“And where might that be, kind of?”
“Well, I do try to control things a little bit.”
“You’re joking!” Angela said. “How did I miss that?”
Cassie said, “What’s the opposite of ‘Buenos’ in Spanish, Barcelona Face?”
“That’s kind of dark, girl.”
“What’s dark,” Cassie said, “is that now I’m not sure how to even act with her. Do I stop talking to her, the way the other girls have stopped talking to me? And how am I supposed to be a team leader if nobody is talking to anybody!”
“You know you’re shouting, right?” Angela said.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t have to be, not with me,” Angela said.
“I know.”
She really did feel as close to Angela as she ever had, even though they were still thousands of miles apart. It just made Cassie miss her even more.
“I know you always want to be right,” Angela said. “I know how often you think you’re right. But you have to realize that what you want for Sarah might not be what she wants. And what you think is best for her might not be best. Or, guess what? Maybe she doesn’t know a lot of the same things you don’t know.”
“So I should stop trying?”
“Not what I’m saying. Maybe just stop trying so hard. Just be her teammate, and not her hero.”
“I wasn’t trying to be her hero.”
“You sure?” Angela said.
Cassie wasn’t sure. Maybe Angela was right about all of this. Maybe Sarah had been right too.
“No, I’m not sure.”
“An unsure Cassie Bennett!” Angela said.
Now she was the one shouting.
“How’s that feel?” Angela said.
“I don’t know that I want to make a habit of it.”
“Listen,” Angela said. “I’ve done a little reading up on Asperger’s myself, just to keep up my end of the conversation. Which you could think about doing with your Spanish skills.”
“Shut up.”
“And the one word that keeps cropping up for me is ‘idiosyncratic,’ ” Angela said. “You know what that means, right?”
“Probably in English and Spanish, both.”
“Point is,” Angela said, “people with Asperger’s are like the rest of us. And you know what that means? They’re all different the way we are!”
“Jack basically told me the same thing.”
“Boy’s a genius.”
“So what are you telling me?”
“Why don’t you let Sarah feel like she’s the one in charge once in a while?” Angela said. “She’s probably spent her whole life having people try to make her into something they think she should be.”
Angela paused, and then said, “Maybe she can take care of herself better than you think she can.”
Cassie smiled across the world at her friend. “Thank you,” she said.
“You know I love you, right? You know our sisterhood is to the end, right?”
“To the end.”
“So I can tell you something else: you’re not always the easiest person in the world to get along with either.”
Cassie was still smiling.
“Buenos noches,” she said.
And signed off.
NINETEEN
The Red Sox won their next two games with ease. Cassie pitched one of them, against Rawson. When it was time for her dad to remove her from the game, with the team having just scored three more runs to stretch its lead to 7–2, he let Sarah pitch the seventh inning instead of Allie.
Allie didn’t act surprised, or question his decision. Chris Bennett had already told the team he might do some different things with pitching over the next couple of weeks.
“You’ve probably heard this one before,” he’d said. “But you can never have enough pitching.”
Cassie had looked around when he’d said it, wondering how many girls on the team appreciated that he was having some fun with one of the oldest baseball clichés in the book. No one seemed to, so Cassie had just said, “I’ll bet they came up with that one the same day they came up with a walk being as good as a hit.”
Her dad smiled at her. She smiled back. It was as if they were letting each other know that at least they hadn’t lost their sense of humor.
For her first time pitching in a real softball game, Sarah did fine. She walked the first batter and gave up a two-out single. But she also had two strikeouts, and induced the Rawson catcher to hit a routine fly ball to Kathleen to end the game. When the ball was safely in Kathleen’s glove, Cassie went to the mound to congratulate Sarah. Lizzie and Brooke did the same. The rest of the Red Sox players celebrated with one another.
So nothing had changed. The team was still two teams, trying to play as one. Lizzie and Brooke were still talking to Cassie. They told her that the other girls didn’t like it but continued talking to them even as they were ignoring Cassie. It was as if there was some kind of rule book for shunning that they were making up as they went along.
Sarah was back on her own island. She would occasionally talk to Cassie at practice, or at a game. But it was as if none of the time they’d spent together away from the field had ever happened, as if Cassie hadn’t made any attempts at gaining her friendship or her trust.
But even though Sarah showed hardly any interest in playing well with others, she was performing beautifully, at bat and in the field. You could count on her making one really good defensive play every game. She had gotten two more hits against Rawson, and two hits in the game before that. And Cassie had noticed that even the shunners paid close attention when Sarah stepped to the plate, as if they had come to expect big things when she did. Cassie was sure none of them would ever admit it, but their eyes were telling them that Sarah had made their team a lot better.
Even though Cassie had been telling herself to give Sarah as much room as she needed, she couldn’t help herself
