Manny wondered if Stu would still be sleeping. But when he entered their neighborhood, he found him in his front yard, throwing a baseball against a pitchback.
“Hey, you’re out of bed!” Manny called. “How are you feeling?”
Stu made a face. “Like an idiot for sleeping through practice! I can’t believe my mom didn’t wake me up when you stopped by.”
Manny laughed. “So no more headache? No more stomach problems?”
Stu leaned over and picked up three baseballs from the ground. “If I weren’t okay, would I be able to do this?”
He tossed the balls one by one into the air over his head, the start of his usual juggling pattern. But unlike the day before, when he’d kept them going effortlessly, today something went wrong. The balls fell to his feet and rolled away.
“Guess my timing is a little off,” Stu said. He tilted his head and squinted. “That, plus, the sun got in my eyes.”
Manny glanced up. The sun was partially hidden behind a big cloud.
“So tell me,” Stu said, bringing Manny’s attention back to him, “was the coach totally cheesed off at me for missing practice?”
Manny dropped his gear, picked up a ball, and tossed it against the pitchback. “Aw, don’t worry about him,” he said, standing back to let Stu make the catch. “He was too busy ordering Sean around to think about you.”
Stu paused in mid-throw. “Sean? Why was the coach yelling at him? I thought he was doing pretty well at shortstop after our coaching yesterday.”
Manny explained that Jason was going to be back in the lineup the next day. “So Coach Flaherty put Taylor in at short and shifted Sean to second.” He gave a little laugh and added, “Sean didn’t have a clue about what to do in your position until I gave him a little bit of extra coaching. Now, thanks to my impressive knowledge”—he pretended to polish his fingernails on his lapel—“I think he’d make a pretty good replacement for you if he had to be.”
Manny thought Stu would be pleased to hear about Sean’s improvement; after all, he himself had said that when a teammate played better, the team as a whole played better.
But Stu just stared at the ground for a long minute. When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were blazing. “So you think Sean’s better than me, huh? Some friend you are!”
Manny was taken aback by Stu’s sudden anger. He held up his hands defensively. “Whoa, hold on! I never said that! I just said that he had improved, that’s all.”
“And that he should replace me,” Stu said.
“That he could replace you,” Manny corrected. “Not should. Could. But now he won’t be doing that because, you know, you’re fine and will be back at second tomorrow. Right?”
Stu eyed him with a suspicious expression. Then he blinked a few times and his face cleared. “Yeah, yeah, right. I’ll be there.”
“That reminds me,” Manny said. “The coach wants us on the field at three thirty so he can finalize the roster.”
“Okay,” Stu said. He tossed his ball from one hand to the other and then popped it high up into the air, following it with his eyes. But when he reached out to catch it, the ball grazed his fingertips and dropped to the ground. He kicked at it, muttering, “Stupid sun.”
Manny didn’t need to look up again to know the sky was thick with steel-gray clouds. He had felt the temperature change and couldn’t see his shadow at all. He didn’t point that out to Stu, though. Instead, he gathered up his gear and said he had to go. “See you at school tomorrow.”
“Yeah, okay,” Stu replied. “I have to go in anyway.”
But when Manny looked back a moment later, he saw Stu still standing in the yard, staring at the baseball in his hand.
The worm of worry in Manny’s stomach gave a sudden twist. He tried to ignore it, but it continued to gnaw at him through the rest of the day.
In fact, it didn’t go away until the bus ride to school the next morning. He was in his usual seat and had just taken out his notebook of scorecards to look through when Stu boarded, slid in next to him, and started talking about the movie he’d seen the night before. He seemed so much like himself that Manny finally relaxed.
The movie Stu had seen turned out to be the same time-travel mystery that Manny and his family had watched earlier in the week. They talked about the film the rest of the way to school and were arguing over one of the more complicated plotlines in homeroom when their teacher pointed out it was time to be quiet.
“I’ll tell you why you’re wrong at lunch,” Stu whispered when the teacher’s back was turned.
Manny whispered back, “And I’ll tell you why you and your theory are out to lunch!”
But when the two boys met later in the cafeteria, Stu seemed to have forgotten all about their argument. In fact, he seemed to have forgotten all about the movie itself until Manny started outlining the plot to him.
“Oh, yeah, I guess I did see that movie,” Stu said vaguely. “It must have been a while ago, though, because I don’t really remember much of it.”
Manny blinked. “But—but you watched it just last night!” No matter how much he tried to convince Stu of that fact, however, Stu refused to believe it.
So after a few minutes, Manny gave up. He gave up on eating, too. The worry worm in his gut made that impossible.