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Dad looks surprised. “I thought you weren’t speaking.”
“We made up,” I say, and try not to flush as I think about how much we’ve been ‘making up’ lately. “A few weeks ago. She would support me if I did this, but I…I don’t know if it’s still what I want.”
His cheek twitches beneath his slightly overgrown stubble. He lifts his beer to his mouth again. When he lowers it, he gives me the first genuine smile I’ve seen in this house all day. “Your mom would be thrilled about you and Azalea.”
“Yeah, I know.” Something niggles in the back of my mind, and then it comes to the forefront. “She told me, right before she died, that she wanted me to tell Azalea about my feelings. And she also told me that she wanted me to enter the draft.”
Dad sees where I’m going with this. “You know that wasn’t really about baseball. It was about you not giving up the thingsyouwanted because of her being sick.”
“I don’t know.” My head is a mess. This is too much to absorb, too much to think about. In all the noise, I can’t pin down what it isItruly want. “I’ll have to think about everything.”
“Think about it.” Dad pins me with a knowing look. “But not too hard. That’s where things start to get tricky.”
Later,I’msortingthroughsome old clothes in my childhood closet when I come across something I haven’t seen in years. It’s a baseball card, featuring me. I’m six years old in the picture, a bat balanced on my shoulders, enormous grin plastered across my face. My name is in Comic Sans across the bottom, and on the back is a little blurb:Coach Cameron says he’s never met a kid who loves baseball as much as Maverick does. Maverick brings amazing energy to every practice and game. We can’t wait to see him playing for the Cubs someday!
It doesn’t mean anything. I know it doesn’t. I’m sure whoever’s mom made these wrote something similar for everybody. This stupid little kindergarten baseball card should not be sending me into an existential crisis, but I’m frozen, staring into my own face, thinking about how devastated that boy would be if he knew how close he got to his dream—theonlydream, the only thing he thought about foryears—just to have it ripped away.
I wonder what he’d tell me to do now, with this second chance—small, but real—staring me in the face.
I pull my wallet out and tuck the card inside a transparent pocket. “Maybe we’ve still got a chance, man,” I say quietly. “Maybe.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Azalea
“Youknow,”saysCallie,“we’ve never gotten to bond over being mad at our parents before. This is, like, a new chapter in our friendship.”
I’m sprawled beside her on the couch with a bag of chips balanced on my stomach, not feeling nearly as cheerful about this development. “It’s not my favorite chapter so far.”
“Zale, it’snormalto fight with your parents. You and your dad will make up in no time.”
Her Thanksgiving was about as successful as mine. She got home late last night and burst into my room, waking me up from a dead sleep to tell me how her mom kept mentioning that she’d gained weight—“nine pounds!” she shrieked, “nine pounds!”—and her dad wouldn’t stop complaining about her choice to major in French studies. It’s the same things Callie and her parents always argue about, but I listened as she related every sharp word exchanged, and then I told her about my own failed holiday.
We fell asleep in my bed and got a few more hours in. Around five a.m., Callie woke me up to go Black Friday shopping. I bought one shirt, spending fourteen dollars, while she spent somewhere north of two hundred. We’ve wasted the rest of the day right here, watching reality shows and eating junk food.
“I probably shouldn’t call it a fight,” I say. “Nobody yelled.”
“For you and your dad, it’s a fight.” Callie reaches over and grabs a couple of chips from my bag. Her ponytail whacks me in the face. “Stop feeling guilty about it.”
“I’m not feeling guilty,” I lie.
She continues as if I haven’t spoken. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
That’s what Maverick told me, too. He’s still at home with his family, but we spoke on the phone again last night and I rehashed what happened with my dad in detail. I fell asleep with his soothing voice in my ear, telling me that he was proud of me for standing up for myself. “I wonder what happened after I left. I probably ruined—”
Callie makes a slashing motion across her throat. “Shut up. Even if you were in the wrong, which you’re not, there’s nothing you can do about it now. So what’s next?”
I glance down at my phone. There’s a red bubble indicating that I have two missed calls from my dad: one from last night, one from this morning. When I didn’t answer the first one, he sent a one-line text:At least let me know you made it back okay.
I didn’t even reply. I just shared my location with him, knowing he’d get the notification. He sent me a thumbs-up a couple of minutes later, and that was that.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I probably just need to mope for today. Maybe get a head start on studying for finals.”
“Well, I’m down for the moping part. You’re on your own with the other thing.”
I send a small smile her way, always grateful for her friendship. I pick up my phone and tap the phone icon to make the notification go away, then open up my planner app. I click through my various lists and due dates, mentally cataloging an order of attack.
I’m about to close the app and go grab my laptop when something on the calendar catches my eye. I frown, thinking it’s a mistake, and scroll back to last month. I count the days since the last pink dot once, then again. I come up with the same number both times, and it’s way too high.
