Out of Left Field Read online

  Sara and I stare silently after them. She’s probably wondering what the hell is wrong with me, and I’m wondering the same thing.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Sara and I both turn, and I bump into Cody.

  “A Lord of the Rings insult?” he says to me. “Really?”

  I take in his tousled brown hair, his sand-covered red-and-black uniform, and the careful way he carries his very swollen left wrist. It’s the semigrin on his face that throws me off. Here he is, nailed with a ninety-mile-per-hour pitch, and he sounds like it’s any other day.

  Then Joey appears, jumping Sara from behind, making her shout and punch him in the chest.

  “So you picking fights again?” Joey asks me as he picks a fight with Sara, putting her in a loose headlock. She shoves him off, and Joey shakes his head at me. “It’s like you’re looking for an ass whooping.”

  “I could’ve handled it,” I say.

  “You know he only left you alone because he saw me and Joey coming,” Cody adds, knowing as much as I do that I could not have handled it. “Who’d be scared by this scrawny thing anyway?” he says, flipping my long auburn hair in my face.

  I push his hand away, about to remind him that his six-foot frame only has three inches on mine, but then I realize that he’s still here and not where he should be, which is at a hospital. “Don’t you have an injury to take care of or something?” I ask him.

  In response, Cody glances back to the dugout, where Chizz and Mr. Kinski are in deep conversation, most likely about what to do with Cody. Since last summer, Cody’s been on track to play ball in college. He went to a bunch of baseball camps and has spent a lot of time working with professional pitching coaches. This postseason was supposed to prove his worth to the scouts. His dad and Chizz have been working relentlessly to get him scholarships and attract the eyes of college coaches.

  “Hey, Marnie,” Sara says. “Maybe you should take Cody’s place. Chizz would love that.” She says this with a straight face, but she must be joking. No way in hell Chizz—not to mention the guys—would let me on the team.

  Case in point: “Hell, no,” Joey says. “Over my dead body.”

  “Gladly,” Sara says, grinning. She starts fake-boxing him, and he fake-boxes back. Cody and I exchange the same look we always do when Sara and Joey, well, do this. We don’t call it flirting because that ship sunk sometime last year. No one knows what actually happened between them, but we do know this: (1) We don’t talk about it. (2) They didn’t speak to—or even look at—each other for almost six months after it happened. (3) Even now, sometimes it gets weird between them, and we don’t know why, so basically… (4) Hooking up with someone you’ve known for eleven years is a Bad Idea™.

  Sara stops play-punching Joey in the gut and points over my shoulder. “Here he comes. Let’s ask him.”

  Before any of us can object, Sara calls, “Hey, Chizz!” She waves him over to us.

  Chizz and Mr. Kinski approach, both looking tired and defeated, despite the regional game win. Mr. Kinski looks like Cody—tall with messy, dark hair and pin-straight posture—only he has a goatee. He and I are on pretty good terms, considering all the trouble I’ve gotten Cody into. It’s Chizz that I’ve got to look out for. He has some sort of vendetta against me, and I’ve got no idea why. I’ve had him as my gym teacher two years in a row, and I have been nothing but a model student. I always get the fastest mile times, always participate, always help put the equipment away when everyone else rushes to the locker rooms…

  Okay, so maybe I clobbered Joey in the head with a tennis racket once. I swear it was an accident. And maybe I can be slightly aggressive and mouth off at times. But I really am an ideal student.

  “So, Chizz,” Sara says. “What do you think about letting Marnie on the mound for postseason, eh?”

  “I think it’s time for you to go home,” Chizz says with a sigh, clearly in no mood for dealing with the four of us.

  I play along with Sara. “Aw, come on, Chizz. We all know I’m a better pitcher than Cody.”

  “Ha!” Joey shouts. “You wish. You’ve got nothing on my boy.”

  “Well, since your boy is now an invalid, who’s gonna pitch for you at the sandlot tomorrow?” I taunt. “Right. Me. So shh.”

  Chizz shakes his head and starts walking away. Normally, he’d at least try and be an authoritative figure when we start acting like twelve-year-olds, but I guess the burden of losing his star pitcher is too much for him.

  “Come on, Cody,” Mr. Kinski says, offering to take his duffel bag. “We have to get you to the hospital.”

  It’s only then that Cody’s carefree demeanor falters. His body stiffens, and the amused grin on his face—put there by Sara, Joey, and me bickering—falls as the crinkles around his eyes disappear. That’s how it is with Cody. He’s the quiet one. You can’t wait for him to say what he’s thinking or feeling. You have to watch his face or the way he walks or stands or looks at his surroundings. It took me almost ten years to figure out how to read him, but I’ve got it down now.

  In the next moment, his look of dread is replaced by a crooked grin. Before following his dad to the car, he says to me, “I suppose telling you not to pick fights won’t do any good, so try not to get your ass kicked while I’m not here to defend you.”

  I know he’s joking around to cover his disappointment over his injury, and because it’s easier to play along than to be serious, I go, “I told you. I could’ve handled it.”

  “Whatever you say.” He flips my hair in my face again, even though he knows I hate it when he does that.

  I slap his hand away. “Hey, when you’re at the hospital, tell the doctor to surgically remove the ass hat on your head.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” he says with a grin, taking a few steps back.

  I blow him a kiss as he starts following his dad to their car. To anyone else, it might seem endearing, perhaps even romantic, but Cody has known me a long time and understands that any kiss I blow his way is only out of irony. He returns my kiss with his middle finger. So it goes in our relationship.

  When I turn around, I find Sara and Joey staring at me, eyebrows raised, condescending smirks on their faces.

  “What?”

  At the same time, they both go, “Nothing.” Joey brushes some residual sand off his uniform and picks up his gym bag. “Sandlot tomorrow,” he reminds us both. “Be late, and I’ll bury you alive.” He waves down a couple of other guys from the team and jogs over to them.

  Sara and I head off on our own. Even though we’ve both got our licenses, we still like to walk between our houses and to school. On a night like this, there’s no reason to contribute to air pollution.

  Much like I don’t ask her what the hell happened between her and Joey, she doesn’t try playing cupid with me. Recently Sara has decided that Cody likes me, and even more ludicrously, that I return those feelings. First of all, Cody would rather have his eyes clawed out by rabid werewolves than like me. And second of all, I would not only rather have my eyes clawed out by rabid werewolves, I would also rather be stung to death by rabid jellyfish. There is only one rule for having a ten-year friendship with someone: like-liking is strictly prohibited. Liking will ruin a friendship because liking always leads to heartache. Exhibit A: Joey and Sara.

  Sara doesn’t have to say anything for me to know what she’s thinking. The look she and Joey exchanged was enough for me to read between the lines. Instead of forcing her to spit it out, I ignore the cupid vibes she’s emitting and stare out at the field.

  The lights are still on, bathing the vacant infield in a fluorescent glow. I imagine Santino on the mound, the sheer power behind his windup, and the ninety-mile-per-hour pitch that no doubt amazed the college scouts in the bleachers.

  For a moment, I picture myself out there on the mound. I haven’t played competitively since fre
shman year when I was on the varsity softball team. Back then, I used to imagine being the star pitcher of the team. Sometimes I liked to think of Cody and me as king and queen of the pitcher’s mound—him in baseball, me in softball. And who knows, maybe we would have reigned. But then I quit. The pressure got to be too much. I don’t like to talk about it. So Cody’s the last one standing, as he should be, considering he would never let his team down the way I did.

  Sure, when Sara jokingly suggested I take Cody’s place, I had a brief moment of Eureka! Like, Yeah, let me do it.

  But the thought of stepping foot on that field is even more ridiculous than the thought of Cody liking me. More ridiculous than the thought of me liking Cody.

  In short, me playing on the guys’ team would no doubt fall under a brand-new category of idiocy.

  3

  I’m sure there was a time before the sandlot, before Cody and Joey and Sara, before our weekend pickup games at the park, before I was a fight-picking, loudmouthed, baseball-obsessed jock, but hell if I can remember it. It’s as if some other me in some alternate reality lived through those five years. But not this me.

  Almost like clockwork, I wake up Saturday morning, pull on a pair of running shorts and a faded old Cubs T-shirt, and tie my hair back in a messy French braid. I pass Nick’s closed bedroom door, behind which he’ll sleep until noon (perks of being on summer break from college), and head downstairs for a quick breakfast of toast before I grab my mitt and head out.

  Or at least, that’s the plan until I find a note stuffed in my gym shoes. My parents know it’s the only place I’ll notice their messages. I bend down and pull out the wrinkled sheet of paper.

  Dinner with Abram @ 6 tonight. —Mom

  p.s. DRESS!!!!!

  Even though she’s not around to hear me, I let out a frustrated groan. For fourteen consecutive days, Mom has been reminding me that Uncle Abram’s wedding is coming up and that I need to get a dress. She knows that on my list of least favorite things to do, dress shopping is in the top five. I need at least six months’ notice for events requiring a dress, and Abram’s invite came in with three weeks’ prep.

  First of all, who proposes to a woman he’s been going out with for only four months? And how serious are we supposed to take it all when he hasn’t even introduced his family to her yet?

  Sure, that’s what this dinner is for, but still…we’re only meeting the fiancée and her son one week before the wedding? How dressed up do I need to be for an event that seems so poorly executed?

  I toss the note in the trash and shove my feet in my shoes. On my way out the door, I text Sara that I’m on my way. By the time I get to her house—four down from mine—she’s already at the foot of her driveway waiting for me, her hair tied back, her mitt on her left hand, a dog leash in the other. Our canine companion today is Moriarty, one of Sara’s three Jack Russell terriers.

  “Greetings, friend,” Sara says as Moriarty jumps up to say hello. “You get the panic message?”

  “What panic message?”

  She pulls out her phone and shows me a collection of angry text messages from Joey, all including the word sandlot in varying degrees of uppercase letters and exclamation marks.

  “He’s desperate for a pitcher,” Sara says.

  “Clearly.”

  As we start toward the park, I glance across the street at Cody’s house, where Mrs. Kinski’s overflowing garden is bursting in an assortment of vivid reds and purples and yellows. Seeing her flowers always makes me feel happy, and I wonder if they did anything to make Cody feel better after what happened last night. I contemplate texting to ask about his diagnosis, but I suspect he’ll be at the park, even though he won’t be able to play with us. We’re all hopeless, us four, when it comes to the sandlot. It’s like a black hole, sucking us in.

  It takes only about five minutes to walk to the park. This place is my proof that God exists. I pass it every day, both to and from school, and whenever I step on the brick path that winds through the park, it’s like coming home. Shrieks of laughter from the playground surround me and Sara as we pass on our way to the sandlot. I swear, that playground is the Mother of All Playgrounds, sitting at the end of the path like Emerald City at the end of the Yellow Brick Road. I can recount my entire childhood through the bruises I got from horsing around there.

  A couple of years ago, the park district decided to spiff up the space, making it new again to match all the modern houses going up on the other side of the subdivision. They repainted the playground blue and yellow, repaved the brick walkway, replaced the nets on the tennis courts, built a sleek pavilion with picnic tables, put a fountain at the center of the pond behind the sandlot, and built another path around the pond. The best additions were the lights they installed in the fountain, along the walkways and around the playground, so people (and by people I mean Sara, Cody, Joey, and I) could continue their park shenanigans after dark.

  But the funny thing is, when they redid the park, they didn’t use any of the resources to fix up the sandlot. The other funny thing is, I don’t mind.

  It’s only a patch of sand and grass and a beat-up, old backstop, but it’s my home away from home, and I wouldn’t trade it for any fancy field—not even if the entire Chicago Cubs team came to my house and offered me Wrigley Field.

  As Sara and I approach the sandlot, I spot Joey lying in the outfield tossing a baseball up and down. Carrot and Jiro, two other guys from the team who also live in our neighborhood, are there playing catch. Cody sits in the grass behind first base. It’s not hard to miss the bright blue cast on his left forearm.

  “Finally!” Joey shouts, getting to his feet. “What the hell took you so long?!” He points at Moriarty, who stares up at him. “And why the hell d’you bring this thing? You know all he does is get in the way.”

  Sara gestures to where Joey had been lying down. “Down, boy. Sit. Stay.” She finds the bat by Cody and picks it up on her way to home plate.

  “Who said you get to bat first?” Joey demands and marches over to take the bat from her. He’s very possessive when it comes to baseball. And he, like me, will look for any reason to start an argument, especially with Sara. After ten years, we’ve all absorbed pieces one another’s personalities. It’s inevitable.

  I go over to Cody to examine his cast up close. He looks up at me with bloodshot eyes. They complement the frown on his face.

  “I must say, you look great today,” I tell him.

  “Shut up.”

  “Party at the hospital?”

  “Would you like to hear the story?” he asks in a tone that makes me think I don’t want to hear the story.

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me anyway.”

  “Well, first my dad decided it would be better to go to an urgent care center instead of the ER because it would be less expensive. But he couldn’t remember where it was, so we drove around looking for it for half an hour, and then we had to wait, because the doctor was with another patient. And then, since I’m a wuss and wanted pain meds, we had to go to the pharmacy, where for some reason there was a line in the middle of the night. Then when I finally got home, frigging Reilly Shwartz next door is throwing a party, so at two o’clock in the morning, all I could hear were pounding music and shouting drunk people. Then they decide to barbecue in the middle of the night, and since they’re all shit-housed, they burn everything, so it smells like burned hot dogs and hamburgers for the next hour. I spent all night thinking about how I’m going to exact my revenge on Santino. I might egg his house. Then fork his lawn. Then saw his arms off.”

  I stare at him.

  This is a lot for Cody to say in one breath.

  I’m about to ask why he’s here if he’s in such a bad mood, but something hits the small of my back. I turn to see a stick on the ground. I know without asking that Joey threw it at me.

  “Pitch!” he shouts, waving his
arms impatiently.

  “If you need to punch something,” I tell Cody, “I invite you to use Joey.” I put on my mitt and head over to the mound, waving at the two sane people standing in the outfield, Carrot and Jiro. They wave back.

  Carrot’s real name is Garrett, but he’s got fiery red hair, which is how he earned his nickname. He’s a senior and works at Gilman’s Sports House with my brother, Nick.

  Jiro is this badass Japanese kid with spiky black hair. He’s a little short, but he’s one hell of a speed demon. We expect him to break the sound barrier any day now.

  The six of us are the sandlot regulars. For the guys, being on the school team isn’t enough. They want to play all day every day, and you can’t play a pickup game with only four people. So Sara and I play with them. It took some convincing on Joey’s part because, like I said, he’s very possessive when it comes to baseball, and having me and Sara—the perpetual pains in his ass, like two sisters he never wanted—encroach on his space was too much for him. But once Carrot, Cody, and Jiro made him realize he couldn’t make the rest of the baseball team move to our neighborhood, Joey gave in. And besides, he knows Sara and I can keep up with him. He’ll just never admit it.

  It’s rare to find people who love what you love as much as you love it. I mean, if it was up to us, we’d spend our lives at one giant sandlot with a baseball and a bat, and we would play until the sun went out and the earth ceased to exist.

  At the plate, Joey is ready—bat lifted, knees bent, eyes trained on me. He’s probably trying to read my mind to see what I’m going to throw. I try confusing his telepathic skills by thinking, Curve ball, changeup, fastball.

  I throw a fastball first. He foul-tips it over the backstop, where it lands with a splash! in the pond.

  Over by third base, Carrot slow claps for Joey.

  “Good hit,” I tell Joey.

  “You pitched it,” he says, pulling the bat back over his shoulder.