“Are you sure, sweetie?” Dad asked. My right hand was on the door handle, my left hand inside my glove. It was two days after the funeral, and Dad had driven me all the way to Indiana for the baseball tournament.

I can do this.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” I said. I hopped down from the truck and walked toward the field, toward my team. Everyone was there already. For the first time I could remember, I was late.

Jordan was warming up on the mound, tossing pitches to Katie. Did Jordan think he was going to pitch instead of me?

“Quinnen?” Katie yelled. She stood up as Jordan’s pitch bounced in the dirt in front of home plate. She grabbed the ball and ran to meet me by the bench. “I didn’t think you were coming,” she said. “I’m so sorry about Haley.”

“Thank you,” I said. I had said it so many times over the past week that it came out automatically.

Nobody else came over to talk to me while I put on my cleats. Jaden and Andrew were getting drinks from their water bottles. For once they didn’t give me dirty looks or crack jokes under their breath, even though Coach wasn’t watching. Instead, they gave me these weird fake smiles. Coach Napoli was busy talking to the other team’s coach. Once my cleats were all laced up, I slid my hand into my glove and jogged to the mound.

“Hey, QD,” Jordan said. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’m ready.”

I nodded and stuck my hand out for the ball.

And then it was me pitching to Katie, like I had all season. Coach told us once about muscle memory, how your body has a way of remembering how to do something if you’ve done it enough times. My muscles remembered how to do it, how to throw the ball where I was supposed to, even though my heart and my brain didn’t.

The balls whizzed out of my hand, in an arc for one pitch, in a line for the next. Every time, right into Katie’s glove.

I can do this, I told myself. I. Can. Do. This.

The bleachers were filling up with people who had driven all the way here to watch the games that we had worked so hard for. All spring long, all summer long. Grandmas and grandpas. Moms and dads. Aunts and uncles. Those weirdos who always came to these tournaments even though they didn’t know anybody on the team. Brothers.

Sisters.

It was time to let the other team take the field to warm up. I jogged back to the bench for my water bottle. My mouth was dry, but no matter how much water I drank, it was never enough.

Casey was sitting on the bench, swinging his legs back and forth as he munched on a chocolate-chip granola bar. He smiled at me, but I could tell he didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like Casey to keep quiet like this.

He wasn’t the only one, though. Hardly anyone said hi. It was like they weren’t expecting me to show up. Like they thought I would ditch the team for our most important game yet. You never ditch your team. That was rule number one of being a Panther. Panthers always have each other’s backs.

And then it was time. Game time. They considered us the home team for this game, so we took the field at the top of the inning. I walked out to the mound, scuffing my cleats in the dirt. Katie put on her catcher’s mask. She was right there. Just like always.

The leadoff batter stepped up to the plate. A righty. He jiggled his bat above his head, like he was one of the pros. I gripped the ball tight in my hand, felt the stitching cutting into it, and waited.

“Yeah, Quinnen!” one of the Panthers yelled from the bench.

“Come on, Quinnen, you’ve got this.” Mrs. Sanders.

“You can do it!” Dad.

“Let’s go, QD.” Coach Napoli.

I waited and waited. Waited for her voice to yell out from the rainbow-striped chair where she always sat. She occasionally missed one of my games, but she never missed an important one. She never missed a tournament. I waited, and I waited, and I waited.

And then I understood.

I wasn’t going to hear her again. She was never going to pick me up after practice. She was never going to be on the other side of my bedroom wall, tapping with her knuckles after we were supposed to be asleep. She was never going to be in the backseat next to me for a long car ride. She was never going to sit next to me at the kitchen table for dinner. Her stocking wouldn’t be hung next to mine by the fireplace on Christmas Eve. I was never going to have to wait for her to be done in the bathroom on a school morning. She was never going to do anything, be anywhere ever again.

My sister was gone.

I was never going to hear Haley’s voice again.

And that’s when I did it. The thing a pitcher is never ever, ever, ever supposed to do. I didn’t wait for the coach. I didn’t wait for the next batter, or the next inning, or the next anything. I walked right off the mound in the middle of the biggest tournament we had ever played in.

When Coach Napoli called out my name, I stopped. Stopped walking and started running. I ran until I was at the edge of the woods by the field and there was no one to tell me not to and I took my glove off my hand and chucked it, as far as it would go.