Becky's Kiss (20 page)

Becky looked down at her cell, and there was a text there. She gasped.

There in the small view window it said,

Message from Louisville Slugger.

She held her breath and hit the ‘Ok’ button. On the screen, letters came up slowly at first, fading in and wavering, and then they were there in pure solid font.

“What if my three misses started a new cycle, strike one, where I could push the rules? And by the way, you had better get to health class, silly.”

Even though school was over, Becky Michigan didn’t have to be told twice to go back to the place where the magic of all this had started. She walked across the courtyard, trying not to shake to pieces, trying not to burst into tears of hope and joy, and then she vaulted the stairs to the trailers two at a time. The door was open, of course, and she crossed the hall to Trailer Classroom C where the desks were all set in squares facing each other, and the audio-visual cart sat right by the teacher’s desk.

The television suddenly came on, making Becky jump. There was a blizzard of static on the screen, and for a long moment, that’s all it was, white noise with the volume too high, and mad twisting curls of electronic nothingness. But then Becky’s hands started rising to her mouth as she thought she heard a voice beneath the blare, wavering in and out as if it was fighting to become real, and she was almost positive it said, “Strike two…I bent the rules by staying in limbo.”

Suddenly, the static cleared and the television showed a scene. It was the baseball field Danny had died on, just as they had left it when he got the chance to re-do his at-bat, and he was sitting there on the visitor’s bench in his Newtown Edgemont Bicentennial jersey. Then it started to fast-forward, but not like a normal video. It was supernatural, like the movie “Paranormal Activity” on hyper-drive, the days and nights flying past so quickly they were almost a blur, the field growing obsolete around Danny Tarragna as it had over the course of years, the weeds and vines thickening and patterning themselves in the fencing, the reeds and cattails growing in the outfield, the wild fern rising and marching between the baselines.

In wonder, Becky watched Danny Tarragna outlast time, refusing to re-enter his life, reliving once more the thirty-five years he’d originally endured between the time of his death and her fifteenth birthday. Even blurred like this, it seemed to last forever, and finally the scene faded, the television winking off to one dot of luminescence in the center. Danny’s voice came through clear out of the speaker.

“Thirty-five years for me was a day and a night for you, Becky. And guess what…you’re late for your after school practice in the gym.”

Becky didn’t walk. She didn’t jog, she didn’t pass ‘Go’ and collect two hundred. Becky Michigan ran.

And this time, she didn’t get lost. Once re-entering the main building, she took two lefts where there should have been rights, shot down the long hall of green lockers, and burst through the gymnasium doors.

They were all there: the team, Cody Hatcher waiting to the side for his interview, Beth and the posse, and Joey Chen taking grounders at the hot corner. The bleachers were packed, and there was a player’s semi-circle over to the side by the stacked-up wrestling mats, where there was a new kid facing away, taking warm-up swings. She stood there on the first baseline, and he turned.

It was Danny Tarragna, blue eyes filled with emotion, face flushed, helmet framing his face like a portrait. They walked toward each other and someone was saying that this new kid looked like he knew what to do with a bat, and there were others murmuring back that he couldn’t stand up to a Michigan heater.

They met behind home plate, Danny with his bat hanging down, Becky with her glove up at her chest.

“Strike three,” he said. “I broke the rules and crossed into your timeline for good. The 1978 at-bat had to go through a period of redefinition, like me and a whole team of duplicates ghosted into Brett Michigan’s reality, his whole team and the crowd too. My dad’s sixty-eight now and I’m adopted.” He smiled that gorgeous smile. “He claims I was a twinkle in his eye his whole life, and he wants to see me break all those records.”

“You’ll have to get past me first,” Becky said.

“I’ve been looking forward to it.”

They were nose to nose now.

“I missed you,” Becky whispered.

“Not half as much as I missed you.”

They bent forward and pressed their lips together. The crowd went bananas, and they broke it off, smiling at each other foolishly. Becky turned, and the coach was looking on with wry disapproval. Embarrassed, Becky walked around the netting to take her place on the mound, no ball tricks, no bravado, and the coach waited there for her behind the plate.

“Same signals as Friday?” he said.

“Same,” she replied.

“Warm-ups?”

“Don’t need ‘em.”

Danny Tarragna looked at her, eyes shining, and took a couple of swings there in the on-deck area.

“Get in the box.” Becky giggled.

Danny nodded and stepped up to the plate. The bat went behind his shoulder to the ready position, and his face became a mask of beautiful steel, etched, forged, and ready.

“It’s gonna be a fastball,” Becky said. “Try to keep up.”

She went into her wind-up, hands over her head, making shadows across the polished gymnasium floor. There was the high knee kick, and when she spread her hands and took that deep step toward the plate, Danny Tarragna rocked back, weight to the plant foot in the perfect rhythm of paradise.

Epilogue

Oh my
Goodness,
how Danny Tarragna annoyed her sometimes! He was totally old school, scared of the internet, uninterested in video games, and a die-hard fan of stranger tunes than those of her father: all this wild progressive stuff by Kansas, and ELP, and King Crimson, the lot of it sounding like psycho circus music you wouldn’t even roll credits to at the end of a bad movie. He used hackneyed phrases, like “Don’t rag on me,” and “You’re foxy,” and refused to talk on the phone unless she used a land line—he claimed he couldn’t hear her on a cell, and they kept interrupting each other.

On the other hand, she loved him more and more every day.

He was clearly the best natural hitter any of them had ever seen, and the coach was already contacting colleges. His GPA was a solid three-point-eight, and he fit in with her friendship group as if they had all been part of this well-oiled machine since the beginning of time. Dad didn’t recognize him, thank goodness, and when she asked him casually about the ‘at-bat’ that started it all back in ’78, he said what a lot of pitchers said. “He was just a guy in a helmet.”

As for the relationship, Becky and Danny were always together, holding hands in the halls, making out every day outside the shop between second and third periods, and writing each other poems, all terrible if you considered rhyme and meter but wonderful in terms of the heart.

They were serious.

Things were progressing, and Becky wanted to talk to someone about it. She had questions about…well…
stuff,
and she needed a sounding board above the age of fifteen.

She stood outside the counseling office and hesitated. How was she to start? How much was she supposed to divulge about her…urges? Everything? She didn’t want to get in trouble, but she supposed that’s why she was here in the first place.

She raised her fist and gently knocked on the door. On the other side of it she heard something tumble over, and a familiar voice that said,

“Gosh, darn, not again!”

Becky opened the door, and the new guidance counselor was kneeling there, picking up the remains of a broken cup. She was wearing a smart black skirt and a vest, and she was skinny, with lots of eye-liner, totally severe, and a sweet streak of gray coming down the left side of her long black hair.

“Ma!” Becky said.

The woman stood and walked the broken pieces of stoneware over to a small trash can by her desk.

“That’s what they all call me, honey. C’mon in. I dropped my mug again. At least this time, it was before I filled it with coffee.” She turned, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, and smiled apologetically. “I’m a little bit of a klutz. Always have been.”

“I can help you with that,” Becky said carefully. “Don’t think so fast. One step at a time, one task executed through to completion, one foot finishes its step before you think about moving the other.”

The woman sat at her desk and reached down to loosen the strap at the back of one of her high heels.

“That sounds like it comes from experience,” she said.

Becky sat across the desk from her.

“It does.”

“I’m Miss Nichols,” she said. “Delores Nichols.”

“I know,” Becky said. “I mean, of course you are.”

“I like saying my name like that, because I’m recently divorced. Don’t mean to come off like the flighty guidance counselor cliché or anything.” She crossed her eyes and gave a short sardonic laugh at herself. “And what’s your name, honey?”

“Becky Michigan. Brett Michigan’s daughter. You know…the pitcher.”

“I’ve heard of him.”

Becky’s eyes twinkled.

“You should meet him, Miss Nichols. He’d like you.”

“Really?”

“I’m sure of it.”

Now they both were smiling at each other, and even though it was kind of gross to be thinking about her parents from another life hooking up in this one, Becky Michigan was pretty darned sure that this was the real cure to her mother’s habitual clumsiness.

Sometimes the puzzle pieces were destined to all fit together.

And maybe it was okay to finally let them.

About the Author

Nicholas Fisher is a college professor of English.
Becky’s Kiss
is his first young adult novel, yet he has published numerous works of weird fiction for adults under a different name. Nicholas Fisher lives with his wife and son in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.

To learn more about Nicholas and his upcoming works, visit
www.nicholasfisher.weebly.com

.

Dear Reader,

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Nicholas Fisher

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The author gratefully acknowledges the following trademarks in this work:

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