Playing the Field

  “Because he’s the best-looking guy in the junior class. Maybe in the whole school.”

  “You can’t just fake that you’re a baseball fan forever.”

  “Yes, I can.” She got a dreamy look in her eyes and slowly smiled. “For Adam, I can.”

  Tony looked over at me. “What did I expect her to say? We’re talking about someone who streaks her hair, puts on makeup to get the mail, and wears shoes that make her look an inch taller.”

  “Oh,” she replied tartly. “And I suppose the reason you’ve been lifting weights lately is because the barbells need to be elevated several times a day. It airs them out.”

  Tony blushed. “Lifting weights helps my batting technique.”

  “Right,” she said. “As in, you want a bunch of girls to bat their eyes at you.”

  “A lot of baseball players lift weights,” Tony insisted. “We also jog.”

  “Oh really?” Jenna’s voice sounded studious again. “What else do you have to do?”

  We told her what went on at practice, but in the end she decided to come with us to watch. She also took paper and pencil so she could take notes. Then while we played, she sat in the bleachers, pencil poised, and observed us.

  It made practice that much harder. Every time I messed up, I wondered if Jenna was jotting it down. Later on she’d corner me somewhere and ask, “So, when you hit a ball straight up in the air and the pitcher runs up and catches it, are you supposed to drop to your knees and scream, or is that just your own personal ritual?”

  Usually I’m a great batter. My average is .410.

  I tried to ignore Jenna the best I could.

  As Tony and I walked on the field to toss long balls, Tony brought up the subject of Serena again. “We walk by her locker on the way to math class. Tomorrow we should, you know, stop by and talk with her.”

  “What exactly would we talk about?” This was always my problem when it came to girls. What did you say to them? With guys it was easy. You could say anything to a guy and not worry about it. Even if you said the most stupid thing in the world, he wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t make a big deal about it and sit around with his other friends giggling about you. Now I’m not saying absolutely that this is what girls do. But if they’re not laughing about boys, why is it you always see them huddled in groups, giggling as certain boys walk by?

  Tony shrugged. “We could talk about math class. You know, you could say, ‘Hey Serena, did you finish all your math homework? That Mrs. Swenson is such a slave driver. She never gives us a free moment, does she?’”

  That didn’t seem too hard to say, except when I pictured myself walking up to Serena’s locker and actually saying any of it. I know by the time boys are in the eighth grade they’re not supposed to be afraid to talk to girls, and a lot of my friends weren’t. Tony wasn’t. But Tony isn’t me. He has that “old Manetti charm” working for him.

  I looked skeptically at Tony. “You don’t think she’ll think I’m a loser?”

  “Naw. Why would she? We’ll just talk to her. Lots of people talk to each other. It’s no big deal. But remember, you’ve got to say something this time. Otherwise she’ll think I like her, and where would that leave you?”

  “Peacefully sitting in algebra class enjoying my dignity.”

  “Peacefully flunking your algebra class,” Tony said.

  I opened and closed my glove a few times in an attempt to loosen it up. “All right. Tomorrow I’ll talk to her.”

  * * *

  Tomorrow came much sooner than I would have liked. First, second, and third period also went too fast, and then I was walking down the hall with Tony toward Serena’s locker.

  I thought about trying to imitate Tony’s cool walk, but I figured I’d better practice in front of a mirror before I undertook anything so major. Instead, I grabbed my math book as hard as I could while still trying to look casual.

  “What do you think about Rachel and me?” Tony asked me as we walked.

  “Rachel and you what?”

  “You know,” he said, lowering his voice. “Rachel and me as a couple.”

  “Do you even know Rachel?”

  “Sure.” Tony smiled a little. “I’ve seen her around. She’s cute.”

  I slowed down a bit because we were coming up to Serena’s locker, and suddenly it was all I could do to drag my feet across the floor. “Yeah, but do you know anything about Rachel?”

  “I know she’s Serena’s friend. Just think, if you become a couple, and Rachel and I become a couple, we could do things together.”

  “We don’t need girls to do things together. We do things together all the time. Like right now we’re about to go make total fools of ourselves together.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Tony said.

  I took a swing at him with my math book, but missed. I was thinking of some really good insult to fling back at him, but we'd reached Serena's locker. She was kneeling down to get something at the bottom, and Rachel was leaning against the next locker over waiting for her.

  I had never seen the inside of Serena’s locker, but I should have guessed it would be spotlessly clean. All of her books stood neatly stacked across the shelf, and there were no crumpled papers littering it up like there were in mine. She even had pictures of horses taped to the door. In my locker there’s nothing on the door but the wadded-up gum someone stuck there last year that I’ve never bothered to clean off.

  Serena looked up at me, and I cleared my throat. I tried to remember what it was Tony said I should say. Somehow under the pressure of her gaze I forgot the first part of my speech. Instead of saying, “Hey Serena, did you finish all of your math homework? That Mrs. Swenson, what a slave driver. She never gives us a free moment.” I just croaked out, “Hi Serena, we never get a free moment, do we?”

  Her jaw dropped a little, like she couldn’t believe I’d said that—which made two of us, since I couldn’t believe it either. With one hand still in her locker she said, “A free moment to do what?”

  “Algebra,” I said quickly. “There’s never a free moment to do algebra.”

  “Oh.” She nodded slightly and stood up. “I did my assignment last night. Didn’t you get it done?”

  “Oh sure, I did it. I’m just not certain I did it right.” Tony hadn’t told me what I was supposed to talk about after my first statement, and suddenly I felt myself grasping for anything to say. “You know, I always think x equals one thing, and Mrs. Swenson has other ideas. That’s the problem with math. There’s no room for different opinions.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tony shake his head, but I plunged on anyway. “And why do you think they use the letter x so much in math anyway? We hardly ever use it in English class. I mean, how many words can you think of that start with x?”

  “Xylophone,” Serena said.

  “Exactly my point,” I said. “How often do you use the word xylophone?”

  Serena and Rachel walked toward the math classroom, and Tony and I followed them. Although I hate to admit it, I was still spouting off my feelings about the letter x to her all the way down the hallway. “You see, it’s a difficult letter,” I told her as we walked through Mrs. Swenson’s door. “And that’s why they use it in math class. Math teachers want these problems to be hard.”

  “Uh-huh.” Serena smiled at me before she took her seat, but I’m not sure whether it was the kind of smile that meant, I think you’re nice, or whether it was the kind of smile that meant, Which of your multiple personalities was I just speaking to?

  I sat down sullenly in my own seat and opened my book to our assignment page. Tony sat down in the next row over. He was still shaking his head.

  I tore a piece of notebook paper out and wrote, “I talked about math class to her. I thought you said she’d offer to help me.”

  While Mrs. Swenson wrote equations on the board, I passed the note to Tony. He read it, wrote his reply, and passed it back to me. It said, “With your speech on the letter x, it’s amazing the school counsel
or doesn’t offer to help you. Besides, this was the first time you ever talked to her. Give it awhile. Say hello to her a few more times.”

  I made myself listen to every word Mrs. Swenson had to say during her next algebra explanation. I hoped that if I listened instead of doodling pictures of baseball stadiums on my notebook, then suddenly everything would make sense. But it didn’t. And the worst part of it was, I knew it was my own fault. If I had paid attention from the beginning, if I’d asked for help when it first got hard, I wouldn’t have these problems now.

  I scanned the room looking for someone else that might be willing to help me out. Brett Parson? He thought he was too good for everyone. He probably wouldn’t slow down in the hall long enough to say hello to me, let alone spend time with me and a math book. Rich Shefler? He’d been mad at me since that basketball game when he’d been hogging the ball so I’d refused to throw it to him no matter how open he was. Ian Thompson? I didn’t know him that well, but maybe . . .

  As I looked around the room, I caught Serena’s eye. She smiled at me, then turned back toward Mrs. Swenson.

  Or maybe, I thought, maybe Serena wasn’t such a bad choice after all.

  Chapter 3

  When I got home from school, the first thing I noticed was that my little brother, Kirk, had gotten into my dresser and dumped my clothes all over the floor. I put my backpack on my bed and went to find the little shrimpola.

  I was an only child for eight years before Kirk came along, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t appreciate my onlyness. My parents had tried to have more children for years but weren’t able to. They’d just decided we were stuck being a three-person family, then Kirk surprised us all. When my parents told me I was going to have a brother, I was so happy I went wild. That was five years ago, before I realized a little brother’s main purpose in life is getting into his big brother’s stuff.

  I walked into the family room and found Kirk watching TV wearing only my underwear. “Kirk, what are you doing?”

  “Watching TV,” he said.

  “I mean,” I said a bit more forcefully, “what are you doing in my underwear?”

  “Watching TV,” he said again.

  I went and stood in front of the TV. “Number one, you’re not supposed to get into my dresser. Number two, you left all of my clothes on the floor. And number three you’re not allowed to wear my things.”

  He stood up and put his hands on his hips. “Get out of my way or I’ll tell Mom.”

  “I’m not moving until you put my clothes back in my dresser and get out of my underwear.”

  Kirk scowled and tried to push me. I put my hand on his head and held him away until he got so frustrated he yelled for Mom.

  Mom came into the room two seconds later and looked at me accusingly. “You can’t even be home for five minutes without fighting with your brother?”

  I let go of Kirk but didn’t step out of the way. “He dumped my clothes on the floor, and he’s wearing my underwear.”

  Now mom’s gaze turned to my brother. “Kirk?”

  “I spilled milk on myself and got all soaked, and I didn’t have any clean underwear.”

  Mom sighed, mumbled something about doing the laundry, then said, “Go pick up McKay’s clothes and put them back in his dresser.”

  “And my underwear?” I asked.

  “It won’t kill you to let him borrow your underwear.”

  “But Mom—”

  “You’re not using them right now, and he needs some.”

  This just goes to show you how unreasonable mothers can be. After all, a guy’s underwear ought to be sacred. I mean, what if somebody came over and saw those size 16 boxers hanging off of Kirk’s skinny little body? They’d know they were getting a firsthand look at my private matters.

  Kirk gave me a smug look and left the room.

  “Put everything back in the right drawers!” I called after him. Then I followed Mom into the laundry room.

  “I need my own bedroom,” I told her. It was a matter we’d discussed before, but Mom always used one of three excuses to tell me I had to stay put: (1) It’s too much work to move somebody out; (2) Kirk will be lonely without you; (3) We don’t have the room.

  We have a three-bedroom house, and the smallest bedroom is used as an office. My mom works at home as a medical transcriptionist, so she needs a computer, a filing cabinet, and that sort of stuff. In addition, she has every sewing project and craft she ever planned to finish stuffed into the closet. It’s probably the most crowded room in the house, but to my way of thinking, where there’s a will, there’s a way to get Kirk out of my room.

  This time Mom started out with excuse number three. “We don’t have the room for separate bedrooms in this house.”

  “Then let’s get a bigger house.”

  “We’ve gone over this before. We don’t have the money for a bigger house yet.”

  “Well, when is ‘yet’ ever going to happen?”

  “Either when you and Kirk stop outgrowing your clothes on a monthly basis, or when Daddy or I get a raise.” She picked out some whites from the laundry basket and threw them into the washer. “Neither of which,” she muttered, “is likely to happen soon.”

  I leaned against the dryer. “Couldn’t you just move your desk and all that office stuff into your bedroom?”

  Mom threw a few more clothes into the washer. “You know how early your dad gets up. If we had the computer in our room, then I couldn’t work on things at night because he’d be sleeping. Besides, I’m not sure all of that stuff would fit into our room.”

  “But Kirk constantly gets into my things. He has no respect for my property.”

  Mom sighed. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

  “When my friends come over, we can’t hang out in my room because he always follows us in there.”

  “He looks up to you,” Mom said.

  “I’d like him to look up to me from a different bedroom.”

  Mom dumped some soap in the machine and turned the dial slowly. “I’ll discuss it with your father.”

  This was farther than I’d ever gotten before on issue number three. “Really?”

  Mom shut the lid of the washer and picked up stray socks from the floor. “Right now it’s just talking.”

  “Right,” I said. But after Mom left the room. I did a little victory dance anyway.

  When my dad came home from work, I was a model child. I complimented him on how clean he kept his truck. I got him the mail. I even made Herculean efforts not to fight with Kirk.

  When dinner came, I remembered to say please and thank you as the food was passed around. Then I asked him how his day had gone.

  “My truck, the mail, and now my day, huh?” He nodded at me knowingly. “You’re in some sort of trouble, aren’t you?”

  I put my hand across my chest as though I’d been wounded. “I’m just trying to be the thoughtful kind of person you’ve raised me to be.”

  Mom rolled her eyes but didn’t contradict me.

  Dad broke a roll in half and spread margarine on one side. “My day . . .” He took a bite of his roll and seemed to contemplate this for a while. “I took a shower half way apart to find a leak, and then I fixed a couple of toilets—had to take one of them all the way off –and then I spent nearly two hours installing a reverse osmosis system. It was the most annoying piece of equipment I’ve come across in a long time, and the worst thing is it was our own RO system.”

  The water in Arizona has roughly the same aftertaste as cough syrup, so most people either buy bottled water or filter their water through an RO system.

  “Hendricks plumbing has their own RO systems?” I asked.

  “They do now. About a month ago, they bought out a local RO company. So now not only do I have to install the stupid things, I’m supposed to be pushing them too.”

  “Sounds like hard work,” I said. “Any chance you’ll be getting a raise soon?”

  Dad guffawed. “You know what Mr. Hendricks
told us at our last general meeting? He said we give ourselves our own raises now—through commission sales. Every time I recommend a Hendricks system and someone buys it, I get a two-hundred-dollar bonus.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “I’m a plumber, not a salesman. I’m not about to go pushing RO systems. Honestly, what does Hendricks expect us to say to people. ‘I’m here to unclog your sink, and by the way, have you ever considered the advantages of purified water?’”

  Dad and Mom then discussed several other faults Mr. Hendricks had, including the fact he tried to get out of paying overtime. But I wasn’t listening anymore. I was calculating how many RO systems Dad would need to sell in order to pay the mortgage on a four-bedroom house. How much extra a month did bigger houses cost? Two hundred dollars? Three hundred perhaps? My parents had never discussed the mortgage payment with me, but certainly four hundred dollars a month ought to pay for another bedroom. That meant my dad would only have to consistently sell two ROs a month. Selling two a month didn’t sound that hard.

  Granted, my dad had just said he didn’t want to be a salesman, but then probably no one wants to be a salesman in the beginning. It’s something people just do because they have to.

  Last summer I’d gone door-to-door and sold magazine subscriptions to earn money for baseball camp. At first I’d felt awkward ringing door bells. I’d been afraid people would be mad at me for interrupting them. But after awhile, I realized it wasn’t so scary. Most everybody was nice, and some people actually wanted to buy a magazine. I made enough money to go to camp. If I, a thirteen-year-old boy who didn’t actually read magazines, could sell them, then certainly my dad, a water expert, could sell some ROs. All I had to do was convince him he’d be successful.

  Between bites of spaghetti, I said, “I think you’d be a great salesman, Dad. I mean, if I were a stranger and you told me about Hendricks ROs, I’d buy one from you.”

  “Yeah, and I keep my truck very tidy too. Flattery will get you nowhere, McKay. I’m onto you.”

  “No, I mean it.”