It all started with a haircut. A week before my tenth birthday, I came from home from school and told my mom I wanted my hair to be cut—like, now. My hair suddenly felt like this heavy, weighted thing, not right on my head at all. I always wore it in a single braid, and it kept thump-thumping me on the back when I ran, like someone tapping me on the shoulder.

“You have baseball practice,” my mom said. I always had baseball practice. I was on two baseball teams—one for regular kids and the other for players who were really good. I don’t mean to brag, but it’s the truth. Even when I was five years old, I could throw a ball almost to the end of our street.

“We can make time,” I said. “It won’t take long.”

She must have known by my tone that I was serious, because she agreed, and we drove to The Chop Shop at the mall. My hands were trembling a little bit, the way they did when I practiced pitching and lost track of time. But some days you just know something.

The Chop Shop was one of those cheapo hair places, but it had special seats for kids—red race cars for boys and a splashy pink for girls.

“Hi, Cassandra,” said Elena. She had been cutting my hair since I was three. There is a photo in our family album of me having my first real haircut with her. She’s dabbing my nose with a big brush that sweeps away the hair, and I am laughing.

This day, though, I was not laughing. I sat down in one of the regular black chairs for adults before she could ask which kids’ seat I wanted.

“Just here for a trim?” she asked, taking out the elastic band from my braid. She raked her fingers through my long brown hair. The salon smelled of the citrus shampoo I usually enjoy having lathered into my hair. But there was no time for that. I remember thinking, This is it.

“No,” I said. “I’d like to cut it all off.”

“Oh,” she said. “Short and sassy? Like short hair, don’t care?” she asked, glancing at my mom in the mirror.

Short hair, don’t care was what all the celebrities tweeted when they chopped off their hair. Even I knew that. My mom held her purse in front of her chest. She looked as if she were preparing to be hit by a wild pitch.

“I do care. I want it short,” I said and crossed my arms. I was already wearing my baseball uniform. Red and white. Number 3—my lucky number.

“Okay, you’re the boss. I’ll just take a few inches off to start, in case you change your mind,” said Elena.

I heard the scissors slowly close over a chunk of my hair, and the first piece fell to the floor. Elena started working faster then, whistling under her breath, her fingers deft with the scissors.

“Still good?” asked Elena, stopping to look at me in the mirror. She smiled. She had round cheeks with lots of pink rouge, and shiny red-blond hair that she sometimes wore curly and sometimes wore flat, as if she’d ironed it. I’d always liked Elena. She often wanted details about my latest baseball game.

“Keep cutting, please,” I said.

My mom’s eyes got bigger as more and more of my hair covered the floor tiles. The growing pile reminded me of the grass trimmings left behind after my parents cut the lawn.

“Cassie, are you sure?” Elena asked. “Mrs. Cadman, is this okay?”

I was so sure. I was like Mike Trout soaring up in the outfield to make one of those amazing airborne catches and stop a home run. It was time to do something. Take a jump.

I guess I’d never thought about the other player, the one denied the run. The one who shuffles back to the dugout. The one who is disappointed because they imagined it would turn out differently. I hadn’t thought about my mom.

“Well, it’s her hair,” said my mom in a tiny voice, like she couldn’t get enough air.

When Elena was done I ran my hand over my hair. It was cut to just below my ears, but not buzzed or spiky, so it felt smooth and cool. I ran my fingers along the bare skin on the back of my neck. My head felt light and free. My mom picked up a piece of my hair from the salon floor and tucked it into her purse. Our eyes met in the mirror, but we didn’t say anything. She went over to the counter where Elena was ringing up the cost of the haircut. Elena was singing along under her breath to the pop music piped in, cheerful as ever, like it was no big deal that I’d just had all my hair shorn off. Lots of ball players wear their hair long, flowing down past their helmets. A few have bald or shaved heads, like Albert Pujols or Adrián Beltré. But they all have their own style. Now I had mine.

In the car on the way to practice, I knew I had something else to say.

“Mom,” I said, “I’d like you to call me Caz, like my baseball nickname.”

“Cassie, this has gone far enough. You’re my daughter, and I named you Cassandra. Your friends can call you Caz, but I’ll call you Cassie.”

“Cassie is a girl’s name, Mom. I don’t want a girl’s name.”

My mom darted into a spot at the ballpark, crookedly, her hands gripping the steering wheel. She cranked up the parking brake.

“Cassie, you are a girl.” She stared at me, looking confused, as if fog were steaming a window between us and she couldn’t quite see me. My mom has soft brown eyes and shoulder-length hair the same shade as mine. She wears one little swipe of lipstick, and that’s it.

“Mom,” I said, my breath heaving out and making a whooshing sound like a fastball past your ear. “I don’t think I am a girl.”

And not long after that almost everything changed. I decided my new full name would be Caspar. My dad got a new job flying planes for an American company. We moved from our house in Toronto all the way to Washington State, a place with lots of rain and hardly any snow. I left my own baseball team, the Leslieville Lightning. I left my favorite major league team, the Toronto Blue Jays. My dad let me see one last game at Rogers Centre, and I cried when the players came out—and even for ACE, the Blue Jays’ mascot, with his number 00.

That was what happened to me when we moved. My dial was set back to 00. We went thousands of miles away, where nobody knew us. And only my mom, my dad, my dog and I knew I had ever been called Cassandra.