Plunked Read online

  Andy gives me a weird look, like he didn’t hear me right. Then he laughs.

  “Open to mopin’,” he says. “That’s pretty good. Where did you hear that?”

  “Nah, just made it up,” I say, and it’s true. Right on the spot. The mind can come up with some clever stuff when it’s trying to avoid the truth.

  “Well, that’s pretty good,” Andy says. A thoughtful look comes over his face and he adds, “Considering how stupid you are.”

  Now I laugh, because I really thought he was going to say something nice there.

  “Get your glove on,” I say, holding up the ball like I’m playing fetch with Nax.

  “Yeah, all right,” he says. “Open to mopin’…”

  And then he says it: “I may even allow you to serve as a rifleman in my beloved corps.”

  It’s another line from the same movie. I’m not saying which movie because it’s not exactly rated G. But Andy bought it for two bucks at the Winter Fair at our church, so it’s not like it’s that bad. It’s just a war movie.

  But anyway, the thing is, if you begin with that first line, you have to end with that second one. That makes it official. Unless you still have a “major malfunction,” so what Andy is saying is that I don’t. And you know what? I sort of do feel better about things now. War movies kind of put things in perspective.

  Other kids are arriving. Chester comes over to see if we want to toss the ball around three ways.

  “Nah,” says Andy. “We’re just gonna long toss. My arm is all, like, tight.”

  Chester looks over at me, hoping for a second opinion.

  “Hit the road,” I say.

  Chester waves his glove at us like we’re both useless and starts walking away.

  “Tot thief,” I add.

  He waves his glove at us again, this time behind his back, and walks on.

  Andy and I just toss the ball back and forth without another word. The only sounds are the pop of the baseball landing in our gloves, the cars whooshing by out on Maplewood, and the scattered chatter around us. Then Coach arrives and practice begins.

  I don’t feel the same nerves I did on Tuesday, or at least I don’t feel them quite so much. I’m starting to think I’m going to be OK.

  Famous last words.

  We start out with the star drill. It’s the exact same drill we used to call hot potato a few years ago. It’s a little confusing. Like if someone misses practice and asks what we did, you might say, “We started off with the star drill,” and they’d say, “You mean hot potato?” and you’d say, “Yeah.” It’s just that we’re older now. You’ve got to have some self-respect.

  Anyway, the drill is pretty simple. You break up into groups of five and get in a circle. Then you toss the ball to the person two to your left. They call it the star drill because the ball travels in a star shape by the time it gets back to the first guy.

  The first thing is, you want five good guys. Andy and I are already standing next to each other, so there’s two. But it’s a scramble after that, because the good partners get snapped up. So it’s like: Here’s Chester again.

  He latched on with Tim and Dustin, so that’s the three we need. I try to make eye contact with one of them, but there are already kids heading for them. Andy takes a few quick steps, but he’s not going to get there in time. If they add even one more kid, they’ll have four, and the two of us will have to keep fishing.

  So I throw my glove. It hits Tim in the back of the legs.

  “Hey!” he says, spinning around.

  “Nice arm,” says Andy.

  The first kid is talking to Dustin, but Tim turns to him and says, “Nah, we’re set.”

  Dustin looks up, like: We are? And Tim just points his glove at Andy and me, hustling up. Chester smirks. “Oh, noooww you two want some of my sweet, sweet glovin’,” he says.

  So we luck out and get a good group. We form a circle and start out pretty close in.

  “Toss it!” yells Coach.

  We flip the ball to each other fast, like we’re getting the ball out of our gloves to turn a double play. We’ve got Andy, Tim, and Chester: all top-of-the-line infielders. And Dustin and I have both spent time there, too, and we’ve been doing this drill since, you know, hot potato. So we’re flying.

  Toss; catch, transfer, toss; catch, transfer, toss; catch, transfer, toss; catch, transfer, toss; and we’re done, and we start again, even faster.

  Coach Liu wanders by. It looks like he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t, probably because of Tim being here. He notices, though. You can see he’s impressed. When he walks away, we exchange smiles as we follow the ball around the circle.

  “Back it up!” Coach yells out.

  We make the last toss, back to the guy who made the first throw. Dustin holds the ball, and we make the circle wider.

  “Grounders!” yells Coach.

  I groan. Great: I’ve got three awesome infielders and the starting catcher. These guys eat bad hops for lunch. Me? I’m an outfielder, all right? Most balls come to me airmail, and the ones on the ground are usually all out of tricks by the time I can get a glove on them.

  So you’d think I’d be concentrating, right? Well, I am — until I see Katie in the next group over. What? She’s a great infielder. Seriously. And OK, there’s something about how her ponytail flies around, and her —

  “Heads up!”

  But with grounders that really means heads down. My eyes go the wrong way, but my body has done this drill before. I fall down to my knees to smother the ball. It bounces up into my chest.

  “Oooof!” I say as it rolls away. I scramble after it, and the other guys are laughing.

  “Nice play,” says Tim. “Maybe you should just tape the glove to your chest.”

  “They could call you Chester, too,” says Chester.

  Yeah, ha-ha-ha. I drill the ball into the ground in front of Tim. I throw it extra hard, but he vacuums it up like it’s nothing.

  I swivel my head in every direction: Did Coach see? Katie? When the next ball comes, I’m ready. It was another dumb mistake, though, like diving for that ball on Tuesday, like bailing out at the plate. My cold streak is becoming an ice age.

  And I still have to bat.

  I’m waiting for it all practice, but I’m thinking we’ll just do batting practice. Since Tuesday, I’ve been thinking what I could do differently, how I could get myself to stay in on those inside pitches. How I could convince myself or trick myself or just anything.

  We motor right through the middle of practice, and long after the star drill ends, we’re still in the field. I know from the postmortem there were some errors against Haven, so Coach is making a point of “the fundamentals” today.

  Still no BP, and I know what that means.

  Katie, Tim, and Jackson turn a sweet double play. Coach finally seems satisfied.

  “Live batting,” he calls. “Let’s get ready for those Rockies.”

  Live batting … Not everyone will bat. Maybe I can slip by. Maybe I can even still start. It was really just one bad practice.

  I can’t help myself. I look over at Coach. He gives me just the tiniest nod of his head, and my heart lands somewhere down by my cleats. I’ll be batting, all right. Coach has been doing this too long to miss something so obvious. He needs to know what I’ve got for Saturday. He needs to know if he needs a new left fielder.

  “Meacham!” Coach shouts. “Take the mound.”

  Malfoy sprints in from right, a wicked smile on his face and his glove up for the ball.

  “Cuddy, Jiménez, Mogens,” says Coach. “We’ll start off with you three. Grab a bat.”

  So right away, I’m in the hole, up third, and Geoff just jogs out to left without anyone needing to say anything. It doesn’t settle who’s going to get the start on Saturday, but I guess maybe that’s the point.

  Anyway, this is Three Bears batting. Coach does this a lot. Dustin is big, the papa bear, a power hitter. Chester is little, the baby bear. And
I guess that makes me just right. We’ll find out. I can already feel the churning in my stomach.

  There are just too many things to try not to think about: getting hit on Saturday, lying there with tears in my eyes, going to the hospital. Getting humiliated at BP on Tuesday. The last one sneaks up on me: The last time I faced Malfoy, he knocked me down. I can literally feel my pulse shift gears when I remember that, him pumping his fist and glaring in at me.

  I try to talk to Chester, just to distract myself, but he’s not having it. He’s on deck and focused. Like I should be. I wander back to the pile of batting helmets and poke through it. I’m hoping there’s one that covers my whole body.

  Dustin steps to the plate, and I get a spot off to the side to try to time up Malfoy’s pitches.

  It’s another nice evening, pretty warm, just a little wind. Malfoy is throwing easy, getting nice velocity. Dustin takes a few pitches, and it’s one ball, one strike. Malfoy paints the outside corner to pull ahead in the count.

  The outside corner, I think. Maybe he’ll stay away. But that’s just how you pitch to Dustin. He’s a dead pull hitter and can turn on inside pitches like you wouldn’t believe. Everyone knows to pitch him outside, and it occurs to me right then that I must be getting the opposite reputation.

  Does everyone already know to pitch me inside? Half this team pitches or wants to, and it’s the kind of thing we keep track of. It’s weird; you think that what’s going on with your swing is your business. Meanwhile, you’ve got a dozen kids watching you every time you pick up a bat.

  Dustin is protecting the plate on the 1–2 pitch and swings at some junk. He chops it weakly to Katie, who guns him down by five steps.

  Chester steps in and scrunches himself up. Malfoy looks in at that mini strike zone, but his expression doesn’t change at all. Like I said, he’s throwing easy today.

  It’s a long at-bat. My heart is racing the whole time. It doesn’t seem possible that it could beat any faster and still be inside my chest. My hands are sweating so bad that I take off my batting glove, just so it doesn’t turn into a water balloon.

  I stuff the wrist end inside the waist of my practice pants and take a few light swings bare-handed. It feels wrong.

  The count has been full for two pitches now. Malfoy is hitting the zone by taking a little off his fastball, daring Chester to make contact, but all Chester has managed to do so far is foul it off.

  But Chester is getting comfortable now. He’s figured out what Malfoy’s doing, and there’s a little smile on his face. He’s going to wait on this next one. It’s a mistake. Malfoy winds up big and launches one, blazing fast.

  It’s probably not a strike, but Chester is surprised by the velocity and doesn’t do the math. He’s way too late with a just-in-case hack and strikes out swinging.

  Now I’m up. I’m fried. I feel like I do after a tough out, head down and beaten up, even though I haven’t taken a single swing yet. I should have a white flag tied to the end of my bat.

  Dustin has his catcher’s gear on now and heads to the plate with me: me to hit (or not) and him to catch.

  “Dude,” he says. “Your glove.”

  I don’t know what he means for a second. It’s like I can barely hear him over the sound of the blood hammering in my head. Then I remember and look down. The fingers of my red and white batting glove are poking out of my pants, waving at me as I walk.

  I barely have time to put it on before Malfoy goes into his windup. I don’t even have time for one mini swing. He’s coming right at me.

  The first pitch is on the inside half. It’s not way inside, but it still locks me up. I pick up the angle, the little cut inward, and I flinch. It’s not much, but it’s enough to ruin my balance. As a batter, you want to be like a cocked gun up there. That little flinch, it takes that away. And because the pitch still had plenty of the plate, it’s an easy strike.

  The second pitch is a rocket, and it’s even farther inside. Malfoy has figured out the inside thing, just like Coach Liu. He was in right field for that and had a great view. And he knows me. He has for years. The only thing that keeps me from jumping back out of the box is the burning memory of how sick I felt after doing just that on Tuesday. But all I can do is stand there. I am officially locked up.

  Coach calls it a ball, and Dustin says, “Good eye,” to me under his breath.

  Good eye, my butt: My eyes were closed. It’s 1–1.

  I shake my head and shoulders, just to reset, and look out at the mound. Malfoy is working fast, already in his windup.

  This one is way inside. I close my eyes again. I can feel the sweat inside my batting glove as I hear the ball pop into Dustin’s mitt.

  “Come on,” yells someone in the field. And it’s true: I’m not up there to test Malfoy’s control. That was Chester’s job. I’m up there to make contact, maybe hit a line drive. I used to be good at that. But here I am, a total statue, ahead in the count 2–1.

  It doesn’t make any sense. He could’ve struck me out by now. I look out to the mound a little earlier this time. I catch Malfoy’s eyes. I see what’s in them, and then I know. He’s not trying to get me out. He’s trying to punish me.

  He goes into his windup, and I hold my breath because I know what’s coming. I won’t do it, though. Not again, and not now. I won’t end another at-bat in the dirt.

  The pitch comes in. It’s a nasty snake of a fastball, hissing as it twists in toward me. The last thing that flashes through my mind is a single phrase, said just a little too loudly in the hallway after lunch.

  I don’t close my eyes this time. Why bother. I tilt my head back and look up at the gray sky as the ball drills me in the ribs.

  That’s it. I’m done. I’m never doing this again.

  And then I drop to my knees. I’ve been taken apart, piece by piece.

  Afterward, everyone is like, “You should fight him! You should fight him!”

  I think even he’s expecting it, because he’s hanging with Wayne and his one other friend on the team. We’re all sitting on, hanging off, or standing around the bleachers, waiting for our marching orders for the game.

  I’m standing with my usual group, off to one side. My ribs hurt, but I can tell they’re not broken. I can tell because I can breathe without stabbing myself in the sides.

  “Just go over there and punch him out!” Jackson is saying. “We got your back.”

  I look over at him and he means it. Even Chester is making fists with both hands, his glove on the ground in front of him. And the thing is, it’s tempting. It really is. I’m hurting right now, and I don’t mean my ribs. I mean I’m embarrassed and beat down, and pounding on Malfoy doesn’t sound so bad right now. But I’m not going to do it.

  “Nah,” I say, but they’re waiting for more.

  “Sometimes you squash the bug,” I add. It’s a saying we have and almost, like, a philosophy. The coaches are always telling us to “squash the bug” when we bat. It means to grind your weight down into the ground on that back foot as you swing, like there’s a bug under it. So sometimes you squash the bug, and sometimes the bug squashes you. That’s the rest of it. The bug can be the ball, the pitcher, the weather, your swing, whatever. It’s a baseball explanation that can excuse a lot. Today, the bug won.

  “OK,” Chester says, still processing it. “After practice then?”

  “Yeah!” says Tim. “After practice!”

  “Yeah, yeah!” says Jackson.

  And all of a sudden, it’s like I agreed to it. The coaches are still walking slowly across the field from where they’re huddled up, making their final decisions. In a few seconds, before they can get here, my friends will start telling other kids there’s going to be a fight. Then there will be no going back.

  That’s how fights happen: just sheer momentum. It just snowballs all around you until it’s like you’ve got no choice. But it’s not what I want, and it’s not going to make one bit of difference.

  I look over at Andy, and I guess he wa
s waiting for that, for confirmation one way or the other.

  “No, no, no,” he says. “He’s not gonna fight after practice. Give him a break, he just got drilled in the ribs.”

  Everyone turns and looks at my ribs.

  “Don’t do it, man,” Andy says, as if he’s talking me out of it.

  “All right,” I say, fake-punching my fist into my glove.

  Jackson makes the final decision. “Yeah,” he says, disappointed. “Now is not the time.”

  And then the coaches arrive, turning the corner of the chain-link fence that separates the bleachers from the field. The first thing Coach Wainwright does is call out my name.

  “Yeah,” I say, but what I’m thinking is: What now?

  The second thing he does is call Malfoy’s.

  “Yes, Coach,” he says.

  Coach makes a V with his first two fingers and points to both of us, on either side of the bleachers. It’s like that gesture you make before you point at your own two eyes and then back out, meaning: I’m watching you.

  “I don’t know what it is with you two, but you better get it sorted,” he says.

  “What it is with me?” I want to say. I just got drilled in the ribs for no reason. And last time he knocked me down. That’s what it is with me. But I don’t say any of that. I just look at Coach when he looks at me.

  He looks over at Malfoy, and that look lasts a little longer. Then he looks back at Coach Meacham, who doesn’t say anything. Even he can’t claim I was crowding the plate this time.

  There’s no official lineup, like last time, no calling out one through nine. Coach just makes a few replacements. I’m the first.

  “How’re the ribs, Mogens?” he starts.

  “Fine,” I say.

  He squints at me and then looks at my side, as if injuries came with labels.

  “How about the coconut?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  I can feel a tear starting to form in the corner of my right eye. Not because of my ribs or my “coconut,” but because I know what’s coming next. I want to reach up and wipe it away, but everyone is looking at me and that would just call more attention to it. I just have to hope Coach gets this over with before the darn thing rolls down my cheek.