"It's tough for me, Rache."
"I thought we went over this. There was forgiveness and apologies and—"
"I don't mean that. I mean ... this." I gesture to the sky, the surrounding parking lot, the car. "All of this. Being out like this ... I usually stay in when I can. I don't like being out in public."
"Shy?"
"No. It's just ... everyone knows, Rachel. My name wasn't in the papers, but that didn't matter. Everyone knows. And they watch me. And she's out there now. She could be anywhere." Her fingers dig deeper into my shoulders, or maybe my shoulders are just bunching up more or maybe it's both. "She could be anywhere I turn."
Rachel stops kneading my shoulders and leans in against me. She drapes an arm around my chest from behind and rests her chin on my shoulder. I find myself holding her other hand.
"Are you afraid of her?" she whispers.
I can't answer. I can barely breathe. I'm fighting against a flicker, struggling to stay in the present. There should be something sexual about this, about Rachel draping herself over me like this, but there isn't, somehow. It's just warm and cozy and safe. Maybe it's because my back's turned. Or maybe it's that she doesn't have these gigantic breasts to push against me. Whatever it is, I feel myself relax against her and then it's just amazing because we're leaning on each other, holding each other up, like cards tilted against each other on a table.
"Are you afraid of her?" she whispers again. "You can tell me."
And I can. I realize in that moment that I can tell Rachel, that I can tell her anything.
"I'm not afraid of her," I say, and it's true.
"I'm afraid of me. I'm afraid of what I'll do if I see her."
I spend an hour like that with Rachel, just entwined with her on the hood of her car, lit by the stars and the lampposts of the Narc's parking lot.
We talk. Nothing important. Just meaningless little things. Teachers we like or don't like. Crazy tests. Whether Zik and Michelle are having sex right now.
I ask her why she gave up baseball for softball in seventh grade. There's a girls' Little League and ladies' baseball teams at South Brook Middle and South Brook High.
"Because there's no career path in it." She's snuggled up tight to me from behind, lightly stroking my arm. It feels good; there's a little chill in the air. "No matter how well I played, I'd never get to play professionally in the majors. In softball, at least I can play at the top of the game."
I think about that.
I think about how shitty the world is to her. She's one of the best pitchers I ever faced, and there's no room for her in a major league dugout.
But mostly I think about how good I feel right now, how for the first time in five years I'm touching and being touched by a woman and not wondering what she's going to do next.
Or what I'm going to do.
Chapter 15
Wrapped Up in Rachel
In the game against East Brook, I go 3 for 3 with a double, a walk, and two RBIs. I'd say I'm on fire, but the fact is that East Brook's pathetic. They're 2 and 10 before we play, 2 and 11 by the time they limp off the field. We take them for 15 embarrassing runs and even Grady, our worst pitcher, almost shuts them out. He pitches six innings, walks five, but strikes out ten. It's the best game of his life.
My average is now an unreal .550, and my on base percentage is up to .620. In the field for the first time in a long time, I don't see much action given the quality of East Brook's hitting, so it's not too bad.
Zik kicks all sorts of ass. He hits two homers, one of which drives me in and one of which brings in two more runs. His isolated power average is .667, making him Zeus, Lord of Thunder and Lightning. He goes 2 for 4, which is the best he's done all season—he usually goes 1 for 3, something like that. He's a power hitter—if he can manage to get a piece of the ball, you'll never see it again, but he has trouble getting that piece sometimes. If he could settle down in the batter's box, he'd be a better overall player than I am.
Behind the plate, he catches well, calls good pitches that are executed with borderline competence by Grady. He gets a moment of rare attention when a pop fly is lost in the sun—no one in the infield can see it, but Zik somehow finds it and runs halfway to the mound, throwing his mask in the air and making the catch. In a tight or challenging game, it would be heroic. Instead, it's just ... fun to watch.
I race through my shower and throw on my clothes as fast as I can, my shirt clinging to my still-wet torso. Rachel's softball game started thirty minutes after our game, up in Canterstown. If I hurry, I might make the last inning.
I break the speed limit on Route 54 on the way to Canterstown, but by the time I get there, I know I'm too late. The field is emptying out and there's a snarl of cars honking and inching around, trying to get onto the road. I park in a now-abandoned spot and make my way to the field, where some obnoxious Sledgehammers are chanting:
There ain't no brook!
There ain't no dale!
There's just fucking Brookdale!
The worst part of the chant is that you really can't argue with it. There is no brook or dale in Brookdale. I don't know where the name came from.
I wait outside the visitor's locker room for a while, watching South Brook girls come out in little clusters and pairs. The scoreboard tells the tale: Visitors 2, Lady Sledgehammers 3.
Rachel drags her duffel bag out. I've never seen her so dejected and hurt. She doesn't realize I'm there as she trudges up the path toward the bus.
"Hey!" I shout. "Hey, wet-head!"
Her face lights up when she sees me, and I feel like a superhero.
"Josh!" She comes running back down the path, but I'm already headed up the path and it's like something from a cheesy movie as we meet in the middle. Her hair is sopping wet, too. "Look at us!" She musses my hair, scattering water droplets over us. "How much of the game did you see?"
"I just got here. I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry." She throws her arms around me and hugs me. "I can't believe you came. That's so sweet."
I can't bring myself to move my arms in turn. She doesn't say anything, just hugs the totem pole standing there in front of her, then takes a step back.
"How did you guys do?"
"Against East Brook? Heh."
"Say no more."
I point to the scoreboard. "You kept them to three runs. That's amazing. Were they earned?"
"Decent defense today, but yeah." She links her arm with mine like she's been doing it her whole life and marches me toward the bus. School policy dictates that she has to travel to and from away games on a bus, so she can't join me in the car. "I thought we had them for a little while. Struck out four in the first two innings, but then they found me and started chipping away."
"Three runs," I tell her again. "That's amazing. They haven't scored less than five in a game all season."
She stops near the bus. I'm suddenly, keenly aware of the entire South Brook varsity softball team watching through the bus windows as their star pitcher holds hands with the school pariah. "Follow the bus back to school?"
I glance at the windows.
"Don't look at them," she scolds. "Look at me."
And I do. Hair dripping. Spray of freckles like a constellation over the bridge of her nose. Absolutely no makeup. Just fresh-faced girl.
Woman. Not girl.
"OK."
And she leans in and kisses me, quickly, just a peck, but it's smack-dab on the lips, and I think I hear a massive, coordinated intake of breath from the bus as it happens.
"Rache..." I could just combust and die right here, watched by fifty eyes that know what I did with Eve.
"Shh..." She strokes my cheek with a palm, and then a shout from the bus:
"Madison! Get on the damn bus!"
Rachel rolls her eyes and squeezes my hand, then dashes to the door and brushes by her coach, who glares at me from the bus steps as Rachel flops into a seat near a window. I ignore Coach Kimball and find myself waving to Rachel
as the bus pulls away.
I follow the bus back to South Brook, exposed, naked, and aware that at least two softball players keep looking back at me through the bus's rear windows as if I'm a stalker.
And why not? Any one of them could log on to the Web and see what I've done, see my history. Dr. Kennedy has told me for years that I shouldn't always assume that everyone I see has read the files on the Web, but I think that's naïve. Kids in particular are curious—they want to know things. And when knowledge—prurient, forbidden knowledge—is just a click away, how can you not check it out?
At school, Rachel flies off the bus and hops into my car. "Let's go!"
"Um, where?"
"Dinner, Math Boy! I'm dying. I'm starving. I'm wasting away as we speak."
Dinner is suspiciously like another date, a territory I've been avoiding as much as possible. Going out with Zik and Michelle is one thing—they take some of the attention away from me. But just the two of us?
I reach for a secure rung on this weird ladder I've found myself on. "OK. We'll go to Cincinnati Joe's."
Her nose wrinkles. "C'mon, Josh. I just held Canterstown to three runs on their home field and hit a home run, to boot. You want me to celebrate at Joe's?"
"You hit a home run? You're hitting .367 this season, now. With a .500 slugging average and an IPA..." I hesitate, because her IPA is low. She hits mostly singles. But for a pitcher, she's killer at the plate.
"You're the only person on the planet who even bothers to figure out his IPA, Josh. I bet you could talk to twenty major-leaguers and most of them wouldn't be able to tell you their IPAs at any given moment in time."
I move on. "Your ERA is 2.20. Jesus, Rache! That's Cy Young territory!" I hate myself for saying it. Rachel could have an ERA in the negative numbers and she'd still never get a Cy Young Award.
We're at a light. I look over; she's staring at me. "Did you just do that in your head? Right now?"
I shrug. "Well, yeah." I still get caught off-guard by that—how can other people not make those calculations right away? How can they stop themselves from doing it? I don't understand.
"Not Joe's," she says, leaning back. "You hate it there anyway."
True. But I have two reasons for wanting to go there. One is that Zik will be there and Michelle will have joined him by now, turning this into another safe double date. I can't tell her that, though, so I tell her the second reason.
"There's no chance Eve will show up at Joe's."
The light changes. I hit the gas. Rachel sighs.
"Swing by the Narc," she tells me.
At the Narc, Rachel tells me to keep the engine running. She disappears inside and comes back out with two plastic shopping bags and a big bottle of sports drink.
"SAMMPark, Math Boy!" she orders. "Quickly!"
So as the sun sets over SAMMPark, we find a quiet, secluded place near the baseball diamond and break out the impromptu picnic Rachel scored from the Narc: potato salad, apples, baked chips, fried chicken (we peel off the skin—we're in training), and carrot sticks.
We pass the big bottle back and forth, sipping from it. "Don't leave me any floaties," she warns me.
For a little while, there's nothing but the sounds of two hungry teenagers devouring food as if someone had threatened to take it away from us. We're both jocks, so it's cool to forgo manners and go totally into demolition mode while we eat and replenish our bodies after the games.
I feel a belch welling up from the depths of my gut and turn my head aside to let it go as discreetly as I can. Rachel giggles and taps her belly, then lets loose with a burp-roar that sounds like a wounded lion.
"Holy shit!"
"Not bad, huh?"
She sidles up to me. We both smell like fried chicken and mayonnaise, and since we both do, it doesn't matter. A part of me wants to snuggle up to her, to entwine with her like the other night on the hood of the car. But I just hold myself still.
"Loosen up. You got screwed, Josh. No question about it. Literally and figuratively. So what? It was five years ago."
"I guess I should just move on, huh?" I ask sarcastically.
"I'm not saying that what happened wasn't a big deal. Just that it's not the deal. It's not the only thing in your life. You've got college to think about. Prom."
I groan. "Please, Rachel, please stop talking about prom. I don't want to go."
She gnaws at a carrot. "You don't have a choice. I bought my dress already. It's gorgeous. Green. I'll bring you a swatch so you can match your tie and cummerbund."
Match my tie and cummerbund? Match my tie and cummerbund? Is she insane?
I think I've let this go on long enough. I have to let her down easy, but I absolutely have to let her down.
"We're going away to college, soon, Rache. We're gonna be apart. Does it really make sense to start something now?"
She toys with her carrot, not looking up at me. "We're not starting something," she says quietly. "We're continuing something. Something that was interrupted. The question really is: Do you want to? Or not?"
"Rache..."
"No, let me finish. You're avoiding it. You're avoiding all of it. Why? Is it her? Is it because she's out of jail? Do you think she's going to show up and pick up where you left off? Why can't you pick up where you left off with me?"
"Because it doesn't make any sense—"
"Damn, Josh, why do you have to be so logical all the time?" Her eyes flash as she finally looks up at me. "Why can't you just enjoy the moment? We missed out on five years, on what could have been. Why can't you let us at least experience what is? Why do you always have to worry about what could be or what might be?"
She leans in and kisses me on the lips again; she wants more. She wants me to open my mouth and let her in, but I can't, I won't, but then I do because as much as I try not to be, I'm still me. I'm a horny guy. I try not to act on it because that way lies disaster, but I'm still just a guy at the end of the day. A guy wrapped up in Rachel as SAMMPark goes dark around us.
Chapter 16
MIT, Stanford, Yale
I stay with Rachel longer than I should. We don't go any further than kissing and a little tongue-action on necks and ears, but it makes me dizzy and almost sick. Rachel doesn't groan like Eve did—she makes little sounds that are almost like whimpers, but somehow sexy.
I'm hard as a rock the whole time and I don't want her to know, but I think that's probably impossible.
It's past midnight when I get home. My brain is sloshing around in my head like a cork on the ocean. I don't know how Rachel manages on so little sleep. She's like a robot or something.
I creep into the kitchen for a quick snack—it's always time to feed the machine, even late at night. If I'm up, I need fuel. But in the light from the refrigerator, I notice a collection of shadows on the living room sofa. Now that I've seen it, I hear it, too—softly breathing.
I sneak over. It's Mom, wrapped up in an old afghan, fast asleep. The afghan's too short and her feet and calves poke out from the bottom.
Well, this can't be good.
In my bedroom, I figure I'm good for passing out as soon as my head hits the pillow, but instead I just lie there on top of the covers, my mind spinning, my chest too tight for my heart.
I'm a dickhead.
I call Rachel on her cell phone. I have an inkling she'll be up. Probably texting Michelle about me.
"Hey, Rache. It's me."
"I know."
"Did I wake you up?"
"Are you kidding?"
Deep breath. And:
"I'm sorry I'm such a dick."
"You're not a dick. What are you talking about?"
"Everything. I'm distracted these days. College stuff." I'm beating around the bush. I'm not talking about what I really need to talk about. Why? Why can't I just open up and tell her?
It's like dead air on her end, and for a second I think she's lost the connection. Then she says, "Hang on a sec, OK? I want to tell Michelle I'm on with you
and I'll get back to her later."
I hear a click. I lay in the dark. What the hell am I doing? How did I get to this point? Seeking forgiveness from Rachel was one thing. Telling her about Eve was too far. And then the double dates. And now ... Am I really considering going to the prom with her?
"I'm back," she says.
"Maybe I should just go. Let you sleep."
"You're the weakling who needs sleep," she reminds me. "C'mon, why did you call me all apologetic?"
I tell her about Coach confronting me in the shower, about the deal we made. "Zik thinks I should just try to impress the scout, see if I can go out for the minors or maybe even straight to the majors. My parents want me to play ball in college."
"What do you want?"
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? "I want to play baseball. I want to go to a good school. Somewhere where I can really use math, you know? Change the world a little bit. Send someone to Mars."
"So, college, then. Zik can't control your life, Josh. He'll get over it."
But it's not as simple as that. "It's not just a choice between the league and college, though. You know how it is. Most of the really good math schools, the ones that would change my life—they're not exactly renowned for baseball."
"What about Georgia Tech?"
I considered Georgia Tech. Good school, ranked consistently in the Top 15 nationally for college ball.
"Clemson?" she goes on. "USC?"
Decent schools. Good for baseball.
"Stanford," I tell her.
She doesn't say anything for a second. "Not exactly renowned for baseball," she says. "Might as well go to USC if you're looking that far away."
Does she realize what she just said? "Where are you going, Rache?"
I can almost hear her shrugging. "Probably Maryland. They've offered me a great scholarship as long as I pitch. Still a chance that financial aid might come in from Michigan or Iowa. I don't have the options you have."