Page 11 of The Way We Swing Back

Chapter 6

Ihadn’t even finished unlocking my locker when a high-pitched voice joined my thoughts. “Jake and I are going to hit, and you haven’t been at the house all week. You’re coming over.”

I pulled open the door without looking at Gavin, shoving my books in, knowing I had no homework at the end of the first week of school. “Do I even have a choice?”

“Nope,” a second voice said next to me. I looked over at Jake and sighed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hit; the problem was that the house had been a bit too empty all summer, and the start of school hadn’t helped like I’d hoped.

Zach had a football game to get ready for, so the three of us walked back to the Quinns’, the crisp air bouncing around us as if it couldn’t decide whether it was summer or fall. I pulled Zach’s old hoodie tighter against me—one of the ones he’d outgrown, as his arms kept getting bigger than his sleeves. Hand-me-downs were better than nothing.

“So, Easton,” Jake said when we were a block away, “do you have a girlfriend?”

I stared straight ahead, my face burning. I could sense Gavin’s eyes on me to my right. “Not now, I don’t,” I said, my legs getting stiffer with each step.

“Why not? You’re a cool dude. I always see girls talking to you and stuff; they must think you’re hot for some reason.”

“Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“Please shut up.”

“I was only curious, man,” he said, “but anyway. Do you think if we genetically engineered my dog to be the size of a horse, it’d let me ride it?”

“That’d be so much fun!” Gavin said. “Randy the horse!”

I sighed, no longer trying to process the conversations these two had. They rambled longer, and I was thankful I didn’t have to join in.

They finally stopped the chatter when we got to the Quinns’ backyard and pulled out the bucket of balls, the two of them deferring to me once we got into baseball mode.

“Let’s start with short screen for now,” I said. “Your bat was a little slow in the fall games, Gav.”

“Yeah, I could tell,” he said as he started to stretch. We moved in silence. When I tried to rotate my shoulders to get them loose, my right one pinched, the metal between my shoulder and bicep grinding white-hot. I scrunched my face but moved quickly to cover it up.

“Are you okay?” Gavin said. Maybe I hadn’t covered up fast enough.

“I’m good.”

“You keep saying that.”

I waved him off and stepped into the cage, rolling my shoulders a bit. The dull ache was back—low and thudding—but manageable if I didn’t think too hard. So, I didn’t. We were taking a couple of months off from pitching, so the pain was somewhat tolerable.

Gavin tossed a ball to me as I widened my stance and swung.

Pain shot from the back of my shoulder down my arm for the second time. I hissed, biting down before the air skating through my teeth could turn into a more audible sound, and gripped the bat tighter to keep myself from letting go.

Gavin had seen enough. “Stop,” he said from behind the net.

“I just got started.”

“Stop,” he repeated. “You flinched on contact.”

“I didn’t flinch.”

“Yes, you did,” Jake jumped in, concern written on his face.

Gavin gave me a look, sharp and steady, like the ones Tanner used to give when I lied badly. He had turned into a Tanner replacement, spending way too much time watching everything I did. Annoying.

“You’ve been doing this for weeks,” Gavin said. “Your follow-through’s been shorter; you don’t want to pitch long distances to me. You’re hiding it.”