“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kathleen said.
“Still figuring that out,” Cassie said. “Kind of a process.”
Then she turned and walked away from Fierro’s. She wasn’t shunning anybody. She just felt like Sarah Milligan.
She was tired of talking.
Exhausted, actually.
TWENTY-EIGHT
It was amazing, if you really thought about it, considering everything that had gone on.
If they beat Hollis Hills, they really did win the regular season championship. And then they were two wins in the play-offs away from their shot at Fenway.
Yeah. Amazing.
Jack and Teddy and Gus went to a movie on Friday night that Cassie had no interest in seeing, so Cassie and her dad went to Cold Stone for ice cream after dinner. They decided to get it in cups so that they could sit and eat it at Highland Park in the early evening.
When they got to the park, they decided to go sit in swings at the playground, which was empty now. It occurred to Cassie that Highland was hardly ever empty in the summer. But it was tonight. No ball games going on. No kids with their parents. Just the two of them.
“Just like when we came here and ate ice cream when you were a little girl,” Chris Bennett said to her.
“Sometimes I wish I still were one,” Cassie said.
Her dad laughed. “Me too!” he said.
They sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, until Cassie’s dad said, “But here’s the thing: as much as I’d like to have those nights back, and have you be little again, I look at the girl you are now, the person you are, and I know I would have signed up for that in a heartbeat.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she said.
They rocked slightly on their swings and ate their ice cream. Cassie noticed the first fireflies around them. She’d always loved fireflies. She wondered sometimes what they did during the day.
“This season has been nuts,” she said.
“Well, it hasn’t been dull, I gotta admit that,” he said. “Your mom told me about how you ran into Kathleen and Greta and Allie today. What was that like?”
She gave him the highlights. Or lowlights.
“Do you think that breaking the ice and at least talking made things a little better?”
“Nah.”
“Maybe things will get back to normal when you’re all back in school,” he said.
“Jack said the same thing.”
He pumped a fist in the air. “Then I must be right!”
“I actually don’t think that’s gonna happen, Dad. Not even sure if I want it to.”
“I understand why you might feel that way now,” he said. “But unless somebody moves away, you girls are going to be going through high school together. And you might have heard this one, but time does heal all wounds.”
Her dad leaned over and gently cleaned some ice cream off her chin.
“Teddy says that it should be the other way around: time wounds all heels. He says that’s what he wants to happen to the girls who treated me the way they have.”
“You know he doesn’t really mean that.”
Cassie smiled. “Well, maybe just a little bit.”
They went back to rocking in silence on their swings.
Then Cassie said, “You want to know another crazy thing about our season? I kept telling myself that everything that happened was because of Sarah. But I don’t think that anymore.”
“How so?”
“I think it’s been about me, Dad. I thought Sarah was the one who had to figure out why she was playing and what it really meant to be part of a team. But guess what? It turned out to be me.”
“I know it’s been a challenge, kiddo. But who loves a challenge more than you do?”
“Nobody,” she said. “Even when nobody’s talking to me.”
“I’m talking to you,” he said, reaching over now and mussing her hair.
“I’ve kind of turned into Sarah.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, I’m not an idiot, Dad.”
“Noticed.”
“What I mean is, I’ve had to focus even harder on just playing my game than I ever did before. And it has helped me, watching her, because nobody focuses the way she does.”
“She controls what she can control,” her dad said. “Except for those times when she lost control.”
Cassie took her cup and his, walked over, dropped them into the trash bin closest to them, and came back.
“You know what the best thing that’s happened is?” she said. “I understand better why I play.”
“You didn’t before?”
“Oh, I always knew that I loved playing and competing and doing well,” she said. “But before this season, I’d look at girls on losing teams, ones who didn’t have a chance at winning the title or even competing for one, and wonder what kept them going.”
“There’s all sorts of ways to win in sports,” he said. “If I’ve learned anything, playing and coaching, I’ve learned that.”
“You sound like Jack again.”
“Did it ever occur to you that Jack might sound like me?” he said, grinning at her.
She grinned back, and bumped fists with him.
“Kathleen said that I started the fight,” Cassie said. “But you know what I’ve been thinking since I saw her? I’m not fighting with her. I’m just fighting harder than I ever have before, trying to do something great.”
“That’s my girl,” her dad said.
He’d been saying that to her for her whole life. He used to say that when he’d push her on these swings and she’d keep telling him she wanted to go higher. But there was something about the way he’d just said it—that’s my girl—that made her eyes start to well up.
She stood up. So did he. She put her arms around him and held on tight.
“I’ve never been prouder of you than I have been this season,” he said. “However it comes out.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she said.
“You’re still my little girl. You know that, right?” he said.
“I do,” she said. “But we need to keep that between the two of us.”
She didn’t let go, and neither did he.
