“You know I play the right way, Dad.”
“Not tonight you didn’t,” he said.
She had taken what he’d said to heart. Ever since, she had run out every ball at practice, taken every drill seriously, even leading some of them when her dad asked her to. She had done her best to practice like she played. She knew it wasn’t a real game, knew that every swing she took and every ball she fielded and every pitch she threw didn’t matter the way they did when the games counted. But she had discovered something: there were all kinds of ways to have fun in sports. And now the harder she worked, the more fun she had.
She had told that to her dad after the first official practice for the Red Sox.
He’d put a hand to his chest and staggered back a couple of steps. “You’re telling me I was right?” he said.
“I’ll tell you what I tell Jack and the guys,” she’d said, smiling at him. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
There were thirteen players on the team, which meant they didn’t have enough to scrimmage. So when Cassie and the guys got to the field, her dad announced that he was putting Jack and Teddy and Gus to work. He needed them to be players, because he wanted to have a three-inning scrimmage, with him pitching for both teams.
“And which position would you like to play on Cassie’s team?” Mr. Bennett said to Jack.
Jack was grinning at Cassie when he said, “Shortstop?”
Her position.
“Very funny,” Cassie said.
Brooke jumped in and said, “You catch for my team, Jack. I’ll go play the outfield for theirs.”
“I’d rather play against Cassie anyway,” Jack said.
“Your loss,” Cassie said.
Cassie’s team was starting in the field. Sarah was on Cassie’s team, playing center. Cassie had watched her when her dad had brought Jack and Teddy and Gus out onto the field. She didn’t look frightened, exactly, at three boys she didn’t know basically joining the Red Sox tonight. She didn’t look angry. There was just a look of wariness on her face, as if somebody had moved her stuff.
Cassie had said hardly anything to Sarah over the past couple of practices, still giving her space. Or maybe not trying to invade her space. But now, watching as Sarah kept staring at the guys, she walked over and quietly said, “It’s okay. They’re friends of mine.”
Sarah’s response was to sprint out to her position.
The scrimmage, their first, was fun. Because it was a three- inning game, it meant that everybody would likely get one at bat. By the bottom of the third, last ups for Cassie’s team, they were losing 4–3. Jack, who could have been a switch-hitter, same as Cassie, had hit one over Sarah’s head in the top of the third, knocking home two runs and putting his team ahead.
“You figured me out,” Cassie’s dad said to him when Jack was standing on second base. “In one at bat.”
“Up and in, low and away, then up and in,” Jack said.
“You don’t miss much,” Chris Bennett said.
“He’s cocky enough already, Dad,” Cassie said from short.
“Look who’s talking,” Jack said.
Cassie’s dad looked at his daughter, then at Jack, and said, “So it goes.”
He got two quick outs in the bottom of the third. Greta popped out, and then Kathleen hit one hard, but directly at Teddy in right field.
When he threw the ball back in, he yelled to Cassie, “Am I about to get my first-ever win in girls’ softball?”
Cassie was walking to the plate. She yelled back, “I’m sorry, is the game over yet?”
“About to be,” Teddy said.
Cassie thought: I never make the last out, not even in a scrimmage. And I’m not doing it tonight with my boys in the game.
“That was a mistake,” Jack said from behind the plate. “Him chirping you.”
“Always,” Cassie said, taking her stance, setting her hands, staring out at her dad.
She ripped the first pitch she saw from him over Lizzie’s head at third base, down the left-field line, and into the corner, before Brooke finally ran it down and got the ball back into the infield.
Cassie thought she might have been able to make third. But she wasn’t sure she could make it. And you didn’t make the last out of the game at third, even if it was a scrimmage.
Practice like you play.
But once she was at second base, and the ball was back in her dad’s glove, she did find the time to stare out at Teddy in right, and put a hand to her ear, like she couldn’t hear anything. Chirping him right back without saying a word. Teddy acted like he couldn’t see, just turned to his other outfielders and made a motion with his fingers, reminding them there were still two outs.
Sarah came to the plate. She didn’t say anything to Jack, or look at him as she dug in. Cassie watched as Sarah went through the same exact routine she did before every swing. She leaned forward and touched the far side of the plate three times with the end of her bat. She tugged the right shoulder of her T-shirt, then the left shoulder. Tugged on the bill of her cap. Then, and only then, did she look out at the pitcher.
Her first time up against Mr. Bennett, she’d hit a ball so hard back up the middle that it had gone through his legs before he’d had time to get his glove down. Now, in her stance, she was completely still, the way she always was. Cassie liked to wave her bat a little before the pitch was thrown. Not Sarah. She looked as if she were posing for
