RYAN
State law keeps me from pitching more than fifteen innings a week. I’m only brought in on Thursday games if our other two pitchers dig us a hole. Three innings ago, when Coach put me in, we were so far deep we couldn’t see daylight. Not that the rain helps.
It’s rained for two weeks. Two weeks’ worth of games have been called. Two weeks’ worth of parties have been canceled. Two weeks of me and Beth ignoring each other.
Everyone is anticipating that the rain will end tonight and the field party will finally take place tomorrow. I’m ready too—eager to win the dare and have Beth officially out of my life.
Bottom of the seventh with the score tied, I need to hold this last batter to send the game into extra innings. Light rain cools the heat on the back of my neck. Pooled droplets drip from the brim of my hat. The ball’s slick. So is my hand. I hate playing in the rain, but guys in the majors do it all the time.
The intensity of the rain increases. I can barely read Logan’s signal. Out of habit, I peek at the runner on first, but I can’t see a damn thing. I wind back and the game-changing sound of nature intervenes: thunder and lightning.
“Off the field!” the umpire shouts.
My cleats sink in the mud as I walk to the dugout. This is the third rain delay of the game. There won’t be another. The game is done.
“Great job, guys.” Coach claps each one of us on our soggy backs as we enter. “Drive home safely. Severe weather is moving through.”
Rain beats against the roof. I don’t see the point of a roof if everything underneath it is wet. The seats. The equipment. Our bags. I quickly change shoes, tying my Nikes harder and faster than normal.
Knowing me better than anyone else, Chris wedges his large body onto the bench beside me. “We didn’t lose.”
Rain cancellations don’t count. “We didn’t win either.”
“You would have pulled us out.”
“Maybe.” I stand and sling my bag over my shoulder. “But I’ll never know.”
The rest of the team chatters, changes shoes, and waits in the dugout for the worst of the rain to end. I’m not in the mood for company and I’m already wet. The rain hammers my back as I head to the parking lot.
“Hey!” Chris runs to catch me. “What’s your deal, dawg?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that shit,” he yells over the rain. “You’ve been a walking mood for two weeks.”
I open the door to my Jeep and toss my bag into the back. Beth. That’s what happened, but I can’t tell Chris that. I’m ending my losing streak tomorrow when the rain moves out and Beth comes with me to the party.
“Maybe he’ll tell me.” Standing next to Chris, Lacy looks like a drowned rat with her hair plastered to her face. When the rain began an hour ago, she sought shelter in Chris’s car. “Take me home, Ryan.”
The last thing I want is to be trapped in a car with her. “I’m not your boyfriend.”
“No,” she yells as another clap of thunder vibrates in the sky. “You’re my friend.”
Lacy kisses Chris’s cheek and runs to the passenger side. I glance at Chris and he nods. “She doesn’t want to be mad at you anymore.”
I hop into the Jeep and start it up. In Lacy–like style, she goes to work turning on the heat and switching the radio to her favorite country station before lowering the sound. “Did you and Beth have a fight?”
The windshield wipers whine at a fast rate as I pull out of the parking lot. I wonder what Lacy knows. I didn’t tell anyone that Beth and I went into Louisville. “Is that what she said?”
“No. I finally scored her home number the other week and her uncle told me you guys were out.”
I calculate how this affects the dare. “Did you tell Chris?”
“It’s not my business to tell. Did you take her into Louisville because of the dare?”
“Yes.”
“So the dare’s done. That’s why you’ve been ignoring her?”
Silence. Why is Lacy making me feel like a dick? Beth’s the one that screwed me over. She owes me this. “She treats you like crap, Lace. Why do you care?”
Lacy doesn’t live far from the community ballpark. I ease into her drive and watch the hanging ferns on the front porch blowing in the wind.
“She was my friend.”
“Was! She was…”
Lacy holds both her hands out. “Stop. Listen to me. I’m not you. I’ve never been you. You walk into any situation and it’s automatically perfect. I’m not perfect. I never have been.”
What is she talking about? If Lace only knew how broken my family is; how since Mark left we’re slowing dying. “I’m not perfect.”
“Will you shut up?! God, I can’t get you guys to say crap half the time and then anytime I try to actually SAY something worth saying, one of you interrupts me. So shut up!”
I gesture with my hand for her to continue.
“No one liked me, Ryan. Daddy moved us to Groveton when I was four and I knew then nobody liked me. My mom tried playdate after playdate and put me in preschool and no matter what, I was considered the outsider. I’m not you. I’m not Logan. I’m not Chris. I can’t trace my roots to the founding fathers. I can’t eat Sunday chicken with my grandma after church because she doesn’t live on the next property over, but three states away.”
I rub the back of my head, unsure if I should speak and if I do, what to say. Lacy never seemed to care what people thought of her. “We never treated you different.”
She sighs heavily. “Why do you think I’ve hung out with you since sixth grade? Do you think I love baseball that much?”
I chuckle. “Don’t let Chris hear you say you aren’t a diehard fan.”
“I love him,” she says, and I understand that means that she also loves anything he loves. “Anyway, the whole point is, Beth liked me. When Gwen was mean to me…”
My mouth opens to protest. She points at me and narrows her eyes. “Don’t say a word. One, I told you to shut up. Two, this is my monologue and not yours. Three, she’s a bitch. As I was saying, when Gwen played to her true self and dropped the I’m-pretending-to-be-perfect-so-the-whole-world-will-love-me act, she made my life hell. I was labeled weird before I entered kindergarten, yet Beth liked me.
“When Gwen made me cry, Beth held my hand and told me that she loved me. When Gwen’s friends told me I couldn’t play on the swings, Beth pushed them off and told me the swings were mine. Beth taught me what it meant to have friends. I don’t know what the hell happened to her between third grade and now, but I owe her. Here’s the thing—I love you and I love her, but I swear to God I’ll kick your ass if you hurt her.”
Lacy has thrown out too much to process, so I focus on what I know. “You’ll kick my ass?”
She cracks a smile. “Okay, maybe not, but I will be pissed off and I don’t like being pissed off at you.”
I don’t like her being pissed off at me either. “She’s coming with me to the party.”
Disappointment clouds her face. “Dare or date?”
“Dare.” I don’t lie to friends. “But Beth knows it.”
“If she knows, doesn’t that break the rules?”
I shrug. “We don’t have a rule book.”
The porch light flips on and the front door opens. Through the pouring rain, I barely see Lacy’s mom. I wave at her. A second later, she waves back.
“She thinks all Chris and I do is make out in cars.” Lacy’s hand flutters away any further discussion about her and Chris making out in cars, which is fine by me.
I’d rather think about Beth. Who is she? The girl Lacy swears is a true friend? The girl with blond hair who loved ribbons and fancy dresses? The girl who crawls underneath my skin and stays? The girl strong enough to tell me what she really thinks of me? The girl who looks so small and defenseless at times that I wonder if she can survive in the world on her own? Lacy may hate me for these words, but they have to be said. “Maybe Beth isn’t who you think she is.”
“Funny,” Lacy says. “I was about to say the same thing to you.”