Brother/Sister (2 page)

And I felt inferior, too, probably. Definitely. Sometimes I’d stand way out there waiting for a ball to come flying my way, sort of daydreaming and losing total track of the game and wondering why they put up with me at all. I mean, I’m not horrible. I’ve got coordination. I’ve got twenty-twenty vision, which helps me catch pretty well. But half the time, I can’t hit. I can throw pretty well, but my aim’s all off. I wouldn’t know a balk if it hit me. No wonder they stuck me out in right field.

That day against the Pumas, though, since it meant so much, I tried extra hard to keep my head in the game. I kept track of the outs and made sure to set myself before every pitch, knees loose, glove hovering in front of me, ready to bolt in whichever direction the ball might be hit. When I was up at bat, I reminded myself to watch the pitcher’s hand and follow the ball all the way to my strike zone. And then, when I swung, I reminded myself, push off on your back leg, that’s where the power is, and swing with your whole arm—shoulder, elbow, wrist. It almost didn’t matter if I made contact or not, what mattered was that I was completely ready, deep in concentration. Like they say, my head was in the game.

Good thing, too. The Pumas were fierce.

They had this girl on their team named Velasquez, a huge girl, her calves were like whole hams, and she could just crush the ball.

By the time I was up at bat in the fifth inning, they were beating us three to one, and that’s with Becca throwing her eighty-six mile an hour fastball. Usually, nobody could hit those.

Talk about pressure.

We had runners on first and third and two outs. I was, of course, the number nine batter, which meant the Pumas, along with everyone else in the world, me included, figured I couldn’t hit to save my life. Already in this game, I’d grounded a weak roller straight at the third baseman my first time up and struck out, like really struck out, completely whiffed the ball my second time up. The outfielders were playing in. And as I walked up to the plate, I could just sense the spirit leaking out of our dugout, like everybody already knew our rally was over.

I’d been in this situation before and what usually happened was that all the sounds around me thrummed louder and louder. I’d hear the catcher shuffling her knees in the dirt. I’d hear the ump coughing. I’d hear my teammates cheering me on. And the wind rustling the grass. When I tried to push these sounds out of my head, to concentrate like I should be doing, on the ball, they’d intensify. And then I’d have my own voice to contend with, the sound of my thoughts, saying, “Block it out. Feel yourself. Keep yourself loose. It’s just you and the ball. Nothing else exists.” And the things moving in my peripheral vision, stray napkins floating across the infield, the shortstop pounding her fist in her glove, everything. Until finally, all I could focus on was the tornado of distractions around me and the voice in my head screaming, “Stop thinking. Stop thinking. Stop listening to me!”

The thing is, this time, I wasn’t nervous like I usually am.

It really was just me and the ball. It’s hard to explain. It’s like I was in a trance. I couldn’t hear anything. The Pumas’ pitcher kicked her leg up. Her arm started its pinwheel and the ball pushed forward. Time started moving really slowly. I could actually see the seams on the ball—I mean, who knew? I always thought that was a myth. I could see exactly how the ball was going to move, like I was peering up a track watching it roll toward me. There was a crack and a pain shot up my elbow and all of a sudden the sound came rushing back. Everybody was screaming. The chain-link fence around the dugout was rattling. “Run!” They were all shouting. “Run! Asheley, run!”

And oh did I ever run. Then I was aware of everything going on.

The ball floated over the left fielder’s head, not because I’d hit it especially far, but because she’d been playing so far in that any fly ball would have gone over her head. I rounded first and made it safely to second by the time she’d gotten control and thrown it in.

Two RBIs! That was me who did that! It was exhilarating.

Naomi was up next. She, even more than Becca, was our all star. She’s completely why the Condors have been so good the past few years. She could run. She could hit—not for power all the time, but she reliably put singles and doubles into the gap, which anybody who actually plays the game can tell you is actually better and harder to do. My God, could she field. Her position was shortstop, and I swear, nothing could get past her. At least once a game she made some leaping, contorting miracle play.

See,
she
had the right build for softball. The really good softball players are sort of boxy. They might be tall, but they’ve got bulked up shoulders and super muscular legs. That’s Naomi—she was somehow able to be a total jock and still feminine and attractive to the boys. I think it’s that she was curvy. All those muscles she had were softened by baby fat. She’d go to school in singlets and blood red shorts down to her knees (red’s our school color, well, red and white—go Condors go!), and with her perfectly highlighted, perfectly buoyant hair, still manage to come off as glamorous.

And of course she hit me in. She got a home run. And I got to stand behind home plate and high-five her as she came around.

She wrapped her arm around my shoulder as we walked back to the dugout together. “Killer hit, Ash. You made her throw you the pitch you wanted.”

For the rest of the game, she sat next to me on the bench, trash-talking the other team, comparing notes on which teachers I thought were the biggest pushovers and which ones scared the crap out of me, things like that.

It was weird.

And then, weirder, she said, “Hey, you’re going to Becca’s party, right?”

“Uh,” I said, “I don’t know. When is it again?”

“Wednesday. Don’t tell me you’re not going. Everybody’s going. I’m sure Craig wants to go.” Craig, my boyfriend. Well, my ex-boyfriend now, I guess. I’ll get to him later. “Becca’s parents bought something like five kegs. How can he resist?”

Becca’s family owned a Spanish-style mansion tucked up in the hills north of town, a legendary place to the students of Redwood. They’d had the two or three acres of forest behind the house landscaped for some exorbitant amount of money. A swimming pool and hot tub carved right out of the rock. Lots of dark nooks and caves and places to disappear and smoke a joint or make out. For years, ever since her oldest brother had been a student, they’d been having end-of-the-year blowouts there. Her rich hippie-doo parents funded the whole thing and then always made sure to be away in Hawaii during the actual party itself.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

“Maybe? That’s all I get?”

In my three years at Redwood, I’d never gone to one of Becca’s parties. I’d thought about it the year before, but on the day of, I’d lost my nerve. I figured, if I was wanted, someone would have personally invited me, and now, here was Naomi doing exactly that.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

She held her hand up between the two of us, her fingers curled into a loose fist. “Pinky promise?” We looped our pinkies around each other and pulled. “Oh, and you know what would be great is if you were able to drag Will along too.”

“You want me to?”

“Sure.” Naomi’s gaze flicked away and back to me, like she was beating back a secret of some sort. “If you want, I mean,” she said, almost too nonchalantly.

She liked him. Or anyway, she thought she might like him. That had to be it.

And this is, I guess, the point I’m trying to make. I could tell that day that my life was about to change. And what would that look like, you know what I mean? Because . . . it’s hard to explain. He’s never really had anyone he could talk to. And I know, the house can sometimes get too oppressive for him and he starts envisioning all the ways he’ll be trapped in it forever, pushing and pulling at Mom and her addictions, forced to take care of her for the rest of her life. That’s how he thought about these things.

I want to make sure I’m explaining this right. He’s got crazy, overpowering protective impulses, and since he was little, he’s believed there wasn’t anybody out there—nobody but him—who cared enough to make sure Mom or me—I guess especially me—would be okay. I’m not saying that excuses him. I’m just. . . it just seems important to make that clear.

And, so on this day, when everything seemed to be full of hope for me, I wondered, how great would it be if Will could have something like that too? Like, if he could finally have some friends besides me? A girlfriend even! And one as cool as Naomi!

I was excited by the idea. And then, also, I was relieved by the thought that I wouldn’t have to worry so much about him.

“Absolutely,” I said to her. “I’m sure he’ll be excited to go.” Then, thinking, every little bit helps, I told her, “Hey, you know that tournament going on at Hill Grove? Will sent me a text a little bit ago. It looks like he might win.”

She nodded her head, gazing off toward some intense place only she could see as she took this news in. “Cool,” she said. “Very cool. You know what that means, right, Ash?” Cracking a half-smile, she scrutinized me waiting for the right answer. “Tequila shots! If you’re going to celebrate, you’ve got to do it right.”

By the end of the game, my imagination had gone wild on me. I couldn’t help it. I kept imagining Naomi and Will and Craig and me racing around Morro Bay together all summer, kicking back at the beach all day, cool in our sunglasses, chasing each other around town as we drove from party to party on the weekends, being the glamorous kids everybody circled around on those nights when there was nothing to do but hang around in the woods, smoking pot and slamming beer, searching for the secret codes in the constellations. All these things I’d never done, all these ways Will and I were finally going to get to have the kind of normal high school fun that we’d always been too bunkered down to have before.

Really. This is what I was imagining. I guess I was naive, but what I really wanted, more than anything, was for us all to develop a kind of close-knit, kind of happy family feeling together.

And then we won the game, and as we did the loop of congratulatory high fives, the other girls on the team kept slapping my ass and saying things like, “Killer job, Asheley” and, “That was all you.”

And you know? It was like a perfect day. Too perfect, maybe. I should have suspected that something would sneak up and clobber me.

There was even a sign. As we were packing the bats and helmets and stuff into the duffel bags, I saw Keith’s rusty old green Eagle creeping up Verona toward Paradise Drive. I knew it was his because I recognized the giant Deadhead skull plastered across the rear window and the huge crack on the windshield. And he was going so slow, like ten miles per hour. I could tell he wasn’t headed anywhere, just meandering around like he sometimes does.

Sorry. Keith is Mom’s boyfriend. He’s a little off. Smokes a lot of pot for “medicinal purposes.” Sometimes he’ll space out on you for what seems like hours—staring at you, his cheek twitching just a little. It’s freaky. Mom claims it’s PTSD, but come on, it was the eighties when he was in the army. He was stationed in Germany for, like, six months, but mostly he just sat around at Fort Hood.

One thing he’s always reliable for, though, is letting me know when Mom’s on a downswing. That’s when he jumps in the Eagle and drives around town like a zombie.

Why didn’t I wonder what was going on? Denial, maybe. Or maybe it was that, for one time in my life, I was being selfish. . . . Either way, I regret it now.

Partly, it has to do
with the fact that Mom got carted off to rehab again. I mean, she and I—when she’s doing well, I’m doing well, and when she spirals down, I get, I don’t know.

Bad.

I’m not making excuses. I’m not saying all of this is Mom’s fault—it’s my fault, I understand, it’s all my fault—I’m just saying, there’s a relationship there.

That was the day of the Countywide Invitational.

Yeah. I won. I shot a sixty-eight.

That was satisfying. It felt amazing, actually. Unbelievable. I’d never won anything before.

It was just like on TV. They laid out a big green carpet and propped me on a podium with the emblem of the Amateur Golf Association of America plastered across the front of it and handed me a trophy.

That trophy. It was magnificent. Three feet tall, with a polished marble base and four long pillars ribbed in a metallic bluish material, and on top, of course, was the shiny statue of the golfer, his driver jacked up over his left shoulder and his head angled out toward the far edge of the fairway. It was heavier than I’d imagined it would be. Like something real. Something important.

While I was standing there, Red Gitney, the president of the company that was sponsoring the tournament, gave a speech about how important it is to support young athletes and all that boilerplate stuff and then we shook hands and people took pictures. There were journalists there. I was going to be in the papers and all the local websites. “How does it feel to be standing up there, Will?” one of them asked.

Not a hard question. Or it shouldn’t have been, at least. But no way was I going to tell them the truth: that it felt totally surreal, like there’d been a mistake and I’d stepped into someone else’s life, and it was freaking me out. I couldn’t think of anything witty to say instead, though. I just stared out at the crowd and stuttered, trying not to faint.

Somebody finally shouted, “It’s okay, kid, you said all you needed to say out on the links.”

I think I smiled at this—I tried to. I didn’t want to look ungrateful or anything.

Like I said, I was in a little bit of shock. The nervous shake in my leg was going crazy. I felt stupid, super self-conscious about the canary-yellow slacks I’d decided to wear that day. Like I’d dressed myself up in a Halloween costume. And it was just dawning on me, now that I was standing there in front of everyone, that my shirt was three sizes too small. I kept swiping at my face thinking I was drooling or something.