High Heat (23 page)

"I'm interested," I said quickly.

He slid a thick manila envelope over to me. "There's an application in there, and some information about the school, fill out the forms and mail them to the registrar. I'll be in touch. And keep your grades up."

For the rest of the school day I felt as if I might float off into space. A full scholarship ... pitching at the college level—it was too good to be true.

When school ended I headed to the baseball field. That's when the nerves hit. As I was lacing up my cleats, my hands started shaking. So much was on the line. I wanted the scholarship for me, but I wanted it for Mom too.
If everything works out.
That's what Coach Dravus had said. My numbers had to stay good for the rest of the season.

That afternoon the ball felt strange in my hand. I couldn't focus on home plate, couldn't get comfortable on the mound. My pitches were wild, and they had no movement. Grandison noticed and came over. "Your arm okay?"

"It's fine."

"If something hurts, you tell me."

"Really, I'm fine."

"Well, go easy. Dravus will be at Saturday's game. You'll want to be sharp then. I promised him I'd give you two innings."

I dreaded going home after practice. Coach Dravus would have called. Mom would be excited, and I didn't know how to explain to her that if I pitched badly, I'd blow it all.

I hoped she'd left for work, but when I opened the door to the duplex, she was sitting next to Marian on the sofa, her eyes shining. "So tell us all about it," she said excitedly.

"There's nothing much to tell," I said. "They're just looking at me. I'm sure they look at lots of guys. Coach Dravus didn't promise anything."

"But did you like him?" Mom asked. "Does it seem like something you'd want to try?"

"Yeah. I guess. I talked to him for only a few minutes."

"Maybe someday you'll be a major leaguer," Marian chimed in.

"Don't be stupid. I'm never going to be a major leaguer."

"Your sister is just excited for you, Shane. Don't bite her head off."

"I'm sorry. Neither of you seems to understand. They're only looking at me. They look at lots of players. I pitch lousy once, and that's that."

Mom's voice changed. "Shane, whether you get the scholarship or not, that a college coach would consider you is an honor, and you should be proud of yourself, just as we're proud of you."

I stood facing her and Marian, feeling awkward, not knowing what to say. At last Mom glanced at her watch. "I have to go to work. There's an enchilada dinner in the microwave. Three minutes, then turn it and cook it another two." She kissed me on the cheek and went out.

"What's your problem?" Marian asked as soon as Mom had left.

"Nothing. Only don't ask me any more questions. Okay?"

"Don't worry. I won't."

I microwaved the enchilada dinner and ate it at the kitchen table. After that I did my homework. I was finished by eight. I put on my coat and went downstairs. "I'm going to the library," I said to Marian. She looked up at me. I knew she wanted to come along. "You can come if you want."

It was a clear, starry night—unusual for Seattle. I'd felt stifled and hot for hours. The cold air was calming. "I'm sorry I was mean to you," I said.

She looked over. "Why were you so mad?"

"I wasn't mad. I just want this scholarship so much. It would make everything easier, and I have a feeling I'm not going to get it."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I just feel like I'm going to blow it."

"You won't, Shane. You'll do great." She paused. "Mom says that she'll try to go to some of your games. I'm going too."

I groaned. "Mom gets bored when I'm not playing, and she can't watch when I am. And you don't like the games either. You know it."

Marian shrugged. "She only said she was going to try. She'll probably never do it. You know how much she works."

We'd reached the library. For once it wasn't crowded, so I didn't have to wait for a computer. I typed in Shorelake Academy's website address, and after a couple of clicks I was on the baseball team's homepage.

I was hoping for individual statistics, but the website was nothing more than a list of the games Shorelake had played
and the games still to come. I couldn't tell anything at all about Reese. Discouraged, I was about to log off when my eye happened to fall on their schedule. Shorelake had a game against O'Dea on Friday night on field one at Woodland Park. Our game wasn't until Saturday.

I logged off, waited while Marian checked out three books, and then started for home. The sky had become even clearer, the night air colder.

"Look at all the stars," Marian said. "There must be thousands of them."

I looked up. "There are millions more we can't see."

She stopped, and so did I. "Remember that time Dad took us camping at Diablo Lake?" she said. "When he woke us up in the middle of the night and made us get out of the tent and look at the stars?"

I smiled. "Sure, I remember. I was mad at him for waking me, but that sky was unbelievable, wasn't it? Way more stars than tonight even."

"A hundred times more, I bet. And shooting stars too." She paused. "Remember how he bought those glow sticks and then passed them out to all the kids at the campground so we could play tag late?"

"That was fun." I paused. "I wish we'd gone camping with him more."

"Still, we went every summer," Marian said. "Laura's dad has never taken her camping. He always says he's going to, but then he doesn't. It makes her mad."

Woodland Park: I didn't think about it being the field where I'd hit Reese until I got there. It had been a full year, but when I saw the field, my stomach started churning, and I thought I might throw up. Then the nausea passed, and afterward came an odd sort of exhilaration. Maybe everything could still turn out all right. Maybe, on this night and on this field, I'd see that Reese was on his way back.

I didn't sit in the bleachers. I couldn't sit on the Shorelake side, not with Greg's, Cody's, and Reese's parents. And I couldn't sit on the O'Dea side. So I watched the pregame warm-ups from a spot near the bike jumps. Reese was out in center field running down fly balls. I'd been watching Kim Seung for months, and I'd thought he was the best. But good as he was, Reese was better. He didn't so much sprint after a fly ball as glide. It was beautiful. That's the only word to describe it.

After the outfield warm-ups, Shorelake took batting practice. Reese had only five swings, and the pitches were grooved. Still, he stung the ball three times, and he didn't look like a player who was afraid. Finally it was game time.

I figured Reese would be batting in the middle of the lineup. Fourth or fifth, probably, but no lower than sixth. That meant that at most I'd have to wait until the second inning to see him bat. And if Shorelake got something going early, I might see him at the plate in the first inning.

O'Dea's pitcher was a big left-hander. It was fastballs all the time, most of them right down the middle, though now and then he let fly with something wild. He was the kind of pitcher Reese used to feast on. In the first, he powered through Shorelake's lineup, three up and three down. But that was okay.
Reese had gotten a good look at him. He'd know what to expect when he got up there in the second inning. He'd be ready.

But Reese didn't bat cleanup, and he didn't bat fifth or sixth or seventh. I had to wait until the third inning before he finally stepped up to the plate. He was batting ninth.

Reese Robertson.

Ninth.

As he stood in, I remembered the confidence that had been in his eyes, in his stride, in the way he'd dug in to hit. All of it was gone. Now he looked worse than he'd looked in the summer. Worse than he'd looked in December, January, and February.

If I saw it from three hundred feet away, the O'Dea pitcher had to see it from sixty feet six inches. "Come on, Reese," somebody yelled from the bleachers.

The left-hander got the sign, then delivered. A fastball, on the inside part of the plate. Reese jumped out of the box as if it were going to hit him. "Strike one!" the umpire called. "Hang in there, Reese," a voice called out, and I knew it was Reese's dad.

The O'Dea pitcher came right back to the inside half of the plate. Again Reese jumped out. "Strike two!" the umpire yelled. Reese pounded his bat on home plate, trying to look determined, trying to look like a hitter. The next pitch was probably a foot outside. Reese stepped toward third base, reaching with his arms and waving feebly at the ball. "Strike three!" the umpire yelled.

Reese's second at bat came in the fifth inning. The O'Dea pitcher was wearing down, and Shorelake was coming back. There were runners on first and second with nobody out. This
was when Reese had been his most dangerous. A pitcher reeling, teammates dancing off the bases. This had been his time. "Come on, Reese," I whispered. "Do it."

O'Dea's pitcher went into the stretch, delivered. Reese squared around and laid down a sacrifice bunt. It was a good bunt. The pitcher fielded it, and his only play was to first. Both runners moved into scoring position. But it was a bunt.

As Reese returned to the bench, his teammates surrounded him, clapping him on the back and high-fiving him as if he'd hit a home run. In the bleachers parents were up on their feet, giving him a standing ovation. He'd become a charity case: the scrub who tries so hard everybody roots for him. If I had been him, I'd have quit. I couldn't have taken it.

But he high-fived everyone, then picked up his outfielder's glove and sat down by himself at the end of the bench. He was playing it out, just like he told me he would. I left a couple of minutes later. I'd seen enough.

On Saturday afternoon Coach Dravus came to our house for lunch. Mom took the day off and spent an hour cleaning. On the kitchen table she put out a bouquet of flowers she'd bought at Safeway. "He's just a baseball coach," I said to her. "He's not the president."

But in the hour before he came, I kept looking out the window for his car. And when he was five minutes late, I started worrying he wouldn't come. Finally the car pulled up, and a minute later he was sitting on the sofa, a cup of coffee in his big hands.

It was awkward at first; nobody seemed to know what to say. But then Coach Dravus noticed one of my mom's books on the coffee table. "Do you like mysteries?" he asked, picking it up.

"Oh, yes," my mother replied. "Very much."

"So do I," he said, and then they were off, talking about different authors and books. Marian and I just sat looking at each other. Mom had made ham sandwiches for lunch. I could hardly eat, and Mom was the same. But both Marian and Coach Dravus made up for us.

After lunch we went back to the front room, and he started talking about the university. It turns out it's a Catholic school, which I hadn't known, and neither had Mom. "We're not Catholics," she said.

"That's not usually a problem," he said. "There are some religion classes that Shane would be required to take. Mainly the history of religion. So unless you object to Christianity..."

Mom flushed. "Oh, no, nothing like that. I was raised a Lutheran. I always intended to have Shane and Marian go to church, but somehow there just never seemed to be time."

He nodded. "Mrs. Hunter, I wish I could promise Shane a scholarship this very minute. But I can't. At this point all I can tell you is that if you're interested, we're interested. Time will tell if it can all be worked out."

I knew what that meant. I had to keep pitching the way I had been pitching.

The drive down to West Seattle was awkward. I was used to sitting in Grandison's van with Miguel, joking with him to cut the nervousness. Now I was by myself, looking out the
window while Mom and Coach Dravus talked about the beauty of Puget Sound and how nice it was to live near water.

It was a relief to reach the field, find Miguel, and start loosening up with him. He asked me a bunch of questions about the visit by Coach Dravus, but I barely answered.

Dravus was up in the stands sitting next to my mother. She was looking at me, but his eyes were fixed on Kim Seung, who was running down fly balls in the outfield. Kim knew he was being watched, because he went after everything as if it were the World Series, finally Dravus's eyes shifted to me.

Immediately my palms became sweaty. My next throw to Miguel was probably twenty miles an hour faster than the throw before. "Ow!" he said, but then he spotted Dravus watching me, and he smiled. I fired the next five or six pitches at him, and he didn't complain.

West Seattle was like us—a team on the rise. Their school had been rebuilt, and they had some dynamo principal whom everybody loved. The baseball field where they played had been remodeled, and the stands had a fair number of adults and kids.

Right from the start the game was close. Miguel was sharp, striking out half the guys he faced. The only hits West Seattle had were little infield squibbers that nobody could get to and a two-out double. After four innings, they didn't even have a base runner reach third.

West Seattle's starter was matching Miguel. Only Kim hit him hard. He'd lined a single to center his first time up and his next time up had crushed another line drive right past the third baseman for a double.

In the top of the sixth, the West Seattle pitcher struck Jason Crandle out on three pitches, and then got Dirk Becker to pop up. Two outs, nobody on—it looked like another dead inning. But then Pedro Hernandez smacked a fastball right back up the middle and into center field for a single. Benny Gold followed with another hard-hit ground ball, this one past the first baseman and into the right field corner, an easy double. If I'd been coaching at third, I'd have sent Hernandez to the plate. Grandison held him up, though, and it turned out to be the smart play. The throw from right field hit the cutoff man perfectly, and he fired a strike to the plate. Hernandez would have been out by twenty feet.

Two outs, runners on second and third, and Brian Fletcher—our number-nine hitter—stepped to the plate. From the bench we shouted encouragement, but Fletcher had never come through with a clutch hit in a close game.