We’re still eating the ice cream bars that Coach bought us when our parents start to arrive. He bought them with the money he saved on the tokens. It’s late March, and it’s not like it’s actually hot. It’s just a nice, early spring day, and we have free ice cream, and it’s like, who says being an athlete is hard work?

I lick the wooden stick clean and chuck it in the garbage can when I see Mom’s car pull up. The Green Machine, we call it. It’s pretty ugly: a stubby old Honda, and a weird shade of green. It’s the kind of car people use to go to the train station and back, a “station car.” Except that Mom doesn’t use it for that, since she works in town. She just beats around Tall Pines in it. She isn’t driving today, though. As I walk across the lot, I can see Mom in the passenger seat. Dad is driving. He kind of likes the Green Machine, too.

I climb into the tiny backseat and close the door behind me. Dad starts the car and looks over his shoulder: “How’d it go?”

I really hope he won’t try to make eye contact the whole way from up there.

Mom looks back, waiting for my reply and scanning me for any signs of injury. I just smile because no one ever gets hurt in a batting cage. No one except the balls, anyway.

“OK,” I say.

“Is that Siobhan over there?” Mom asks, meaning Andy’s mom.

It is, but we’ve already pulled out of the lot. We’re on our way back to town.

“Work up an appetite?” asks Dad.

“Sure!” I say. I don’t tell them about the ice cream.

We decide to go to the deli counter at the supermarket because they make the best sandwiches. Mom gets a Veggie Deluxe. As near as I can tell, it’s a salad between two slices of chunky brown bread. So weird.

When we pull into our driveway, I can hear Nax going crazy even before the car comes to a stop.

“Someone needs to be walked,” says Mom.

Nax is barking up a storm in the kitchen. His paws are on the glass of the door, and his eyes are wild with excitement as I cross the lawn. I’ve only been gone a few hours, but Nax can’t tell time. He’s a black Lab, nothing fancy. Sometimes when he’s being crazy we call him “the Lab experiment.”

Nax and I go for a walk on the Rail Trail that runs along the train tracks near our house. As long as he doesn’t do his business right on the pavement, I don’t really need to pick up after him back there. When he was little, I used to have to drag him off to the side when he started squatting, but he mostly knows the deal by now. Sometimes he even pulls me off to the side, stretching to the end of his leash and contributing some quality fertilizer to the grass and flowers and weeds along the side of the path.

Nax is a smart dog. I mean, they say Labs are smart, in general, but I think he might be a little smarter than normal. The only reason I even use the leash anymore is because of the squirrels. He goes crazy trying to chase them. If he was an athlete, that would be his sport: the squirrelathlon. He loves it. Sometimes I’ll try to run along with him, just so he can chase them for more than four feet at a time. He’s never going to catch one, but he either doesn’t know that or doesn’t care.

“Good dog,” I say as he finishes his business. He comes up, and I scratch him behind the ear, just where he likes it.

We turn around at the little pond. It used to be just a big puddle, but it has grown up just like Nax has. We have to get back because there’s homework waiting. Not for Nax, of course — he’s not that smart! — but for me. They’ll probably make me mow the lawn, too. It’s the kind of stuff you want to fast-forward past, but you can’t. This whole week is going to be like that, waiting to find out on Thursday if I’m a starter.

“Fun while it lasted,” I say to Nax. Ten feet later, we take off after a squirrel.