The phone rang at ten o’clock the next morning, just as Mickey was blasting through the high desert at a hundred miles per hour in a sick-looking dune buggy with a flaming-orange paint job. He stared at the screen and gripped the controller even tighter.

“No!” he yelled at the phone. “Stop ringing!”

Now he was shooting through a red sandstone ravine, the mutant alien pack chasing him furiously, tires screeching, exhaust fumes swirling, ATVs and dirt bikes spinning out behind him, except…the phone was still ringing.

“I can’t hear you!” he yelled as he swerved around a massive boulder. But his parents were out shopping and they’d told him to take a message if anyone called.

“This better be important,” he muttered.

He threw down the controller and looked at the phone. The caller ID said: ELLIOTT, ABIGAIL.

He felt his heart quicken. Okay, he thought. Definitely important.

As usual, there wasn’t a lot of preliminary chitchat from Abby, which was fine with Mickey.

“I’m at the snowball stand, star,” Abby said. “Stop by if you have a moment.”

“I have a moment,” Mickey said. “In fact, I have many moments. Baseball season’s over, remember? Right now I’m exercising my intellectual capabilities, playing Roadkill Three: Into the Chaos.”

Abby groaned. He could picture her behind the counter, frowning with disapproval at his choice of pastimes as she nervously scanned for bees.

“Is that the game with the stupid alien bikers?” she asked. “Who, like, have three eyes and seven arms and nine legs? That game will rot your brain.”

“Not much left to rot,” Mickey said. “The aliens were about to run me down anyway. And have me for dinner. See you in a few.”

It was a great morning for a bike ride. The sun shone brightly and the humidity of the previous day was mostly gone. Large puffy clouds seemed to race across the clear blue sky. When he got to the field and pulled up to the stand, he broke into a big smile.

There, to one side of the stone walkway, was a large handmade sign that read in big, block letters: GREAT SEASON, DULANEY ORIOLES! WE’RE PROUD OF YOU!

Flanking it was another sign: 1 FREE SNOWBALL FOR EACH TEAM MEMBER! SATURDAY ONLY!

A handful of the Orioles were already there. Zoom was snapping photos of the two signs with his cell phone. “I gotta get one of those,” Mickey muttered for the umpteenth time. Once again he envisioned himself as a seventeen-year-old loser in high school who still had to use a landline to call his friends, thanks to his mom and dad.

Katelyn, Sammy, and Gabe were grumbling about school starting in three weeks while Abby was cheerfully bustling about making snowballs for everyone.

“I told my boss I’d pay for these myself,” she was explaining now. “But she said no, you guys deserve some freebies after that great game last night.”

“Freebies for losers!” Sammy crowed. “Imagine if we ever beat the Yankees! Your boss would probably take us to a five-star restaurant!”

“Where you’d probably order McNuggets,” Katelyn said to laughter.

“I sure don’t feel like a loser,” Zoom said, and the others nodded in agreement. “I kept replaying that game over and over in my head on the ride home. We have nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, we were awesome!”

Now Abby seemed to grow pensive.

“Can I ask you guys a question?” she said. “Do you believe in destiny?”

The Orioles looked at one another and shrugged.

“Because to work so hard and come so close to winning last night,” she continued, “and then to have that crazy grounder shoot over Hunter…it felt almost like the final outcome was decided ahead of time.”

No one said anything at first.

Then, with a serious look on his face, Mickey said, “You want to know what I think about destiny?”

The rest of them listened intently.

“Okay, I think it’s my destiny to be at Augie’s on Monday for Wing Night,” he said. “And furthermore, I think it’s my destiny to try the honey-barbecue sauce this time. Might even go wild and have the mango-habanero, too.”

As the Orioles cracked up again, Katelyn said, “And Zoom, now that you’re not the world’s biggest, self-centered dork anymore, you’re officially invited.”

“Thanks…I think,” Zoom said. “That’s about the weirdest invitation I’ve ever gotten.”

“You should come, too, Abby,” Mickey said. “As ‘Snowball Maker to the Stars,’ you’re practically a member of the team now.”

“Yeah,” Katelyn said. She jerked a thumb at Mickey. “Then you can watch this one gross everyone out with his eating habits.”

Abby smiled at Mickey. “I’d love to go,” she said, and Mickey could feel his face getting warm.

“Which brings up another matter,” Abby continued. “Guess what? My dad said I could play baseball next year if I want to.”

“Get out!” Mickey said. “Hey, that’s great!”

“Yeah, I’ve been working on him for a while,” Abby said. “He was always afraid to let me play. He thought baseball was too dangerous. Way more dangerous than softball, with the ball being so much smaller and harder.”

“What made him change his mind?” Mickey asked.

“I think I just wore him down,” Abby said. “Plus, he saw how exciting your game was last night. And how much I want to be part of something like that.”

“So you’re definitely playing baseball?” Zoom asked.

“Well,” she said, “I’m seriously thinking about it.”

“Come play for us,” Katelyn said. “We could totally use another girl on this team. It would automatically lower the nerd factor, for one thing.”

“Are you saying there aren’t any girl nerds?” Sammy said. “Because that’s ridiculous. I see them all the time.”

“For your information,” Katelyn said, “the ratio of boy nerds to girl nerds is like ten to one. Maybe twenty to one. You could look it up.”

“Where do you look up something like that?” Gabe wondered. “Nerdipedia?”

As a fresh wave of laughter engulfed them, Abby pulled Mickey aside.

“Okay, star, you didn’t get your snowball yet,” she said. “What exotic flavor are you going with today? No, never mind. Let me take a wild guess.”

She grabbed a plastic cup, filled it with shaved ice, and moved toward the grape bottle.

“Whoa!” Mickey said. “Easy with the high-pressure sales tactics! Don’t I get a minute to decide?”

Abby watched him warily as he made a big show of studying the flavor menu.

“After long and careful deliberation,” he said finally, “I’m going to go with—ta-da!—Atomic Apple and Caramel.”

Abby put her hands on her hips. “We don’t have Atomic Apple and Caramel,” she said evenly.

Mickey frowned.

“Oh, that’s disappointing,” he said. “That’s very disappointing. Okay, then make it grape.”

As Mickey cackled gleefully, Abby rolled her eyes.

“If we’re teammates next year and I have to put up with this,” she said, “it’ll be a long, long season.”