Playing the Field (2 page)

“Hi Rachel. Hi Serena.” He stopped a couple
of feet away from them. “What are you guys doing?”

Rachel and Serena glanced at each other, then
looked back at us with somewhat puzzled expressions. “We’re eating
lunch,” Rachel said.

“Right,” Tony said. “We just finished.”

“Oh,” Serena said.

I gulped and swallowed and mostly looked at
Serena’s shoes.

“The lunch was pretty good today,” Tony
said.

“Oh really?” Rachel asked. “We brought sack
lunches.”

So had we. I was glad the girls didn’t know
this little fact, as they would have thought we were total idiots.
As it was now, we might be able to escape this situation with the
girls only thinking we were partial idiots.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Lunch was good.”

The girls nodded at us with the same
patronizing stare you use when you’re talking to
four-year-olds.

“I guess we’ll be going now,” Tony said.

“Okay,” Rachel said.

As we turned and walked to the door, I could
hear the girls erupt into giggles. I was glad my back was to them
so they couldn’t see my face turn red. I shook my head at Tony.
“That was a master at work?”

“It was a start,” Tony said.

“I think it was a strikeout.”

Tony pushed the cafeteria door open with more
force than he needed to. “It was breaking the ice. Now it will be
easier to talk to them next time.”

“Next time?” Even though we were out of the
cafeteria, I could still hear Serena and Rachel’s laughter in my
mind. I shook my head again and walked a little faster. “I think
I’d rather pay all of my allowance to have some funny-smelling
college student come over and spit at me.”

Chapter 2

After school, on the days we had baseball
practice, I always walked home with Tony. His dad then drove us to
the baseball field for practice. Mr. Manetti was the coach of the
Gilbert Coyotes, the best team in the East Valley league; that’s
how Tony and I originally became friends. We were on the same team
in fourth grade and have played ball together ever since. Tony
plays third base. I’m on second. We have our system down pat. I can
field a ball and deliver it to Tony before the base runners even
know where it's at. We call the space between second and third
“no-man's land,” and we let no man cross it without feeling our
wrath.

Tony’s dad is a real estate agen, but I think
his real passion is baseball. He was an all-star in college and
even had an offer from the Angels to play on their farm team, but
he decided realty was a more stable profession so he’d followed
that instead. Sometimes I wondered if he regretted the decision.
For someone who’d rather be selling houses than playing ball, he
spent an awful lot of time on the baseball diamond.

As we were fixing ourselves a snack in the
kitchen, Tony’s older sister, Jenna, came in and sat down at the
table. Her dark hair was twisted up in curlers, and she held her
head perfectly straight so as not to jiggle them. She opened a
bottle of fingernail polish and began painting her nails light
purple. In between painting them, she blew on them.

After she was done with one hand, she glanced
over at Tony. “I’m seeing Adam tonight. I’ll need your help
again.”

Tony and I had just finished off half a bag
of potato chips, and now he grabbed the peanut butter from the
cupboard. “I’m busy eating.”

“You can talk and eat at the same time,” she
said. “You do it all of the time.”

Tony opened a package of bread and handed me
a couple of pieces. “Adam is into baseball,” he told me. “So now
Jenna wants to be an expert.”

She held up her hands and examined her nails.
“How complicated can it be? You play it all of the time.”

Tony ignored her and got the jam from the
refrigerator. Jenna turned to me. “You’re a walking baseball
encyclopedia like my brother. You tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“Like who was the best-ever pitcher?”

“Cy Young,” I said.

“Nolan Ryan,” Tony said.

“Make up your minds and tell me why.”

“His pitching record,” I said.

“Because he throws with style,” Tony
said.

Jenna shook her head. “Are we talking about
Young or Ryan?”

“Yes,” we both answered at once.

“Oh, never mind,” Jenna sighed dramatically.
“Tell me about both of them.”

We gave her statistics for both Young and
Ryan, and she repeated them as though she were trying to memorize a
foreign language.

Tony finished off one sandwich, then got out
bread to make another. “How could you have lived with Dad and me
for so long and know so little about baseball?”

“It’s been hard,” she said, “but I’ve gotten
pretty good at tuning the two of you out.”

“Thanks,” Tony said.

Jenna shrugged. “Well, I can’t help it if I
don’t like baseball. I mean you hit a ball with a stick. How
interesting is that?”

Tony gave her a long look. “Why don’t you
just give up now and tell Adam you know nothing about the
sport?”

“Because he’s the best-looking guy in the
junior class. Maybe in the whole school.”

“You can’t just fake that you’re a baseball
fan forever.”

“Yes, I can.” She got a dreamy look in her
eyes and slowly smiled. “For Adam, I can.”

Tony looked over at me. “What did I expect
her to say? We’re talking about someone who streaks her hair, puts
on makeup to get the mail, and wears shoes that make her look an
inch taller.”

“Oh,” she replied tartly. “And I suppose the
reason you’ve been lifting weights lately is because the barbells
need to be elevated several times a day. It airs them out.”

Tony blushed. “Lifting weights helps my
batting technique.”

“Right,” she said. “As in, you want a bunch
of girls to bat their eyes at you.”

“A lot of baseball players lift weights,”
Tony insisted. “We also jog.”

“Oh really?” Jenna’s voice sounded studious
again. “What else do you have to do?”

We told her what went on at practice, but in
the end she decided to come with us to watch. She also took paper
and pencil so she could take notes. Then while we played, she sat
in the bleachers, pencil poised, and observed us.

It made practice that much harder. Every time
I messed up, I wondered if Jenna was jotting it down. Later on
she’d corner me somewhere and ask, “So, when you hit a ball
straight up in the air and the pitcher runs up and catches it, are
you supposed to drop to your knees and scream, or is that just your
own personal ritual?”

Usually I’m a great batter. My average is
.410.

I tried to ignore Jenna the best I could.

As Tony and I walked on the field to toss
long balls, Tony brought up the subject of Serena again. “We walk
by her locker on the way to math class. Tomorrow we should, you
know, stop by and talk with her.”

“What exactly would we talk about?” This was
always my problem when it came to girls. What did you say to them?
With guys it was easy. You could say anything to a guy and not
worry about it. Even if you said the most stupid thing in the
world, he wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t make a big deal about it and
sit around with his other friends giggling about you. Now I’m not
saying absolutely that this is what girls do. But if they’re not
laughing about boys, why is it you always see them huddled in
groups, giggling as certain boys walk by?

Tony shrugged. “We could talk about math
class. You know, you could say, ‘Hey Serena, did you finish all
your math homework? That Mrs. Swenson is such a slave driver. She
never gives us a free moment, does she?’”

That didn’t seem too hard to say, except when
I pictured myself walking up to Serena’s locker and actually saying
any of it. I know by the time boys are in the eighth grade they’re
not supposed to be afraid to talk to girls, and a lot of my friends
weren’t. Tony wasn’t. But Tony isn’t me. He has that “old Manetti
charm” working for him.

I looked skeptically at Tony. “You don’t
think she’ll think I’m a loser?”

“Naw. Why would she? We’ll just talk to her.
Lots of people talk to each other. It’s no big deal. But remember,
you’ve got to say something this time. Otherwise she’ll think I
like her, and where would that leave you?”

“Peacefully sitting in algebra class enjoying
my dignity.”

“Peacefully flunking your algebra class,”
Tony said.

I opened and closed my glove a few times in
an attempt to loosen it up. “All right. Tomorrow I’ll talk to
her.”

* * *

Tomorrow came much sooner than I would have
liked. First, second, and third period also went too fast, and then
I was walking down the hall with Tony toward Serena’s locker.

I thought about trying to imitate Tony’s cool
walk, but I figured I’d better practice in front of a mirror before
I undertook anything so major. Instead, I grabbed my math book as
hard as I could while still trying to look casual.

“What do you think about Rachel and me?” Tony
asked me as we walked.

“Rachel and you what?”

“You know,” he said, lowering his voice.
“Rachel and me as a couple.”

“Do you even know Rachel?”

“Sure.” Tony smiled a little. “I’ve seen her
around. She’s cute.”

I slowed down a bit because we were coming up
to Serena’s locker, and suddenly it was all I could do to drag my
feet across the floor. “Yeah, but do you know anything about
Rachel?”

“I know she’s Serena’s friend. Just think, if
you become a couple, and Rachel and I become a couple, we could do
things together.”

“We don’t need girls to do things together.
We do things together all the time. Like right now we’re about to
go make total fools of ourselves together.”

“Speak for yourself,” Tony said.

I took a swing at him with my math book, but
missed. I was thinking of some really good insult to fling back at
him, but we'd reached Serena's locker. She was kneeling down to get
something at the bottom, and Rachel was leaning against the next
locker over waiting for her.

I had never seen the inside of Serena’s
locker, but I should have guessed it would be spotlessly clean. All
of her books stood neatly stacked across the shelf, and there were
no crumpled papers littering it up like there were in mine. She
even had pictures of horses taped to the door. In my locker there’s
nothing on the door but the wadded-up gum someone stuck there last
year that I’ve never bothered to clean off.

Serena looked up at me, and I cleared my
throat. I tried to remember what it was Tony said I should say.
Somehow under the pressure of her gaze I forgot the first part of
my speech. Instead of saying, “Hey Serena, did you finish all of
your math homework? That Mrs. Swenson, what a slave driver. She
never gives us a free moment.” I just croaked out, “Hi Serena, we
never get a free moment, do we?”

Her jaw dropped a little, like she couldn’t
believe I’d said that—which made two of us, since I couldn’t
believe it either. With one hand still in her locker she said, “A
free moment to do what?”

“Algebra,” I said quickly. “There’s never a
free moment to do algebra.”

“Oh.” She nodded slightly and stood up. “I
did my assignment last night. Didn’t you get it done?”

“Oh sure, I did it. I’m just not certain I
did it right.” Tony hadn’t told me what I was supposed to talk
about after my first statement, and suddenly I felt myself grasping
for anything to say. “You know, I always think x equals one thing,
and Mrs. Swenson has other ideas. That’s the problem with math.
There’s no room for different opinions.” Out of the corner of my
eye I saw Tony shake his head, but I plunged on anyway. “And why do
you think they use the letter
x
so much in math anyway? We
hardly ever use it in English class. I mean, how many words can you
think of that start with
x
?”

“Xylophone,” Serena said.

“Exactly my point,” I said. “How often do you
use the word
xylophone
?”

Serena and Rachel walked toward the math
classroom, and Tony and I followed them. Although I hate to admit
it, I was still spouting off my feelings about the letter
x
to her all the way down the hallway. “You see, it’s a difficult
letter,” I told her as we walked through Mrs. Swenson’s door. “And
that’s why they use it in math class. Math teachers want these
problems to be hard.”

“Uh-huh.” Serena smiled at me before she took
her seat, but I’m not sure whether it was the kind of smile that
meant, I think you’re nice, or whether it was the kind of smile
that meant, Which of your multiple personalities was I just
speaking to?

I sat down sullenly in my own seat and opened
my book to our assignment page. Tony sat down in the next row over.
He was still shaking his head.

I tore a piece of notebook paper out and
wrote, “I talked about math class to her. I thought you said she’d
offer to help me.”

While Mrs. Swenson wrote equations on the
board, I passed the note to Tony. He read it, wrote his reply, and
passed it back to me. It said, “With your speech on the letter
x
, it’s amazing the school counselor doesn’t offer to help
you. Besides, this was the first time you ever talked to her. Give
it awhile. Say hello to her a few more times.”

I made myself listen to every word Mrs.
Swenson had to say during her next algebra explanation. I hoped
that if I listened instead of doodling pictures of baseball
stadiums on my notebook, then suddenly everything would make sense.
But it didn’t. And the worst part of it was, I knew it was my own
fault. If I had paid attention from the beginning, if I’d asked for
help when it first got hard, I wouldn’t have these problems
now.

I scanned the room looking for someone else
that might be willing to help me out. Brett Parson? He thought he
was too good for everyone. He probably wouldn’t slow down in the
hall long enough to say hello to me, let alone spend time with me
and a math book. Rich Shefler? He’d been mad at me since that
basketball game when he’d been hogging the ball so I’d refused to
throw it to him no matter how open he was. Ian Thompson? I didn’t
know him that well, but maybe . . .