After a lukewarm shower, I pulled my wet hair into a ponytail and grabbed one of Dad’s old baseball caps off his dresser.Tracker stared at me from where he’d been waiting outside the bathroom.“I forgot your dinner, didn’t I?I’m sorry.Can it wait until after baseball?”
The dog looked sad.Or maybe it was my imagination.
“We’re going to be late,” Vinny announced from the hallway.“If I’m late I have to run laps.”
“You’re eight.They don’t make you run laps.”
“I’m almost nine.My coach does.”He sat on the lowest step of the stairwell to the second floor and tied his shoes.
“He can get over himself and go…” I caught Vinny staring at me as if waiting for bad words to tumble out of my mouth.“Never mind,” I muttered as I pawed through my mini-backpack that served as my purse.“Where’s my phone?”
“He’s a great coach, but he’s serious about being on time and working hard.”
“Can’t find my phone,” I said distractedly.I ran through the kitchen.No phone.
I searched the bathroom.Nothing.Where is it?
“Hurry up!”He slung a heavy backpack onto his shoulder, the baseball bat Velcro-strapped to the outer pocket.
When I hurried back through the hallway, he caught my arm and steered me toward the door.
“Ah ha!”I found my phone in the cupholder of the center console in my car.Tracker jumped into the backseat with Vinny.“Where’s practice?”
“It’s at the elementary school field.We’re already late.Takes thirteen minutes to get there and it’s already five.”He crossed his arms and slumped in the back seat.“This sucks.”
I turned around before backing out.“I’ll tell your coach it’s my fault we’re late.Do you think that will help?”
He grunted and stared out the window.His sweatshirt was about two sizes too tight and his baseball pants, which should’ve hit his shoes, rode up to mid-calf.“Your car smells weird.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the Pathfinder other than the six hundred miles it took to get here.”I rocked my head.“Tracker might’ve had bad gas after snarfing up discarded fries at a rest stop.I told him not to but let’s just say the last one hundred miles were miserable for both of us.”
The kid didn’t even crack a smile.Tough audience.
“You should go home,” Vinny muttered.“Then things would be better.”
Now wasn’t the moment to have this argument.In the rearview I saw Tracker move to sit close to Vinny, who didn’t seem to mind.
“I guess you remember how to get to the school.”He reached out to pet Tracker’s head.
“Sure do.”Picked you up there.The rest of the drive was silent.
Vinny was out and dashing toward the field before the car came to a complete stop in a parking space.Neither the playground nor the various fields used for sports had changed over the past decade.The oversized rock in front of the school that got painted on a rotational schedule every week to advertise a birthday or event still existed.
Wind shot a bitter chill through my shirt on the walk to the solitary, rickety metal four-tiered bleachers.I pulled my jacket closed and crossed my arms.The jacket zipper broke yesterday on the trip down like a screaming metaphor for the road trip.
Parents clustered in their canvas folding chairs around the chain-link fence behind home plate like they were defending a sacred ritual.Not a single soul sat on the lonely tier of bleachers, which must be reserved for social outcasts and anyone who committed the unforgivable sin of arriving after practice started without a personal chair.
I felt eight pairs of laser-beam mom eyes—and two equally judgy dads—tracking me like I was a raccoon raiding their campsite.
One of the dads grunted, “You’re late.”
I blinked and pointed at my chest.“Were you talking tome?”
“Practice starts at five.”The guy’s tone was snarky, not informative.Not one hint of compassion came from any of the adults.None would make eye contact with me.Maybe they’d been here early and had frozen in misery.Maybe they didn’t know Vinny’s parents died a few days ago or that I knew jack shit about his life.
“If they’re late, the coach makes ’em run laps,” said a mom wearing a fake fur hat.She was buried beneath three blankets, two of which sported UNC logos.“Then we’re here an extra ten to fifteen minutes.”
“Sucks,” muttered Mom Number Two, rearranging her scarf like she was auditioning forFrozen: The Community Theater Edition.“It’s cold enough without the extra fifteen minutes.”
