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A moment later, she started her Jeep and drove away.

I got back into my truck and sat there with the engine idling.

Ben was moving. I wouldn’t play ball with him again. Eliza was already planning on moving. Still no word on Dad.

I shook my head and put the truck in drive. The air circled through the open windows as I made my way back to the farm. To the family who needed me to win. Who were counting on me to save everything they held dear.

As much as I wanted and needed to be with Eliza, my focus had to be on baseball. I couldn’t control most of the things happening right now. But the one thing I could control was myself and keeping my head on straight for the championship.

I promised Granddad I’d give it my all.

And a Fulton never backed out of a promise.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Eliza

“We all must do theater, to find out who we are, and to discover who we could become.”

—Augusto Boal

Being that close to Reed in the hospital parking lot was one of the hardest things I had ever done. Not touching him, not letting him hold me or kiss me…

I went there, waited for a half hour, because I wanted to apologize. Because I missed him. Because I stupidly listened to Mom and thought I needed to “take a leap.” But the pain he failed to hide brought me back to reality.

His best friend was being charged with arson. Mrs. Fulton told Mom that Mr. Fulton’s unit was attacked and that they still hadn’t received word on his condition. Reed didn’t need anything else to worry about going into that championship.

So in those quick minutes, I had backed down from my “Get Reed back” plan and decided instead to spend every day of the next week pouring all of myself into getting the play ready in its new location.

Tech Week, aka Hell Week, officially arrived and, naturally, it came during the hottest week on record.

God, what I wouldn’t give for air-conditioning.

I took a long swig of water from my fourth bottle of the day while Carl, my “favorite” light guy, finished inspecting my job of hooking up our new trees and fixtures. He explained the complexity of DMX cables while he looked over everything, and my head spun.

Can you Google Translate an electrician?

“Okay.” He rubbed the sweaty stubble on his chin. “We’ve got good news and bad news.”

Great. I groaned. “Bad news first, please.”

He tucked his clipboard under his armpit. “Bad news: You’ve got a faulty fixture for your stage left.”

“But how is that possible?” They’d just come in a couple of days ago and were working fine until yesterday. I chucked my bottle into the nearby trash can.

“Nice shot.” Carl pulled a Red Sox hat from his back pocket and tugged it on.

Ugh. He would be a BoSox fan.

“Sometimes, these lights are like…like sleeper cells from a spy movie.” He rubbed his nose. “You don’t know they’re bad until BAM! They start stabbing you in the middle of the night.”

Super. “So what do I do?”

“We’re going to run it from a splitter so it can’t affect any of the other lights. Kinda like a virus. Gotta keep it from spreading and infecting.” He made a few notes on his clipboard.

I rubbed my sunburned neck. “Okay. It’ll run from its own board, but can I still sync that up to my main one?”

“Yep. And don’t forget: With that older model of a board, you gotta do any chase sequences or big effects manually if they’re not already preprogrammed.”