“Good hustle,” said Karen approvingly, in exactly the same tones she’d always heard me use.
Suppressing a smile, Stacey said, “Thank you, Karen.” She and Claudia looked out over the sea of expectant faces. Then Stacey cleared her throat. “Uh,” she began and stopped.
“Why don’t you all sit down?” asked Claudia quickly.
“Why?” asked Claire Pike.
“So we can talk about what we’re going to do.”
“That’s after practice,” said Karen, consulting her clipboard.
“Today it’s before practice,” said Claudia firmly. “Everybody sit down.”
Everybody sat.
They waited.
Claudia said, “Welcome to Krushers’ practice. Today we’re going to … to … practice, uh …”
“Softball,” supplied Stacey.
“Right,” said Claudia.
Linny Papadakis raised his hand and said, “Is this going to take long?”
“No!” said Claudia.
“No,” said Stacey. “What we’re going to do is divide into two groups and Claudia is going to work with one group and I’m going to work with the other and then at the end of practice the two groups will play a very short practice game against each other.”
Claire waved her hand in the air and said, “Can I be in Matt’s group? He’s the best player.”
“No fair!” cried David Michael, which was pretty funny, since it is usually Claire who’s having a temper tantrum and shouting, “No fair! No fair!” (only it sounds like “Nofe air!”).
Sensing that chaos was fast approaching, Claudia gave a blast on her whistle. It wasn’t very effective, but the copycat blast that Karen gave right after was — although it also made Claudia jump.
“Uh, thanks, Karen,” she gasped. “We’re going to divide into groups by counting off. All the ones in my group, all the twos in Stacey’s. Karen?”
“ONE!” said Karen in her best outdoor voice.
A little jockeying went on to try to get on the “best” team, but in the end, the two groups seemed pretty evenly divided.
Claudia picked up a ball and her glove and started walking toward the outfield.
“What’re we doing?” asked Jamie Newton, eyeing somewhat apprehensively the softball Claudia was holding (he’s afraid of the ball).
“We’re going to do a drill,” said Claudia brightly.
“What drill?”
“Wait and see,” said Claudia.
They reached the outfield. Everyone stopped.
Claudia desperately tried to remember the drill she had in mind. She’d drawn a picture of it when I had shown it to her at the practice the three of us had coached together. She’d filled it in with colored pencils. It had looked pretty terrific.
But what was the drill?
Something to do with junk food. Pop. Soda pop? Pop-tarts?
“Pop ups!” she said at last, triumphantly. It wasn’t exactly the drill she remembered, but it was A Drill. And the players were getting restless.
A few minutes later, Claudia was looping balls high (and sort of randomly) in the air and the Krushers were running around underneath, thumping their gloves and trying to catch the fly balls.
It didn’t take long for the inevitable to happen: Jamie, running under one of Claud’s random high fliers, cringed and then lunged unexpectedly at the last moment. He crashed right into Karen, who said, “ooof,” and fell down. Karen’s glasses went flying.
“Don’t move!” screamed Claudia desperately. She had visions of Karen’s glasses getting broken and, worse, of someone cutting themselves on the broken pieces (she’d forgotten they were made of safety plastic).
Claudia screamed so loudly that the whole field froze, including Stacey and her team.
Stacey looked over. “Claudia? Is everything okay?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah, here they are … everything’s fine! No problem. Karen, here are your glasses. Are you and Jamie okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Karen, in her most dignified adult manner.
“Me, too,” said Jamie.
“Shouldn’t one of them have called for the ball?” asked Buddy Barrett.
“Called for the ball?” asked Claudia. She had a mystified vision of a fielder calling for the ball and the ball coming, like a dog. But she saw several heads nodding and realized that it couldn’t work that way. “Uh, yes,” she said firmly. “Next time, call for the ball.”
Everyone nodded, satisfied, and went back to practicing catching pop-up fly balls. A few minutes later, the mystery was solved for Claudia when Karen and Hannie Papadakis both ran for a fly ball.
“Mine!” bellowed Karen, and Hannie stopped while Karen caught the ball.
“Much better!” said Claudia. “See how much better it works when you, ah, call for the ball?”
But the players soon got tired of the fly ball drill and wanted to do something else. In desperation, Claudia suggested sprint races.
“Why?” asked Buddy.
“Because,” said Claudia. “It’s good for your endurance. Why, on some professional baseball teams, the players run miles before they ever even begin a practice.” (Was that true? she wondered. Well, it could be. After all, baseball players were athletes, right?)
Claudia ran the players back and forth. Then she made up games, like Keep-Away-From-Being-Tagged-by-the-Player-Holding-the-Ball.
At last it was time for the practice game.
Wearily, Claudia led her team back toward the dugout.
Stacey, she noticed, was looking as weary as Claudia felt. Her Dodgers hat was askew. Her long braid was coming undone. She was covered with smudges.
As for Claudia, one of her socks was all bunched up around the middle of her foot. Her hair kept sticking to her neck. Her hands were sore from catching the ball. And she could barely remember which base came first. Or which base was first.
“Who’s at bat?” asked Karen.
Claudia looked at Karen blankly.
“Our team’ll field first,” said Jackie Rodowsky. “Since we got to practice in the infield while you guys were in the outfield, you bat first.”
“Right,” said Claudia weakly.
“What’s the batting order?” asked Buddy.
“Batting order?” Claudia had a sudden vision of herself, hands on hips, saying to a player: “I order you to take that bat and hit a home run!”
But that wasn’t it.
“You know,” Buddy was saying. “The order in which we get to bat.”
“Oh. Right,” answered Claudia. “Well, uh, Buddy, why don’t you go first and, and Karen, you go second …” She rattled off four names, concluding with Claire.
“Claire for clean-up hitter?” asked Karen.
Before Claudia could worry about that, Claire said mutinously, “Nofe air! I don’t want to go last!”
“I’ll swap with you, Claire,” said Buddy instantly.
That seemed to satisfy everyone, so Claudia agreed.
They only played one inning. It was the longest inning of Claudia’s life. She wasn’t sure what a strike was, but she had to be the umpire behind the plate. She heard a half dozen bewildering phrases, including “infield fly rule,” “tagging up,” and “full count.”
And when Jackie Rodowsky slid into home plate he not only managed to uproot the whole plate, but to topple both Matt Braddock, who was playing catcher, and Claudia.
“Watch out!” someone shouted, but it was too late. One minute, Claudia was bent over, hands on her knees, watching the play the way she’d seen umpires on TV do, and the next minute the sky was somersaulting above her head as she fell.
“Safe!” cried Jackie, “I was safe. We won, we won!”
Claudia closed her eyes. She hadn’t even seen the play.
“It’s true,” said David Michael. “Matt dropped the ball.”
Matt, who is deaf, signed good-naturedly to Jackie, who turned pink with pleasure. “Awesome? Really? Thanks.”
Claudia f
elt them climbing off her. She slowly sat up.
“We won, Claudia,” screamed Nina Marshall right in Claudia’s ear. “This was great! Wow! I can hardly wait till next practice.”
It was too much. With a groan, Claudia lay back down next to home plate.
“Claudia?” said Stacey’s voice above her. “Claud? Are you okay?”
“It’s going to be a long season,” Claudia answered and closed her eyes again.
“Burning up the diamond, Kristy?”
The only word I heard was “burning.” I must’ve jumped a mile. My brother Charlie, who was sitting across the dinner table from me, looked surprised.
I managed to laugh. “Sorry. I guess I wasn’t listening.”
“You weren’t eating, either,” murmured Nannie.
I realized she was right. I’d been poking at my dinner with my fork.
“You shouldn’t play with your food,” said David Michael severely.
My whole family laughed at that. I joined in, relieved to be gotten off the hook. Of course I wasn’t listening. Or eating. I was worrying. Worrying about the fire. Worrying about the man in the hospital. Worrying about getting caught. And, in a way, almost wishing I would be caught and just get it over.
Only I wasn’t off the hook. When the laughter died down (and as I conscientiously began to eat my potatoes, trying to look like I didn’t have a worry — or a guilty secret — in the world), Charlie said, “So, how is softball going, Kristy?”
“Uh, fine,” I said.
“Starting to feel like a team member?” asked Sam.
“Well, that may take some time,” I hedged.
“You like Coach Wu?” asked Sam.
“Yes, I do. She really knows how to get her players fired up.” I stopped, horrified by my choice of words.
“Speaking of fired up,” said my mother, deftly catching a bit of roll that Emily Michelle had sent spinning off her plate, “has anybody heard any more about that fire at SMS? The one that caused the old shed to burn down?”
“No,” I said quickly. “Uh, Charlie? I’ve been meaning to ask you and Sam. Do you think I need to get new softball cleats? Mine are looking kind of worn down, but I don’t want to break in new ones right now.”
Charlie said, “I’ll look at them after dinner. There’s some new goop you can put on worn cleats to build them up. Maybe that would work.”
“That’d be great.”
“It might be better to get new ones now,” Sam said. “Break ’em in before the season really starts.”
“That’d be almost as bad as breaking in a brand-new glove right in the beginning of the season,” Charlie argued, and they were off and running.
Relieved that I’d been able to divert the conversation, I leaned back. But I couldn’t divert my thoughts. I felt horrible. And there was nothing I could do about it.
Except wait. Every time the phone rang, I jumped. Every time someone came to the door, I was sure it was the police, for me. I kept listening to the news, but nothing new was reported about the fire or about the man who had been burned. I wanted to call the hospital and find out how he was, but what if they traced my call? What if someone heard me making the call?
So I waited. I don’t even know what I was waiting for. No one was going to give me any good advice. I couldn’t tell my friends. And Tallie and Marcia and the others on the team sure weren’t going to help.
Even if they did, I thought their kind of help could only make it worse. But then, I didn’t see how it was possible for things to get worse.
I was wrong.
When I got to school on Monday, people were talking about the fire. It wasn’t the only thing they were talking about, at least not then.
But then Mr. Taylor, the principal, called a special assembly immediately after homeroom that morning. The subject of the assembly was the fire.
Mr. Taylor got up behind the podium, surveyed the room sternly, and cleared his throat. In case any of us hadn’t heard the news, he told us, a fire had destroyed the old equipment shed. The man who had reported the fire and helped contain it so it wouldn’t spread had been injured and was still in critical condition.
“Of course, the police are investigating the incident,” he said. He paused, then went on. “They have gathered enough evidence to suspect that the fire was started by students.”
He paused again to let this sink in. A murmur went around the room. Beside me, I heard Mary Anne whisper, “Oh, no! Kristy, do you believe it?”
I kept my eyes fixed on the principal and pretended not to hear.
“I urge the guilty party to step forward,” Mr. Taylor said. “I will stay in my office until dinnertime this evening. If anyone wants to come forward, either to tell me why and how he would do something like this — or to give information that would solve this crime — I’ll be there. If you do come forward, the matter will be handled as quietly as possible.”
This time, I couldn’t pretend not to hear Mary Anne. She grabbed my arm and said, “Do you believe it? It can’t be true! Who would do something like that?”
“Maybe it was an accident,” I said through stiff lips.
“That must be it,” agreed Mary Anne as we left the auditorium. “Some kind of accident. Something stored in the shed like paint thinner or something, must have overheated.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I gotta go, Mary Anne. See you at lunch?”
Mary Anne nodded and waved and turned down the hall toward her first period class. I headed for my locker.
“Kristy!” someone hissed.
I looked up and saw Tonya and Bea standing to one side of the stairwell.
“What do we do now?” said Bea.
“Nothing,” Tonya said. “He’s just trying to scare us.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. But I can’t stand it. Why don’t we just confess? I mean, who knows what kind of evidence they have — maybe it’s my can of paint, covered with my fingerprints.”
“Forget it,” said Tonya scornfully. “And besides, even if they do have that can of paint, it could have been left there anytime. The shed is all burned up, remember? They don’t know about the graffiti.”
“Have you seen it?” I argued. “Maybe it didn’t all burn up.”
“Listen, if you tell, we’ll say you’re lying. And you can’t prove we’re involved either. It’ll be your word against all of ours — the whole softball team. So you’ll be in trouble for the fire and for lying about us and trying to get all of us in trouble, too!”
With that, Tonya turned and stomped up the stairs. Bea hesitated for a moment longer, then turned and fled after her.
I stood staring after them. I felt sick. I had a horrible lump in my throat and my stomach was hurting and my eyes were blurring.
I stumbled toward my locker and realized as I reached it that the blurring in my eyes was coming from tears threatening to spill over.
Disgusted, I dug my fists into my eyes until I could see.
“Get a grip, Kristy,” I muttered to myself. I had to stay calm. I had to think.
But right now the most important thing was to act normal, to get my books from my locker and get to class on time.
I opened my locker and stopped. A square of white paper had been shoved in through the vents. I picked it up and unfolded it.
And felt even sicker.
In large block letters someone had written:
I SAW WHAT YOU DID. I’M BIDING MY TIME.
Instinctively, I crumpled the note in my hand and looked around. But no one was watching, no one seemed to have noticed my gasp of surprise or my guilty look.
Or at least, no one that I could see.
What should I do now? Who could have written it? What had they seen?
Maybe someone else had found my lost can of spray paint.
But then, how would they know it was mine?
The warning bell rang, jerking me back to the present.
I stuffed the note in my pocket, then grabbed my books, and head
ed for class. But I couldn’t focus on anything that was happening.
When I had a chance, I tore the note into tiny little pieces and threw it away — half of it in one trash can and the other half in another. I wasn’t taking any chances, although I wasn’t exactly sure what chances I wasn’t taking by tearing up the note.
I wish I could have thrown my thoughts away, too. They weren’t so easy to get rid of. Everything seemed to lead back to what I’d done. To someone knowing. To what I could do.
It might have helped if I could have talked to someone, asked someone’s advice.
That, of course, was out of the question.
So I went through my classes and through the BSC meeting. Fortunately it was a mondo busy meeting, with practically a phone call a minute, so no one noticed my distraction. Or at least, no one said anything. No one had time to talk about anything else that was happening at school either — like the fire, and how no one had come forward to confess, and who had done it.
The man who had been injured remained in the hospital in critical condition.
By the time Tuesday practice rolled around, I was so tense and uptight that I felt like screaming. The warm weather, the golden sunlight, the velvety green grass that practically screamed, “Play ball!” — none of it helped.
And I wasn’t the only one.
We trotted out onto the field like a team. We did our warm-up laps around the track. We went through the motions of our fielding and hitting drills. From a distance, we probably even looked like a team.
Coach Wu wasn’t fooled, though. At first she corrected us patiently, demonstrated over and over the play she had in mind, the pitch or the throw or the batting stance. She tried us in different positions. Nothing helped. We kept on making really stupid mental errors. Finally, as if she realized that all the patience and demonstrations in the world weren’t going to help, she went to the third baseline and stood, arms folded, face blank, watching.
That made it even worse.
We began to really make big ME’s — mental errors. We turned left when we should have turned right, overthrew the bases on simple plays, swung at the bad pitches, and stood with our bats on our shoulders as the big, fat easy pitches sailed by.