
“More stubborn than stupid, maybe.”
“I think they’re being stupid and mean,” Sarah said, not acting as if she’d even heard Cassie. “My mom tells me all the time that sometimes other kids don’t mean to be stupid or mean, they just don’t know any better. But they barely know me. They know you. So why are they treating us the same?”
“If you want to know the truth,” Cassie said, “sometimes I think they don’t know me at all. But it still makes them mad when I don’t go along with them.”
“I hate when people get mad.” She gave the globe another small turn. If you looked at her, it was almost as if she were talking to it instead of Cassie.
She stopped talking now and walked back over and sat down in her chair, as if she had run out of things to say. She folded her
