“It’s true,” Jackson said. “He won’t stop bothering you until you play or one of you dies.”
“Ha! Nice one, Green. Steve, look, seriously—”
“I said leave me ALONE!” I planted my palms on Derrick’s chest and pushed him so hard he stumbled and fell back into the grass.
Everything went quiet except the sound of blood pounding in my ears.
Derrick looked up at me with huge eyes. Jackson and Martin were motionless, just behind me, waiting.
“Steve,” Jackson said, his voice tremulous. “Hey, come on, we were just trying to—”
I turned and shot him a hard glare. He staggered backward as I tore past Derrick and up the road.
The Greens were both gone when I got back to the house. I slammed the door behind me and threw my coat in a heap by Dad’s bed, fuming.
How could I have been so stupid? School. What was I thinking?
My fingernails found the scabs on my palm and sank in. I gritted my teeth. I wanted to break something. The chair by the fireplace. The frames on the mantel filled with pictures of idiotic smiling boaters, tanned and lying about in the sun, with no idea that their world was about to come crashing down around them.
I wondered how it would feel if I put my hand through the window above Dad. The glass would tear through my skin and scrape along the bones, maybe shattering them. I flinched at the idea of it, but still my hand collapsed into a fist and drew back. Just then, there was a rattle next to me as Dad’s chest rose slightly and then fell again.
My fist fell open. Will wanted me kicked out of here, and hadn’t I helped him enough already?
I break something, maybe Marcus gets mad, maybe that’s strike two….
I sucked in an angry breath, and slowly the redness that clouded my vision flowed out of me, replaced by something cold and dark, something empty.
“You okay?”
Startled, I turned to see Violet standing in the doorway, a big medical book tucked under her arm. I found a nearby chair and pulled it up to Dad’s bedside. I sat with my back to her as a tidal surge of guilt rocked through me. This is where I should have been the whole time. I took Dad’s hand in mine. It was light as a handful of grass.
“I imagine they’re getting a game started over there. I’m surprised you didn’t join them.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Violet was sitting in a chair just behind me. She had grabbed an old ball cap off a nearby table and had pulled it down over her hair. The book lay open in her lap.
“It is the national sport, you know.”
“It was the national sport,” I said. “I don’t understand why you people talk about America like it still exists. My grandfather would say it was” — I searched for the phrase. I had heard it a thousand times growing up, generally whenever one of us suggested a slightly shorter hike or a little more sleep — “like square dancing on the Titanic.”
Violet’s book closed softly behind me. I didn’t move. My eyelids felt heavy watching Dad’s shallow breathing rise and fall.
Outside, the remaining leaves of fall swayed in the fading sun. Two kids, a boy and a girl with wide, bright faces, were playing out in the park. I looked away and my eye fell on Violet’s cabinet, the cabinet that only I knew was lighter a few bottles.
“Why are you people helping us?”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
“You don’t know us,” I said, surprised at the wave of disgust rising in me. “You’re giving us medicine, food, your home, and you’re just getting in trouble for it. It’s stupid.”
“You’re what was put in front of us,” she said.
“That’s not an answer.”
Violet crossed her arms and looked out the window over my shoulder. “Because there was a time when people helped each other,” she said. “And that made the world a little bit better. Not perfect, but better. We’d like to think we can have that time back.”
“But what if you’re wrong?” I asked.
Violet shrugged. “Maybe we are on the deck of the Titanic,” she said. “Maybe the Collapse isn’t over and this will all be gone tomorrow. I don’t know. What I do know is what it’s like out there, we all do, and even if I can only have a little break from it, if I can be the kind of person I was before all this happened, then I’m going to take it. Even if it’s just for a day.”
Violet tossed the baseball cap into my lap.
“You know what I mean?”
She left without another word, entering the kitchen and leaving me alone.
I shifted in my chair. Outside, leaves swayed across the blue sky. Dad lay before me, as still as ever. I turned Violet’s threadbare cap over and over in my hands.
There was a squeal of laughter and the two kids flew by the window. They were maybe six or seven years old, the girl with a long stream of golden hair. The boy was taller and thin as a sapling. They were both holding sticks that had colored streamers attached to the ends so as they went by they were a streak of red and purple and blond, like a flight of brightly colored birds. I pulled the cap down over my head and watched as they banked into the sunshine and disappeared into the park.
FIFTEEN
I skipped school the next day and spent it searching for Jenny but had no luck finding her. I ended up standing in the field east of the school, watching Jackson and the rest gather for their daily baseball game, choosing sides, lining up, swinging their bats through the crisp air.
I had never played baseball, but with how much Dad talked about it I almost felt like I had. He pitched throughout high school and was a passionate Padres fan. Sometimes to keep us entertained on the road, he’d recount major games he had seen in painstaking detail. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and let myself drift closer to the game, finally finding a spot to sit in the grass.
No harm in watching, I thought. Just for a few minutes.
Derrick and Jackson’s team was lining up for the first at bat. Martin threw a battered plastic helmet to a broad-shouldered girl, and she took a few practice swings before making her way to the plate. She hunkered down, eyeing the tall pitcher sharply, and let the bat hover over her shoulder. She was ice-cold and didn’t move an inch on his first two pitches but unloaded completely on his third and sent the ball rocketing into the blue sky. She made it to second, then stopped, cheating out toward third.
“Carrie V.”
Jackson had strayed from the game and was standing just a few feet in front of me. I half expected him to tell me to beat it, given how I’d acted after school the previous day. But he just stood there and watched the game, his hands in the pockets of a worn pair of khaki pants. Soon he eased down next to me. I set my palms in the grass, ready to get up and walk away, but for some reason I didn’t. I just sat there, watching.
“She’s one of our best. The pitcher is her boyfriend, John Carter. She knows him inside and out. Almost always gets a hit off him.” Jackson turned to face me over his shoulder. “You can play, you know. If you want.”
“I gotta get back to my dad.”
A shrimpy kid with long hair made his way nervously to home plate with the encouragement of his teammates. “Stan,” Jackson said. “Not our best player. Hey, where were you today?”