It was here that Cassie made the only mistake she’d really made all day. One of the biggest she’d made all season.
She missed her spot completely.
Threw Lexi a pitch that was down and in.
And Lexi crushed it, pulling it to left-center.
Right between Kathleen and Sarah.
Cassie could hear Sarah yelling for the ball all the way from the pitcher’s mound, no doubts on that this time. The ball might have been a little closer to Kathleen. But even though both of them had started out running hard for the ball, Sarah had clearly taken charge, as if she were sure the ball was going to end up in her glove, and end this game.
Kathleen then played it exactly the way you were supposed to when you’re giving way to the center fielder. She veered to her left, giving Sarah plenty of room, but ready to back her up if somehow Sarah couldn’t make the play.
Except.
Except that as she did angle herself to get behind Sarah, Kathleen’s right leg buckled underneath her in a sickening way, Kathleen grabbing for her right knee as soon as she hit the ground.
As she did, Sarah stopped, for a far different reason than she had on the same kind of play in the first game of the season.
She stopped because she was looking at Kathleen and not at the ball, stopped because she was hearing what everybody on the field was hearing: the sound of Kathleen crying out in pain.
As Sarah did, the ball fell underneath her glove, and began rolling all the way to the outfield wall.
Sarah wasn’t even watching it. She was already kneeling next to a teammate in trouble, even though it was the teammate who had started all of Sarah’s troubles on the Red Sox.
THIRTY
By the time Nell Green came all the way from right field to collect the ball and throw it back toward the infield, Lexi was all the way around the bases with an inside-the-park homer that won the game for the Yankees, and handed Cassie her first loss as a starting pitcher in two full seasons of softball.
Yankees 3, Red Sox 2.
Lexi’s teammates, not really focused on what was happening in the outfield, mobbed her as soon as she crossed the plate with the winning run. As they did, the Red Sox players, and Cassie’s dad, and Kathleen’s mom and dad, were running toward left-center, where Sarah and Kathleen were.
Cassie beat them all out there.
“Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move,” she heard Sarah telling Kathleen. “You’ll only make it worse if you do. I hurt my knee one time in basketball and even had to have surgery, and they told me afterward that I only made things worse because I tried to put weight on it. So don’t put any weight on it, okay? Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move.”
“It hurts so much,” Kathleen said, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Please don’t cry,” Sarah said. “I hate when people cry.”
Cassie’s dad, and Kathleen’s parents, were there by now.
“Where does it hurt, honey?” Kathleen’s dad said.
“Everywhere.”
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “Just don’t move.”
“I told her that,” Sarah said. She looked at Cassie. “You heard me tell her that, right? I told her not to move because it would only make things worse.”
“I did,” Cassie said. “You did good.”
Kathleen’s mom was behind her daughter, gently patting her back. She said they were going to get her to the car and take her to Walton Hospital, which Cassie knew was twenty minutes away, tops.
Cassie’s dad and Kathleen’s dad asked the girls from both teams, because all the players from both teams were out there by now, to please give them some room. Then the two men helped Kathleen up, as Kathleen kept her right leg completely off the ground. She had stopped crying by now. Her eyes were still red. Cassie’s dad asked where their car was, and Kathleen’s dad said, “Right behind home plate. Got here late, and had to risk a foul ball busting my windshield.”
Cassie’s dad always said that only inexperienced softball parents parked that close to the field.
One careful step from Kathleen at a time, the two dads half walked and half carried her toward the infield. As they did, the girls from both teams applauded. Sarah didn’t applaud, just stared, wide-eyed, at Kathleen. Cassie thought Sarah might cry too, as much as she said she hated crying.
Then, as Kathleen and the dads got to second base, they stopped. Kathleen turned around, and called out, “Sarah?”
Sarah took a couple of steps forward, as if she’d just been called on in class.
“Yes?” she said.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” Kathleen said, and then continued on toward her parents’ car.
“Why’s she thanking me?” Sarah said, almost to herself. “I don’t know what she’s thanking me about. All I did was make an error so we lost.”
“No,” Cassie said. “No, we did not lose.”
THIRTY-ONE
Cassie remembered the last time she got an L as a starting pitcher.
She was eleven. Their team was called the Dodgers. It was the second-to-last game of the regular season. She gave up three runs in the top of the first inning. Nobody’s fault but her own. Four hard hits around a walk. She got mad after that, and never gave up another run that day. But the Dodgers lost 3–2.
But she wasn’t angry today. She was disappointed that they’d lost, of course. She was always disappointed when she lost, and she was now, because she hadn’t finished the job. Lizzie could blame herself all she wanted for making an error. Maria, too. Sarah could blame herself for attending to Kathleen while the ball and the game were rolling away from her. But none of them had put that pitch to Lexi in the worst possible place.
No, this was on her.
Kathleen’s dad had said he’d call Chris Bennett when he knew something at the hospital. But just the way Kathleen’s knee had twisted and collapsed
