30

“SAW THE INTERVIEW,” ERIC said at lunch. He was beaming. “Must feel good to get that out of the way.”

I didn’t answer him.

“Now everything can go back to normal,” he said, a huge smile still taking up half his face.

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I thought.

Not that I blamed him. Everything that had happened, it was a big misunderstanding, just as Dad had been saying all along. That’s basically what Kristen’s family had said, and that’s what Dad tried to tell Mom last night. But she wouldn’t listen to him. She said she didn’t care what Kirsten said or didn’t say. She said the time for clearing things up had expired a long time ago.

“The batting cage offer is still on the table,” Eric said.

“I just want to rest, you know?”

After Mom finished packing, she’d come downstairs. Rather than argue more with Dad, she ignored him and put away the groceries. When she was done, she came over to the couch. “There should be enough food to last you a while,” she repeated to me. “I even got you those fudge-covered granola bars you like so much, though if you ask me they’re just glorified candy bars.” I had absolutely no idea how to respond to that. Granola bars, Mom? That’s what you want to talk about? Not that I had a chance to respond, anyway. Mom was already whipping around and picking up her suitcase as she announced, “I have to go.” She looked at me one more time, opened her mouth to say something else, then changed her mind and headed for the door. 

“I hear you,” Eric said. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks. You’re still going to be at tryouts this weekend though, right?”

The question caught me off guard.

I said, “But it’s only February . . . ” then realized that that was the point: it was February.

High school baseball tryouts always take place on a weekend in mid-February. In the gym. After junior high, there are only two possible baseball teams to play on: JV or varsity. Up until sophomore year, there were at least half a dozen traveling teams to choose from—if you didn’t make the Rapid River A team, you could still make the B team, and if you didn’t make either team, you could still try to join A or B teams from the surrounding towns. Plus, ninth grade was the last year you could play in a no-cut league that had one practice and one game per week during the summer.

In tenth grade, you didn’t have any of those options. You either made one of the high school teams or you didn’t play organized baseball, and the early tryouts were a way to give whoever didn’t make it a chance to get over it and go out for track or tennis instead. Later, once the snow melted, those players who aren’t cut have a second tryout outside to determine who makes the varsity team and who plays JV.

Most of this had been explained to us in a letter during winter break.

“I can’t believe I forgot about tryouts,” I told Eric.

“You’ve had a lot on your mind,” Eric said. “It’s totally understandable.”

For once, he said the exact right thing at the exact right time.

Then he wobbled, clutched the table.

“Are you sitting on your glove again?” I asked.

He shrugged, wobbled some more. “Gotta break this glove in by Saturday,” he said.