1
IN EVERY BASEBALL MOVIE EVER, IT’S THE SAME.
Bottom of the ninth. Bases loaded. Two out.
The crowd breathless at the batter’s back. The players in the dugout on their feet. The opposing pitcher staring daggers from the mound with steam pouring from flared nostrils.
At the plate: the team’s star, bat pointed toward the wall, challenge clear.
In real life—in softball—it doesn’t exactly work out that way.
It’s close.
But not as if penned by a writer’s hand.
It’s the bottom of the seventh—there aren’t nine inningsin high school softball. But the basesareloaded. And therearetwo out.
The crowd is breathless, the players in the dugout are on their feet, and the opposing pitcher has got the raging-bull thing going on from the mound.
But the team’s star isn’t at the plate.
She’sonit.
Wilted in the dirt after taking a sixty-mile-per-hour fastball to the back. Motionless. Eyes stunned open. All senses on pause, a rolling clap of pain drowning out everything else.
As the crowd holds its collective breath, I search for mine. My lungs don’t seem to be working, and the catcher and umpire both loom over me, outlines blurry with the same fuzzy energy as a 3-D movie left to the naked eye.
I blink a few times. First at the lights. Then at the catcher and ump. And, finally, at the upside-downEAGLESname scrawled across my chest, willing my rib cage to nudge my lungs into action.
Up. Down. Up. Down. In. Out. In. Out.
The sound comes flooding in as my chest finally rises. The shouts of my teammates, the sweet girls of Windsor Prep, will me up. My coach’s voice—my sister’s voice—above them all.
“Stand, Liv! Stand!”
I make it to my feet, back hot and lungs still warming up.
Brows pulled together, I shoot my game-day glare at the mound. Kelly Cleary’s red hair clashes horribly with her stupid orange-and-white uniform; her cat-eye liquid liner is so thick it hides the fact that she has actual eyes. And they must not be able to see worth a crap, because she just hit a batter with the bases loaded and one down.
Which means that if I can walk over to first base, everyone advances and we score a run to tie it. Not exactly the walk-off grand slam of my dreams, but it’s one way to move out of this round and into the Kansas state championship game.
Or at least get one run from doing that.
Again, another true-life technicality.
Both sides of the crowd are clapping, because that’s just what you do when someone gets hit by a pitch. My parents, brother, and Heather are on their feet. My teammates are a rowdy block of purple, crowding the dugout rail, ribbons and ponytails kissing their cheeks in the breeze, clapping me to first.
“Nice job, O-Rod!” There’s my best friend, Addie, cheering even though she’s about to bat.
My sister, Danielle, has her arms crossed over theEAGLESscrawled on her chest, the wedding ring Heather gave her two years ago glinting in the stadium lights. She does her stern-coach nod. It’s a look I first saw at age three, when she was twelve and egging me on as I threw her theball for the millionth time. She was a hell of a player, but she’s always—always—been a coach.
On the other end of the stadium, I spy my boyfriend, Jake. Dreads to his shoulders, he’s dressed out in his orange football jersey, number thirty-two, clapping along with a few teammates in Northland’s section of the crowd. Wearing their jerseys out of season to big games is a tradition, or so he says. But while he looks the part of a good, supportive student-athlete from the rival school, I know that even though we’ve only been dating since the Spring Prep Preview photo shoot at theKansas City Starin February, he’s totally here for me.
Below the Northland section is its dugout where the Tigers’ veteran coach, Trudi Kitterage, observes from the steps. Coach Kitt looks like the burnt-bacon version of a head cheerleader—all hard curves and tan lines. But her talent is real. And her team is good. Too good for Kelly’s mistake. Meaning, if I sawed Kelly in half with my own glare, Coach Kitt’s stare is roasting the pieces of her in a bonfire of why-the-hell-did-you-do-that.
Because in ten of my shuffling steps, we’ll be tied.
Eight more steps. Six. Four. Two.
