38

AT SOME POINT IT dawned on me that I had just done the same thing to Kirsten that she had done to me that night on the driveway: apologized while fleeing the scene. Where I was fleeing to, I had no idea. I just knew I had to go . . . somewhere. So long as I kept going, it didn’t matter where I ended up.

Maybe Kirsten had felt the same way that night Dad told her his plans to divorce Mom. Maybe she didn’t know she was heading home until she burst through the front door and saw her parents’ concerned faces. Anyway, that’s how I felt. One second I was speed walking away from the school, from Kirsten, from what Kirsten had just told me; the next I was arriving at the other school parking lot, the one with the sports fields next to it. I didn’t know why I’d ended up there—not at first. I’d been on automatic pilot.

But now that I was there, I knew it was the right place to be. If I wanted to keep moving, where better to do so than a sports field?

Maybe somewhere deep down Kirsten had needed to see her parents that night. Maybe, despite the letter and the controversy it started, her dad and even her mom had given her exactly what she needed that night. I hoped so.

What I needed was to run. At that moment, it felt like it was all I had left. Every good thing that had happened that year had turned bad, with little hope of getting better. Except for my leg. My leg had been badly busted, but now was healed.

Everything else in my life felt like it was long gone. I’d never felt more abandoned. More betrayed.

I’m not going anywhere, he’d said.  

All this time, I thought sports weren’t a choice, not for someone like him.

Not for someone like me.

No, it was more than that. I thought Dad had made a choice. I thought we both had. By choosing sports, I thought we were choosing each other.

But I was wrong.

Maybe for the first time, I wished my dad wasn’t Coach Duncan; I wished he was a regular guy, with regular priorities. I wished he was the kind of dad who didn’t think twice about driving his hurt kid to the hospital.

I neared the football field and thought about running on it. Racing from one end to the other. Recreating my last play, minus the helmet to my knee cap.

No—on second thought, I didn’t want to edit out my injury. If I hadn’t gotten injured, I might not have ever started hanging out with Kirsten. And as bad as things had gotten, I didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t regret that.

The baseball field then. I could run around the bases, just as I had during tryouts. Only this time I’d be aware of how fast I was moving.

I entered the diamond and stepped into the batter’s box. I pretended to tap an invisible bat against home plate. I looked up at the mound, ready to face an imaginary pitcher.

It was only then that I realized the mound wasn’t empty.

The person was hunched over, on their knees. He or she raised their arm in the air. Something glimmered for a moment in the moonlight.

“C’mon, you Buttcrust,” a voice said.

“Eric?” I said.