The Distance to Home (14 page)

“A
re you sure, sweetie?” Dad asked. My right hand was on the door handle, my left hand inside my glove. It was two days after the funeral, and Dad had driven me all the way to Indiana for the baseball tournament.

I can do this.

“Yeah. I'm fine,” I said. I hopped down from the truck and walked toward the field, toward my team. Everyone was there already. For the first time I could remember, I was late.

Jordan was warming up on the mound, tossing pitches to Katie. Did Jordan think he was going to pitch instead of me?

“Quinnen?” Katie yelled. She stood up as Jordan's pitch bounced in the dirt in front of home plate. She grabbed the ball and ran to meet me by the bench. “I didn't think you were coming,” she said. “I'm so sorry about Haley.”

“Thank you,” I said. I had said it so many times over the past week that it came out automatically.

Nobody else came over to talk to me while I put on my cleats. Jaden and Andrew were getting drinks from their water bottles. For once they didn't give me dirty looks or crack jokes under their breath, even though Coach wasn't watching. Instead, they gave me these weird fake smiles. Coach Napoli was busy talking to the other team's coach. Once my cleats were all laced up, I slid my hand into my glove and jogged to the mound.

“Hey, QD,” Jordan said. “Let me know if you change your mind. I'm ready.”

I nodded and stuck my hand out for the ball.

And then it was me pitching to Katie, like I had all season. Coach told us once about muscle memory, how your body has a way of remembering how to do something if you've done it enough times. My muscles remembered how to do it, how to throw the ball where I was supposed to, even though my heart and my brain didn't.

The balls whizzed out of my hand, in an arc for one pitch, in a line for the next. Every time, right into Katie's glove.

I can do this,
I told myself.
I. Can. Do. This.

The bleachers were filling up with people who had driven all the way here to watch the games that we had worked so hard for. All spring long, all summer long. Grandmas and grandpas. Moms and dads. Aunts and uncles. Those weirdos who always came to these tournaments even though they didn't know anybody on the team. Brothers.

Sisters.

It was time to let the other team take the field to warm up. I jogged back to the bench for my water bottle. My mouth was dry, but no matter how much water I drank, it was never enough.

Casey was sitting on the bench, swinging his legs back and forth as he munched on a chocolate-chip granola bar. He smiled at me, but I could tell he didn't know what to say. It wasn't like Casey to keep quiet like this.

He wasn't the only one, though. Hardly anyone said hi. It was like they weren't expecting me to show up. Like they thought I would ditch the team for our most important game yet. You never ditch your team. That was rule number one of being a Panther. Panthers always have each other's backs.

And then it was time. Game time. They considered us the home team for this game, so we took the field at the top of the inning. I walked out to the mound, scuffing my cleats in the dirt. Katie put on her catcher's mask. She was right there. Just like always.

The leadoff batter stepped up to the plate. A righty. He jiggled his bat above his head, like he was one of the pros. I gripped the ball tight in my hand, felt the stitching cutting into it, and waited.

“Yeah, Quinnen!” one of the Panthers yelled from the bench.

“Come on, Quinnen, you've got this.” Mrs. Sanders.

“You can do it!” Dad.

“Let's go, QD.” Coach Napoli.

I waited and waited. Waited for her voice to yell out from the rainbow-striped chair where she always sat. She occasionally missed one of my games, but she never missed an important one. She never missed a tournament. I waited, and I waited, and I waited.

And then I understood.

I wasn't going to hear her again. She was never going to pick me up after practice. She was never going to be on the other side of my bedroom wall, tapping with her knuckles after we were supposed to be asleep. She was never going to be in the backseat next to me for a long car ride. She was never going to sit next to me at the kitchen table for dinner. Her stocking wouldn't be hung next to mine by the fireplace on Christmas Eve. I was never going to have to wait for her to be done in the bathroom on a school morning. She was never going to do anything, be anywhere ever again.

My sister was gone.

I was never going to hear Haley's voice again.

And that's when I did it. The thing a pitcher is never ever, ever, ever supposed to do. I didn't wait for the coach. I didn't wait for the next batter, or the next inning, or the next anything. I walked right off the mound in the middle of the biggest tournament we had ever played in.

When Coach Napoli called out my name, I stopped. Stopped walking and started running. I ran until I was at the edge of the woods by the field and there was no one to tell me not to and I took my glove off my hand and chucked it, as far as it would go.

“W
e love you, Quinnen,” Mom whispers as she kisses the top of my head. She stops rubbing my back, but she still has her arm around me.

“To the moon and back, kiddo.” Dad squeezes my hand.

And then nobody says anything for the longest time, and we sit on the bed as the thunder roars overhead and the rain pelts the roof so hard it sounds like hail. I wonder if they've called off the Bandits game yet.

I glance over at the signed ball sitting on my bedside table. “I miss Brandon.”

Dad laughs. “You? Miss Brandon?”

“What's so weird about that?” I ask, reaching for the ball. I show Mom and Dad Brandon's signature.

“He ate all our food,” Mom says. “And he always left the toilet seat up.”

“I wouldn't call that his greatest flaw.” Dad chuckled, turning the ball over in his hand. “You been checking up on him?”

“Not since a few days ago,” I say.

“What are we waiting for?” Dad says. “Let's find out what our old buddy Brandon's been up to.”

Mom and I follow Dad downstairs to the kitchen, where he turns on the computer. As we wait for it to boot up, Mom pours glasses of milk and puts Oreos on a plate. I stack two Oreos together, dunk them in the milk, and cram them into my mouth. Mom carefully slides her Oreo apart and scrapes off the frosting with her teeth, exactly how Haley used to.

“Here we go.” Dad pulls up the website for Brandon's Double-A team. On the main page, there's a picture of Brandon pitching. One of those funny shots that shows his face while he's in the middle of throwing a pitch. It looks like his tongue is going to poke through his cheek.

Dad scrolls down to see how the last game went. “Ouch,” he says.

Mom and I read the article along with him. Brandon gave up six runs in his second start for the Double-A team. Someone on the opposing team hit a grand slam off him.
Yikes.

“He keeps pitching like that, he'll be back in town before long.” Dad dunks his Oreo in the milk, leaving it there for so long I can't believe the cookie comes out in one piece.

“You think so?” Mom asks.

“Nah,” Dad says. “I'm sure he'll get his act together.”

“Can he stay here again if he doesn't?” I ask.

Dad doesn't answer right away. He glances over my head at Mom.

“What?” I ask. It drives me crazy when they do this.

“Your mom and I have been talking about this whole hosting deal,” Dad says.

I bite my lip and wait for what he's going to say next.
Please, please, please let us host again.

“My only worry is that it's hard to have someone come and stay here—be a part of the family—and then leave. Sometimes with no warning,” Mom says.

Dad looks at me. “What do you think, kiddo?”

Mom's right. At least a little. But then I think about the letter Brandon left me. How I'll be able to follow him his whole career. And how one day, when he's in the big leagues—and I know he'll get there—we can all root for him. Drive into Chicago and watch him with forty thousand other people in the stands. And how even though he's gone, I can still email him. Mom and Dad have his email address. So even though he's left, he's not really gone. Not
gone
gone.

“I think we should,” I say. “As long as we don't get one of the scary tattooed guys.”

Mom and Dad smile.

“I think they always send those ones to Mr. McCormack,” Dad says.

“It's never going to be the same as having Haley.” I look right at Mom and Dad when I say her name. “But wasn't it nice, having somebody else around? We've got a pretty big house, with Haley's room and the guest room. Could we host a couple of players?”

Dad and Mom look at each other again.

And for once they don't say “We'll see.”

I'm the one who opens the door to Haley's room. It's the first time all three of us have been in here together since she died.

“It's definitely bigger than the guest room,” Mom says as she picks up one of Haley's old softball trophies, the kind you get just for being on the team.

“What'll we do with her stuff?” I sit down cross-legged on the bed to take it all in.

Dad goes to the bulletin board on the wall behind Haley's desk. It's covered with pictures of Haley with Gretchen and Larissa and all her friends. With notes and drawings, cutouts from magazines, ribbons from writing contests she won. “Her friends—you think they'd want something to remember Haley by?” Dad asks.

Mom nods. “Of course.”

There's so much stuff in here. Her bureau drawers and the closet full of clothes. All her books. Her computer. Her cell phone. And all the little things on her bureau and her wall.

“Us, too, right?” I ask.

“Yes,” Mom says. “Anything you want to hold on to, sweetie.”

“Whatever's left, we can donate,” Dad says.

“When can we start?” I ask.

Mom and Dad look at each other.

“It's never going to feel right,” Mom says. “So why not now?”

Dad heads up to the attic to get boxes. Mom offers to start with Haley's bureau. I start with her desk. The top drawer isn't organized at all. It's full of the kinds of things you get but can't throw away, even if no one else understands why they matter. I have one of these drawers, too—okay, a few of these drawers—but I never thought Haley had one. I never thought what might be in it. Movie ticket stubs and folded-up notes with her name on the outside and buttons for all sorts of different bands.

There are so many things in this drawer that are new to me. My sister had a whole other life apart from me and Mom and Dad: the one she shared with her friends. I save this drawer for them and start looking through her bookcase.

“Hey, Quinnen?” Dad holds up Haley's prom dress from last year. It's green and sparkly and goes all the way to the floor. She looked so beautiful that night. “Should we hold on to this for you?” He laughs.

I snort. “Yeah, right, Dad.”

But as he puts it in the pile for donations, I change my mind. “Prom's not for a long time.” I carefully fold the dress and place it in my box. “You never know.”

Mom pulls shirts out from Haley's bureau, considering each one before placing them into a pile for the Salvation Army.

“I loved this shirt on her,” she says quietly, almost like she's talking to herself. She's holding a blue-and-white-striped shirt, nothing special.

“Keep it,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Someone else needs it more than I do.” She places it in the donation pile.

When she isn't looking, I put the shirt in my box to give to her later. She finds one of Haley's old Bandits sweatshirts, and I put it on. It's still too big, but someday it will be the right size.

One by one, I look at Haley's books. I haven't read any of them, haven't even heard of most of the authors before. “Hey, Mom?”

She finishes folding one of Haley's shirts. “Yeah?”

“What if we had our own book club? Just you and me. We could read some of Haley's books. We could take turns choosing the book.”

“I think that would be really nice,” she says, reaching for the next T-shirt.

“Can we keep them all?”

“Whatever you want, Quinnbear.”

I grab Haley's jewelry box from its spot on her bureau and sit down with it on the floor. The little drawer has necklaces and bracelets, but when I pop open the top, all I see are earrings. Some are long and dangly; others are small and sparkly. Little studs and hoops in so many different colors. I pull out one of the earrings and hold it up to my ear.

“Take a look.” Claudia, the woman who just used the small silver gun to punch holes in my ears, hands me a mirror.

I stare into it. Is that really me? The stones sparkle under the mall's fluorescent lights. I turn my head a little to the right, and the earrings get more sparkly, if that's even possible.

“What do you think?” Mom asks. “Do you like them?”

I hand the mirror back to Claudia. “You did a really good job,” I say. “They're right where they should be. Right in the middle of my earlobe.”

She laughs. “Well, I should hope so. I do this for a living.”

Mom lets me pick out three new pairs of earrings, her treat. I spend forever looking at the walls and walls of earrings. It's a hard decision. I hold a pair up to my ear and look in one of the store mirrors to imagine how they might look.

I think about what Dad said, last summer, about how Haley was changing every minute. That girl staring back at me in the mirror? She's me. Quinnen Amelia Donnelly. But she's not the same person who looked back at me in the mirror this morning while I was brushing my teeth. She's different.

Dad was right. We're all changing.

I look different on the outside, especially with these fancy earrings. But on the inside, I'm the same me. Haley's little sister. That's still me.

“You can come back and get more someday,” Mom says. “There're always more earrings.”

I know one pair I'm getting for sure. Tiny white baseball studs.

“Can I get dangly ones?” I ask.

Mom's leaning over the glass case with the necklaces, probably looking for something to ask Dad to get her for her birthday. “Of course,” she says. “But no big hoops. They could get stuck on something, and then you'd rip a hole in your ear.”

“Mom!” Some things about Mom are never going to change.

I decide on a pair of tiny silver hoops and a pair of bright blue studs for my final two choices, and take them over to Mom.

“All set?” Claudia asks.

I look at myself in the mirror one more time. “Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”

“You know, I brought your sister here to get her ears pierced,” Mom says as we leave the store.

“Really?”

“Yup. You came, too.”

We pass by the frozen yogurt shop. My stomach growls, but I don't want to stop Mom from talking about Haley. “I did?”

“You were only two. I probably had you in the stroller. Nope—I definitely had you in the stroller. It was hard to find a place to park it where you couldn't reach any of the earrings. You were awful handsy back then.”

“Did Haley cry?”

“Do you think Haley cried?”

I shake my head. “What earrings did Haley get put in her ears the very first time?”

“The same ones as you.”

Even though school isn't starting for another three weeks, Mom insists on checking out one of the back-to-school sales. “Just for a quick minute,” she says.

Mom's minutes are never quick, but I follow her into the store anyway. She skips over the kids' section and heads straight toward the juniors'. She stops in front of a mannequin wearing the tightest jeans I've ever seen, a super-frilly pink T-shirt, and a jean jacket that looks five sizes too small. “What do you think?” she asks.

“I think you forgot who you're shopping with.” I swing my bag from the jewelry store back and forth. Earrings are one thing, but Mom couldn't pay me to wear jeans that tight.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “But we're not done yet.”

I follow her over to the underwear section. I keep looking around to make sure there aren't any Bandits nearby. Running into one of them in the undies section would be so embarrassing. “Mom!”

“You may not need embellished jeans, but it's certainly time for some real underwear.” She heads straight toward where they have all the bras on tiny hangers.

“Mom,” I whisper. “I don't need a bra yet.”

She turns to look at me, really look at me.

“You're right,” she says. “Why rush things?”

“There is one thing I need.”

She puts her hand on my shoulder. “What's that?”

“I can't remember the last time I went to a store like this,” Mom says when we walk into the sporting goods store. “You always insisted that Dad take you.”