She jerks her mask down and crouches behind the plate while I slip out of one set of shoes and into my cleats. Pounding her glove a few times, she stretches her legs out to the side one at a time, clearly showing off how flexible she is. I catch Zack trying to do the same, and it’s not smooth. He stops trying after losing his balance on his left.
Relax, buddy. You don’t have to do everything she does. You’re good at doing it your way.
Dropping my turf shoes on the bench, I step up on the bullpen mound and dig in at the rubber. Grass overgrows much of it. This field needs some love. I roll my shoulders and hold the ball up for Hollis to see, making sure she’s ready for a warm-up toss. I throw it at half speed, not surprised when it pops in her glove above her head. She stands and rolls the ball in her hand a few times, and I hold my glove out for her to toss it back. We’re going to be here all day at this rate.
I knew she could play. I didn’t expect her to come out here and be weak or not at least hang. I expected Zack to blow her away, but I figured she would be able to handle a little bit of catch. This game is nothing like softball. It’s fragile and dangerous, and tiny mistakes in calculation result in disasters, in a blink. What I expected from Hollis was a gamble, a risky move for the sake of proving a point. My assumptions topple the second she sends the ball right back to my glove, hitting me square in the chest, the pop on my end as loud as it was on hers.
The sound is resounding enough that Zack stops mid-throw, distracted by the game of catch happening next to him. He eventually tosses the ball back to Jay, but I can tell he isn’t invested. I also see right through his lame attempt at tightening his mask so he can watch Hollis and me throw for a full minute. He’s crouched, fumbling with his gear, eyes lasered on the ball zinging between Hollis and me with increasing speed. Either seeing enough or realizing how obvious he is, he puts his helmet back on and drops to his squat, returning to Jay who was as lost in Hollis as the rest of us.
“Damn, girl,” he says. A second later my cousin pounds his mitt, forcing his partner’s attention back to him. Hollis just keeps doing her job, pretending not to notice any of it. She has to, though. Her mask hides most of her features, so underneath there must live a bit of arrogance. Not that it isn’t warranted. Damn.
I shake out my arm after our last toss and situate myself on the mound, ready to really throw, motioning that I’m starting with a four-seam. She lowers and pats her glove, flashing it open and closed where she wants it. She seems ready. Every little nuance is as it should be. This is the true test, and I’m glad Zack isn’t watching. No matter what happens, I’ll have to make him believe he has nothing to worry about, that she can’t handle this. To be honest, I’m not sure what I’m hoping for right now. If she can’t handle it, she’s going to get hurt.
I raise my leg and draw my hands in to my chest, then extend my arms with my stride as I push off and let it fly. It’s an inside pitch for a lefty, and meets her target right at the corner of the plate. A strike if they don’t swing, a probable double if they do. It’s exactly what she called for, exactly where she wanted it. And she handled it like it was nothing.
These odds are not fifty-fifty.
6
Hollis
It’s not like my dad to take Fridays off from workouts. He believes in using every inch given, and there are no rules against holding “optional” workouts seven days a week. Of course, everyone knows the unwritten rule of workout attendance—it’s silently mandatory. Not today. Today, my dad sent out a text blast around lunch hour letting everyone know they were on their own.
Apparently, for most of the team, this means bypassing the field completely after the last bell of the day and heading home, or to this hill everyone keeps talking about. I thought for a while I would be the only person to show up, but about five minutes into my run, Cannon arrives. I went a full mile today, to make sure I could still do it, and I’m about to hit my final stretch, my legs pleading with me to give them the rest I’ve been promising them for the last seven-eighths of a mile.
I slow to a steady jog and eventually a fast walk, my hands folded atop my head to give my lungs a good stretch. The sky is blanketed with a deep gray, the clouds thick and threatening to dump rain or snow, or a little of both. You can really see the weather out here. Back home, it was more of a surprise. The news told you the storm was coming, but the height of the borough’s buildings made it easier to ignore the oncoming threat. More times than I can count, I got caught blocks away with nothing but my bike to get me home. Something tells me rain and snowfall are a little different out here.
Cannon nods to acknowledge me. It’s . . . strange. We spent the week barely exchanging words. We talk more to one another in statistics than on the field, but that’s basically a proximity
