The next few weeks felt normal for the first time since the whole shoe girl thing started. I didn’t have any photo shoots, so I actually played in a couple of softball games. We won both of them, which made TJ very happy. I got to hang out at TJ’s house a few times, and she even invited Rusty over for one of our brownie-making sessions.
Rusty’s dad started his job at Swiftriver, and he finally got paid, so Rusty got some new clothes.
“Just in time, I’m growing . . . again,” she said. I think Rusty’s a whole head taller than me and TJ now. She’s strong too, which is why she’s our cleanup hitter. (That’s the person who bats fourth in the lineup — the best batter on the team.)
Fawn even seemed to stay normal. (I call her “Easter Fawn.”) She invited me over to her house to work out a few times.
“You need to increase your upper body strength for the Half Dome cables,” she said.
When I couldn’t even do one pull-up on her bar, she shook her head. “It’s no use. Looks like we’ll have to push you up.”
“How high is it?”
“About eight thousand feet.”
“Can’t we take the jet?”
“Ha-ha. No.”
Fawn got on the treadmill and turned it up as steep as it could go.
“You’ve got to get your legs ready. Hiking uphill is a lot different than running softball bases.”
I watched her go for about five minutes. She sweated a lot, but she seemed like she could climb forever.
“How come you’re in such good shape?”
“I’m not really.”
“Huh. Yeah you are. You must like to work out.”
She stopped the treadmill. “Here, get on. I’ll go get us some sport drinks.”
She turned it back to the steepest setting. “I wanna see a big sweat mark on your shirt by the time I get back.”
“I don’t remember seeing ‘killer workouts’ mentioned in the shoe contract.”
I changed the setting to easy as soon as she left the room. There was no sweat mark when she returned.
“I guess you don’t need this drink then.” She chugged down my drink.
I guess Fawn was my “personal trainer” now. I wished she would pick a job and stick with it.
During those weeks, I kept having the dog dream. Sometimes it changed a little. The places and people in the dream were different, and the shoes I was wearing changed. But I always slid safely into home plate.
Maybe that’s because Mom had arranged for a police unit to follow Fawn, so I felt safe when she was around. I hadn’t figured out how to tell Mom that maybe the guy had been following me, since then I would have to tell her about the whole Flip thing, and I didn’t want to get grounded. But considering what happened next, grounding would have been a good thing.