I’D BEEN TO so many baseball games that I knew a good hit when I heard one.
Danny was cranking them out when Mom and I pulled up to the batting cages after she took me to my dentist appointment. Usually, Mom would have rushed up to the fence and called him over to leave, but today, she just sat down at a nearby picnic table and watched.
I scooted onto the bench, running my tongue over my teeth. I could still taste the weird lumpy mint fluoride. I thought about my emergency stash of Red Vines sitting back in my room.
It was like rewinding a tape. The machine would shoot out the ball. Danny would wind up. Swing. And his bat would connect with the hurtling pitch, hitting it with a perfect, sweet, hollow ping.
Pitch. Wind-up.
Ping.
“You know he’s getting recruited, right?”
I looked at Mom, who was freeing her hair from a tight bun, her lips pursed in her usual worried look. She was still wearing her lavender-patterned scrubs from the hospital, and they looked a size too big on her. She kind of looked out of place, right next to a batting cage and a skate park where the older teenagers usually hung out. I said, “By colleges?”
She nodded.
“But Danny’s only a junior.”
Mom looked at me. “That’s when they start looking.” Mom smoothed her frizzy hair back and secured it with a clip. She popped in an Altoid mint. She was obsessed with those. “They’re going to start showing up to some games when the season starts. Maybe he can land a scholarship, even, if he keeps his grades up. College isn’t getting cheaper these days.”
Pitch.
Ping.
Mom’s eyes were still on Danny as she said, “Speaking of grades, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I chatted with your old science teacher the other day.”
“From last year?”
She nodded, her earrings dangling. “We were just continuing our conversation from, well, last June. She really wanted to recommend you for some extra help this year.”
Not this again. Just when I thought she’d forgotten. I mumbled, “I don’t need extra study hall.”
She turned to me. “Come on, Benji. We’ve talked about this. Your math grades haven’t been so great this quarter. And you got that C in science last year.”
“Well . . .” It wasn’t my fault that Mr. Martin took points off every time he saw me drawing in class.
Mom said, “Benji, I’m not one to fret, but we have to do something about this.”
Danny took a break; the pings stopped for a while. “I’m fine now,” I said. “I’m getting better at things. Plus, my lab partner is really smart. I’m doing the science fair with her this year, and Mr. Devlin said he’d give extra credit for that.”
The look on Mom’s face was priceless. “You’re doing a science fair project?”
I nodded. “Yup.”
“Since when? And on what?”
“Since September. And we’re building rockets.”
Her eyebrows shot up another inch. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“I’m not! I swear. My lab partner’s practically a genius. She’s even drawn up all these complicated math equations and those diagram things.” I shrugged. “I trust her.”
“Oh, that’s great.” Mom started smiling, for real this time. The extra Benji-sponsored wrinkles faded. She sighed. “You know I want the best for you. I just—”
“I know.” I knew what she was going to say. She just wanted to not worry about me like she didn’t have to worry about Danny. Danny, the star shortstop who could hit a line drive with his eyes closed. Danny, with his near-perfect grades and his girlfriend, Chelsea, and his probably-most-likely fancy college scholarship. Danny, who was probably going to drive off into the sunset in his beat-up blue Ford, like Superman on his Supermobile.
Here’s something Mr. Keanan taught me during his drawing unit in art class: details bring things to life. During lunch breaks, I’d be reading my comics and he’d be sketching different things, like a drawing of his guitar, or his dog, or his two kids. He’d start out with rough brush strokes and hone in. And suddenly, he’d lean over and with a few confident strokes of his pencil, he could add in a sly expression, or a twinkle in the eye, and bring someone to life.
Turns out, when you draw someone, you happen to notice things about them that other people don’t. Like how when Mom was really, really happy, her eyes crinkled at the corners. Or how her left eye twitched if she was about to blow her top over something. Or how Drew Balonik twirled his pencil when he was about to pull a prank. Or how Amir cracked his knuckles when he had to speak in public, because talking in front of people made him super nervous. For Ro, it was easy to draw the blue-and-white windbreaker, or the clunky watch she wore on her right hand because she wrote with her left, or how she always pulled her wavy hair up in a half bun with her white hair tie. But it was harder to capture how she scrunched her face and stuck her tongue out a little when she was concentrating. Or how she brightened when she figured out how to get her radio to broadcast the Giants game.
Details like these matter in comic books. Characteristics are exaggerated. Even the slightest expressions are magnified. But sometimes you have to be picky about which details to draw, or whether to include them at all. Because how detailed a character is drawn depends on how important they are, really.
Like how in every action scene Captain Gemma Harris was in—whether she was bounding off of the hood of a spaceship or landing a powerful kick midspace—I could see the exact detail of her space suit down to the belt hooks and wrist cuffs and the beads of sweat on her face. Plumes of fires and stars whirled around her. Meanwhile, her crew members Asher and Falcon stared on, roughly drawn, with the only detail being the shocked expressions on their faces. The more important someone was, the more colorfully and detailed they were drawn.
Danny started swinging again. As I watched him wind up over and over, I couldn’t stop thinking about what things would be like if that were true in real life. What if some people were lit up brightly, while others slipped by in the background?
Truth be told, if my life were a comic book, my brother would probably be the hero. I could even see it. His helmet would be bright red. I could picture the detail of his baseball jersey and the sheen of sweat carefully sketched in and the pencil catching his laser focus while he struck out another player. Imagine that, on the front page of the newspaper, captured in vivid colors. Mom would tack it up on the fridge with her circular magnet clips.
And, well, maybe it was always gonna be like that. Some people would always be made of bright reds and blues and flashes and those BANG and KAPOW symbols and all that fun stuff. And I would be that sweet sidekick in the background. Or something. With my Red Vines. Barely sketched out and barely shaded in.