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First base suddenly zooms away from me like in a cartoon. I feel like I’m running underwater. With bricks tied to my ankles.

The shortstop picks up the hop and throws it to first base.

I’m out.

I still run through the bag. My heart is pounding when I come to a stop. I desperately want to put my hands on my knees and catch my breath, but I can’t because it’d be too obvious that I’m about to pass out. I don’t want Brandon to see me panting—actually, I don’t want anyone to see me heaving. I put my hands on my lower back and raise my eyes to the sky, hoping to open up my throat and let air in.

“Why are you even out here?” East’s first-base player shouts over her shoulder as she runs off the field.

I haven’t caught my breath yet so I can’t answer her.
What do you care,
I think to myself, wiping off my face. The East team has left the field. My team has left the dugout. I am alone out here. I drop my eyes and shake my head.

What was that, Adele? Huh? What the hell was that?

Right now would be the perfect time to be zapped invisible, because I can’t stand here forever. I have to walk off the field, but I’m trapped—the only way off is past everyone leaning on the fence. They’re all still there, goofing around.

Showtime.

I shout, “Hey!” The group turns my way. I form a pistol with my hand and pretend to shoot myself in the temple. I go big with an exaggerated head snap and stagger. “Right?!”

I hear some light laughter roll through the crowd, and then everyone breaks apart. Kids walk away in twos and
threes. Taryn’s laugh slices the air. She’s still surrounded by a few people—Sydney, Melissa, Emma, Brandon, and his buddy Chase.

And Cara.

I hadn’t seen her over there when I did my little fake-suicide-funny-ha-ha show.

Taryn looks over their heads, right at me, and says loudly, “She’s too freaking huge to hustle! She should
not
be running. Anywhere.”

Laughter.

My breath catches in my lungs and I gasp for air. I may pass out right there on first base, in front of them all. I don’t have a funny retort for Taryn. In fact, I am mortified into silence. Taryn turns on her heels and walks away. Her groupies all follow, except for Cara. She waves, points to where we always meet, and then scurries away. Why is Cara with those girls?

I somehow get myself together and walk off the field as fast as I can. My thighs rub together with each step. By the time I reach the locker-room door, my skin stings so badly I swear there should be blood seeping through my stupid polyester uniform.

I lean against the wall and inhale the smell of sweat. I don’t want to go in there. My teammates are quiet. I close my eyes and picture them all moping around.

I toy with the idea of just leaving, walking home and not looking back. I don’t care about my T-shirt and jeans in my locker. Then I remember my backpack. I have homework.

Shit. I have to go in there.

Coach is addressing the team with her back to me as I enter the locker room. Everyone watches as I waddle toward the back wall, trying not to let my thighs touch in any way. I’m sure I look like I’ve just crapped my pants. I catch two eye rolls and one sneer.
Thanks, bitches.

“Everyone has a bad game, ladies. Even the pros. We let this one get away. Let’s remind ourselves how badly we want States this year,” Coach says. She drops her voice down an octave. “Don’t ever stop wanting it.” Her eyes match the passion in her voice. “When we stop wanting it, we lose. It’s that simple. Is everyone with me?”

My team gives her a weak “Yeah.” I don’t even open my mouth.

“Do you want to win?” Coach shouts.

“Yeah!” the girls shout. The energy in the room lifts.

“Do you want to win States?” Coach asks again.

Coach’s passion is contagious. Something feels awakened inside of me. My organs quiver. They’ve been switched from off to on. I’m alive again. I join in this time. “Yeah!”

I
want to win a state championship. I always have. Coach’s
words have done their job. I’m officially inspired. My guilt from today’s shitty performance slowly melts away as I pack up my stuff. Winning matters to me again. I want to feel the surge of pride that comes with hard work and success. How could I have let myself fall apart like this?

My hands work with silent enthusiasm, changing clothes and packing up. I’m done before everyone else. I sit back and watch my team in various stages of undress and marvel at their smallness. Don’t get me wrong—they’re definitely not a girly-girl group. Our best pitcher could probably level half the baseball team with her eyes closed, and she’s less than half my size. Some girls have their legs up on the bench, untying their cleats. I couldn’t get my leg up on this bench anymore with a crane.

But not for long. Good-bye pizza, ice cream, and cheese fries. I want to win.

Coach suddenly materializes in front of me and tells me we need to talk. I know what’s coming. Diet talk. But I’m ready to hear it this time. I leave my stuff and follow her back to her office. She closes the door, walks behind her desk, and sits down. I give her a little smile, just to let her know I’m on her side. She’s stone-faced and motions for me to sit down with her head.

“You looked awful out there today, Dell.”

I tighten my mouth and nod.

“I wanted to give you a shot this year because of your past performances. You’ve always been our best hitter.”

I squint. This isn’t heading where I thought it would. Exercise, eating right, blah, blah, blah. Why am I sweating again? My face, if wrung out, could fill a juice glass.

She reaches across her desk and hands me a towel. “I should’ve done this preseason. I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work.” She exhales. “You’re not in shape, and that’s not fair to the rest of the team. Do you understand?”

I look through her as I lie and say, “Yeah.” I think I’m about to get cut.

“I wish I didn’t have to do this, Dell. But, Christ, I can’t have you blowing our chances at winning state. I have to cut you. Take the weight off, and we’ll talk next season.”

“Yeah,” I repeat. I look away and stare at the Phillies calendar thumbtacked to the otherwise blank white wall.

Softball scholarship to college—poof.

Degree in communications—poof.

ESPN sportscaster job—poof.

The only things connecting me to my shithead father—poof.

Now that’s some fucking magic.

Coach doesn’t say another word, and neither do I. Like a
lost kid at the mall, I wander into the locker room with wide eyes and terror in my heart. The rest of the team is gone. I lean against the cinder block wall and smack the back of my head against it a few times. Despite my size, it never occurred to me that I could get cut from the team. I walk over to my stuff, grab my bat, and grip it until my knuckles turn white. I want to smash it into the wall again and again, until I’ve reduced it to a pile of dust.

“Turn off the lights on your way out, Dell!” Coach shouts from her office.

My hands release a little, and I start nodding for some reason. With shaking hands and a bobbing head, I somehow get the bat into my bag. Now I can’t bash up the locker room. I just want to get out of here. Far away.

I know Cara is outside waiting for me, yet I walk around the front of the building to avoid her. I am not capable of talking to her right now. She’s probably hanging out with the popular kids anyway.

On my walk home, my brain goes on processing overload. By the time I reach the steps to my apartment I’ve come to two major conclusions:

1. I’ve never meshed with my team socially. They’ve never invited me places or included me in stuff.
I’ve always been detached, even freshman year when I was skinny. The weight I’ve put on has definitely pushed them further away from me.

2. Truthfully, I never needed any of those girls in my life—I’ve always had Cara. They can all, including my coach, shove softball up their firm asses.

THE NEXT MORNING CARA FALLS IN STRIDE WITH
me as we walk across the back field to school. My jeans, in all of their cotton-breathing glory, feel like heaven on my thighs compared to the hideous softball pants, and I’m walking fairly normally again.

“Hey, Dell.” Cara nudges me with her shoulder. “Happy Friday.”

I pull my earbuds out. “Yeah, Friday.”

“You didn’t answer my last text. You totally fell asleep, didn’t you?”

After I got home yesterday Cara and I had a three-hour
text session about the softball bullshit. At first she was all pissy about me ditching her after the game, but eventually she calmed down once I told her why.

She stops walking and puts her hands on her hips. “You ungrateful wench,” she teases. “I would never have fallen asleep.”

I blow right by her with a grin. “Get over it.”

I can’t tell her that I hadn’t fallen asleep or that I’d stared at her last text until my eyes watered. My fingers had just refused to respond to her message—I guess because I had no good answer.

I hear her quicken her pace, and we fall back in stride. “Seriously, Dell, why
didn’t
you just tell your coach you’d go on a diet?”

I shrug. I still have no answer to her question. Why didn’t I fight to stay on the team? I mean, out of the tons of stuff I
wanted
to make disappear, softball was never included.

Cara shakes her head. “I don’t get it. You haven’t even tried to lose the weight.”

“Just drop it.”

“You sound so mad. Dell, come on. You can’t be angry. Sports are all about winning. I mean, I completely understand why she cut you.”

Isn’t that nice? My best friend
completely understands why
.

Dreams of my future have shriveled into tiny bits of pain. The rest of my walk to school I pretend each pebble I kick is one of my dried-up dreams. It ends up being stupidly unsatisfying because the pebbles are too small. I need stones—solid and strong enough to break windows. My withered-pebble dreams are useless. Empty and weak.

Like me.

In a blatant attempt to change the subject, Cara says, “Did you do Zuckerman’s homework? The man is a sadist. Who gives seventeen-year-olds eighty-five trig proofs to do in one night? He’s sick.”

I tuck my hair behind my ear. I want to tell Cara that I don’t care about the homework, Mr. Z., or anything really. I want to tell her how dark it is inside my heart after getting cut from softball. How I couldn’t sleep. How coach’s words looped in my brain for hours, haunting me all night long.

But I don’t say anything. Cara’s not good with emotional stuff. She sort of shuts down or changes the subject instead. She’d probably abandon our friendship if she knew how fragile I feel right now, and then I’d have no one. So I keep my sadness to myself. It’s private and it’s all mine.

I nod and fake it. “I did the homework. For three freaking hours. Z-man
is
a hater. Period. End of story. Good night. The end.”

“Yeah, after we stopped texting, my night sucked too,” Cara sympathizes.

I quietly exhale and look straight ahead at the kids congregating on the sidewalk. I don’t think Cara knows the meaning of “sucked.” Her parents are together, she still lives in our old neighborhood, weighs the same as she did last year, has long blond hair, big blue eyes, and decent boobs. She is a genuinely confident and happy person. Despite the fact that I ballooned to the size of a baby elephant after my father left my family, Cara, for reasons unknown, remains my best friend.

Lately, I think Cara just tolerates me, which sucks because we’ve been best friends for almost half of my life. I wish we could go back to the way it used to be. We went on our first roller coaster together. Got our periods the same summer. In eighth grade, we analyzed our first kisses for months. They happened mere weeks apart, and all we talked about was how we wanted the boys to kiss us for longer than two seconds, preferably with some tongue action. I cried with Cara when her cat got feline leukemia and had to be put to sleep. I painted the freaking headstone, which sits below her bedroom window.

I want to go back to when we laughed at anything and everything. Like freshman year, when the weird gray color of the school’s taco meat made us laugh so hard that we snorted
root beer all over our lunch trays. We don’t do stuff like that anymore.

Cara has no idea my crush on Brandon is in full swing these days. I’ve kept that to myself. I like it that way. If I told her, she would no doubt remind me of the obvious: Brandon is going out with Taryn Anderson. Which would really mean: If he’s dating Taryn, the most beautiful girl in our junior class, there’s no way he would date you, Dell. Get real.

So how I feel about Brandon remains my secret.

Cara and I make our way to our spot and sit side-by-side on the brick wall. Since it’s spring, practically the whole school’s out here waiting for the first bell. I glance over at Cara.

She smiles. “What?”