THE FIRST LOVE of Charli’s life was a frog named Leggy. She met him on a dissecting tray in her seventh-grade science lab and couldn’t stop checking him out—his external nares (nostrils) his tympani (eardrums), his pharynx (throat).
When she sliced open his stomach, her lab partner, Carla Henderson, flagged over their biology teacher and asked for a hall pass to the school nurse.
Mrs. Deane sighed. “You can go when Lauren gets back,” she said. “But try to tough it out. The dissection is part of your grade everyone,” she reminded the class.
Lauren and five other kids didn’t make it through more than twenty minutes of sixth period, but Charli couldn’t get enough of Leggy’s exam. She stayed in the lab long after the final bell rang inspecting the frog with the help of Mrs. Deane, who looked relieved that at least someone was not totally grossed out by the assignment.
When Charli got home that afternoon, the first thing she did after running upstairs to her bedroom, was call her best friend, Jack.
“Did you do the frog dissection today in biology?” she asked him.
“Yeah. Zoe Allen puked all over herself when she had to identify those gross, squiggly, worm-looking things in his stomach.”
“The small intestines.”
“Yeah. Whatever. It was disgusting!”
“I loved it,” Charli confessed. She yanked up her blinds and saw Jack in his room, sitting on the wooden bench underneath his windowsill.
Jack must have felt her eyes on him because he turned toward the window. “Ew. You’re weird,” he said, making eye contact with her.
“No, I’m not. You’re weird for thinking that. It was so cool.”
Jack stuck his tongue out. “Look, I’m a frog. Ribbit Ribbit. You want to come over here and dissect me?”
“I would if I thought there was anything interesting to see in that brain of yours.”
“Hey, you can’t have looks and brains,” Jack shot back.
“Oh, give me a break.” Charli pretended to stick her finger down her throat and gag herself. She heard enough about Jack’s good looks from the girls at school.
Just the day before when she was in the locker room changing for PE, she’d overheard a group of eighth-grade girls talking about him.
“He is such a hottie,” said Becky Tallen, who had probably outgrown a training bra in the third grade. “I’m inviting him to my birthday party, and I’m going to make sure I get to play Seven Minutes in Heaven with him in the closet.”
Jack laughed now, knowing how it irked her, and then he stood up and grabbed a baseball from the top of his dresser.
“You want to come over and play catch with me before it gets dark out?”
“Are you sure you want me to? I’m tempted to give you a black eye after that last comment.”
“I trust your bad aim,” Jack said, smiling.
Charli stepped closer to the window. “Is that a challenge?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, in that case . . . I’ll be right over.”
Jack tossed the ball up in the air.
“Great. See you out front in a minute.”
—
THE FIRST TIME Jack threw a baseball, he knew he was in love. He loved the “whoosh” of the ball as it sailed through the air and the “smack” when it hit his dad’s glove.
“Nice power kid,” his dad said, tossing the ball back.
They were out in his cul-de-sac on the first evening of the year that called for a t-shirt and shorts. It was also the first time that year that Jack could remember his dad being home from work at the law firm where he was a partner before dark.
His dad pounded his glove. “Let’s see it again,” he said. The two gloves and the baseball were a birthday gift from his parents last week. Jack had just turned ten.
Jack wound up a second time. Whoosh. Smack.
“What an arm you’ve got, kid!” his dad said.
Jack beamed.
“Hey Grace, come out and see this!” Jack’s mom who was always around and willing to spend time with him, as if to make up for his dad never being home, came out of the kitchen where she’d been washing dishes, to watch. She had on the red apron Jack had gotten her for Christmas last year, and her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
Jack threw another hard pitch into his dad’s mitt.
“Bravo,” she called, clapping her hands.
“Isn’t that impressive?” his dad said. “We should’ve had this kid in baseball, not soccer last year.”
Jack grinned with pride as his dad tossed the ball back. He was just about to throw it again when his dad’s pager went off. Jack’s least favorite sound in the world was that beep-beep-beep.
His dad took off his mitt and pulled the pager out his pocket. “I’m sorry,” he said, frowning. “I’ve got to go. My assistant’s paging. I’m in the middle of this big case.”
Jack’s shoulders sunk. He didn’t care that there was a crisis. Couldn’t his dad ignore it?
“Hey, maybe your mom will throw around with you.”
His mom gave Jack an apologetic look. “Unfortunately, I can’t right now honey.” It was the first no she’d given Jack in months. “I’ve got to finish the dishes and bake cookies for your school’s bake sale tomorrow. Your dad will play with you some more tomorrow, won’t you, Paul?”
His dad walked over to Jack and handed him his glove. “Tomorrow it is then, buddy.”
Standing in the street with the mitts, the ball, and his dad’s empty promise, Jack felt tears start to well up in his eyes. He was about to lose it when he saw Charli walk out onto her front porch with an ice cream cone.
“Hey,” he said, jogging over to her.
Charli smiled as she smoothed out her dress and took a seat on one of the porch steps. “Hi Jack.”
“Do you want to play catch with me and help me break in my new glove?” he asked.
“I thought you said you wanted to break it in with your dad first.”
Jack looked down at his feet. “Yeah, well . . . he had to go into work.”
“Oh.” Charli’s tone softened.
He knew she wouldn’t say, “I’m sorry,” because he had told her how much he hated hearing those words. They were more common than “I love you” in his dad’s vocabulary.
“Let me just go check with my parents, okay?” She disappeared into the house and returned a minute later. “I can go. I just have to be in before dark.”
Jack’s face brightened. “All right. Race you out to my mailbox.” He took off, Charli following behind him. And as the warm breeze whizzed past them, Jack almost forgot that his dad had disappointed him. Again.
—
WHEN IT CAME time for Charli to start pursuing love interests outside the science lab—boys—Jack didn’t even make her list of prospects. Her best girlfriend, Patti Buchannan, didn’t get it.
“Come on,” Patti said to her when they were maneuvering through the crowded hallways of West Hills High their third week of high school. “Don’t you ever think about what it would be like to date Jack?”
“No,” Charli laughed. “Jack and I are just friends.”
“You’re not even curious what it would be like to kiss him?” Patti pressed.
Charli felt her face flush. Actually, she had thought about that once, just last night when she and Jack were doing homework together in his bedroom. Their elbows had knocked as Jack leaned over her to grab a book, and an image flashed into her head—their lips touching, Jack’s hand resting on the back of her neck. But Charli had dismissed the thought right away, thinking that it was weird.
“What girl at this high school hasn’t pictured herself kissing Jack,” she said to Patti. “It doesn’t mean I’d ever want to date him.” Besides, she thought, even if she was interested in Jack, it’s not like he would ever like her in that way.
She was not Jack’s type. In junior high, Jack dated girls who were older (Charli was his same age), did cheerleading (as if . . .), and couldn’t seem to care less about their school work (Charli couldn’t get enough of hers). And it appeared Jack’s taste hadn’t changed much now that they were in high school. Charli had seen him flirting with the junior captain of the cheer team by her locker just two days earlier after school got out.
“You’re crazy,” Patti said. “If I had a friend who looked like Jack, I’d constantly be throwing myself at him.”
“That’s probably why he’s not friends with you.”
Patti grinned, revealing her hot pink braces, which perfectly matched the pink streaks in her hair. “But still, I don’t know how you resist.”
They rounded the corner and spotted Jack holding court with a group of three cheerleaders outside the Spanish lab. The girls were all dressed in their baby blue and white cheerleading outfits for the football game that night and were staring at Jack with googly-eyes.
“He is soooo hot,” Patti said, nudging her. “Look at him.”
He did look good, Charli had to admit. He was swoon-worthy by anyone’s standards with brown hair, green eyes, and perfectly straight, white teeth. And his confidence made him even better looking. Jack could charm anyone—even Mrs. Numan, their algebra teacher, who assigned loads of homework and was in a constant bad mood because she was going through a nasty divorce. But Jack was Charli’s friend. Had been her friend since they were kids. It would be weird to think of him as something more.
“I just don’t see Jack like that,” she said.
“Well, some day you’re going to take off your blinders and see him like the rest of us do. I’m predicting it now: you and Jack will show up together as a couple at our ten-year high school reunion.”
Charli smiled. “If you were my palm reader,” she said, “I’d ask for my money back.”
—
ON THE EVENING of Jack’s first high school baseball game, his hands were shaking as he threw some warm-up pitches to his catcher from the bullpen mound near the foul line in the outfield. There was a lot of pressure on him to perform well tonight. The bleachers were packed with students and parents who had heard the hype about Jack’s talent as a baseball player from his junior high days, pre-season games, and the newspaper.
The week before, an article had been published about him titled, “Jack Logan: Jack-of-All-Trades.” His coaches and friends had been referring to him as that for years because he could pitch, hit, and field so well.
He tossed the ball a few times into his broken-in mitt and then threw a fastball.
“All right, Jack!” he heard a few people from the stands call out. None of the voices was his dad’s.
Jack looked up into the bleachers one last time for his old man, hoping to spot him in the black collared shirt and tan blazer he’d left the house in that morning. Maybe he’d sat down at the last minute in the empty seat next to Charli and his mom, who both religiously came to all of his games. His dad had promised he wouldn’t miss his first game. “Not when my boy’s the star,” he’d said as Jack was eating a bowl of cereal before school at the kitchen table. But there was no sign of him.
Disappointed, Jack pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes. He didn’t understand it. How could his dad prioritize his career above his only son? He got that his job was important, but was it so important that he couldn’t step out of the office for a couple of hours to be here?
The ump called out to both teams that the game was about to start. Jack hailed one more hard pitch into his catcher’s glove and then rolled his shoulders back and started to jog in toward the dugout.
“Psst, Jack.” Charli was suddenly standing near the chain link fence flagging him toward her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Just come here, real quick.”
Jack looked over his shoulder and saw that the outfielders were still jogging in so he had a second. He went to her.
“Here.” Charli slipped him a folded up piece of paper.
Good luck, it read.
“It’s from your dad,” she said.
“Nice try. That’s your handwriting.”
“Okay, I know, but I’m sure he’s thinking that. I’ve seen you checking the stands for him all throughout your warm-up. I don’t want you to worry. You’re still going to play great without him.”
Jack gave her a half-hearted smile. “I just don’t understand why he’s not here. He promised.”
“I know. I’m sure he wishes he was here.”
“Yeah, right. If he wished it, he’d find a way.”
“Something big must have come up.”
Jack shook his head and checked the stands one more time for him. “Remind me when I’m older to never choose my career over someone I love.”
“Will do.” She reached out and wrapped her pinky around his, promising. “But come on, get your head in the game. Go out there and show everyone how awesome you are. Your dad might not be here, but a ton of people are, including your number one fan.” Charli flashed him a brilliant smile, and Jack stuck her note into the back pocket of his pants.
“Okay,” he sighed. He ruffled up her shoulder-length brown hair. “You’re pretty great, you know that?”
Why couldn’t he find a girlfriend who understood him as well as Charli? She was one-of-a-kind. And was it just him or did she look kind of cute in those jean shorts and the blue and white top she had on. Jack shook his head, snapping out of it. Why was he even thinking about that? If Charli knew that that thought had just crossed his mind, she would think he was crazy!
“Go on!” she said, shooing him. “Go get ’em!”
Jack smiled and hurried to the dugout for a team huddle and then to the pitcher’s mound to pitch the first shutout of his high school baseball career. The first of twenty shutouts in his high school career that his dad would miss.