Becky's Kiss (3 page)

Where do you think you get your klutziness from, Blossum? It ain’t just your ma, I mean, how many windows do you want to go breaking? Now come here and look at this. The Yanks are bringing up a young right-handed bat from Scranton/Wilkes Barre, and they got a lefty for the pen from Chicago for cash.

Becky studied as much as she could stand and slipped under the covers, trying her best to think of what she would possibly say when she ran into this boy tomorrow. The washer ate the shirt. Her Mom gave it to Goodwill. Terrorists stole it. It was abducted by aliens. It was…

That night, Becky Michigan dreamed that she had a baseball in her hand. She was holding it up, looking at it as if some odd specimen in a chemistry beaker, and then a hand pressed softly on top of hers from behind, moving along her knuckles, gently pressing forward across her skin until it was finger on top of finger. It was the mystery boy.

“You grip it this way,” he whispered in her ear. It should have felt weird and inappropriate, like one of those Lifetime warning movies where the big dude in flannel gets behind the girl in the sleazy bar all smooth, “teaching her to shoot pool,” but it
wasn’t
gross. In fact, it was totally warm and snug, like a cushy chair, like peas and carrots. “Here,” he said, moving her index and middle fingers perpendicular to the seam at the top side of its horseshoe shape facing away to the right. Then he pushed her thumb directly underneath the ball, resting on the smooth leather, touching the seam on the underside.

“Three strikes and you’re in,” he said in her ear then. “Three strikes and you’re in.”

She woke up breathless, and her face was hot. She knew that she had dreamt about a four seam fastball of course, but hadn’t a clue as to why her ‘dream boy’ was interested in her knowing how to throw it in the first place. Heck, the idea of Becky Michigan actually chucking a baseball was directly linked to cliché phrases like
“She throws like a girl”
and the broad sides of barns. Just ask Dad!

Still, it was far worse and completely strange that her ‘dream mind,’ or ‘subconscious,’ or whatever you called it, had concocted a vision where a boy she clearly liked went and screwed up the most well-known phrase in baseball history. Three strikes and you’re
out,
of course.

This was simply unforgivable, and considering the way night visions tended to linger, she had to make extra sure she didn’t let the real boy know she had ever doubted him, even in her wildest dreams.

Chapter Four

Becky Michigan’s second day at Rutledge High School started with a search all over the place for ‘Baseball Boy’ before homeroom, having no idea what she was going to tell him about the shirt but looking high and low just the same. He was nowhere to be found. Of course, she tried to act all nonchalant while she was doing the looking, wandering through the crowds, walking like she was calmly finding her way around, searching the sea of faces ready to flick her eyes away if someone caught her staring.

It was as if he didn’t exist. Of course, Becky knew that in a school this big, there was just as much of a chance that she’d miss him in the flow as there was that she’d bump into him straight up, but she’d sort of been hoping he’d be trying to find her too, real casual on the down low.

But he wasn’t hanging out at the rotary where the busses pooled, and he wasn’t in the foyer in front of the auditorium where there were tons of kids standing and chilling, sitting with their backs against the walls, forming little hacky sack circles, one kid selling energy drinks out of his back pack, another with hair in his eyes, skateboarding little paths through the mass and annoying everyone.

She checked her cell—7:10 a.m.—and she used the twenty minutes before first period to try the halls. Talk about entering the labyrinth! She got lost twice, once going over a glass-enclosed bridge between the main building and the shop, and the second time, when she took two lefts, the second past a storage area where there were a bunch of old text books and overhead projectors on roller racks. She wound up dead-ending by the choir room. The school was basically a pair of connected octagons it seemed, with a few funny offshoots. And there were lots of lockers, especially in the second building where the back wall was a long hall of them leading to a security office.

Becky peeked into room after room, seeing teachers putting stuff on the white boards, setting up projectors for PowerPoint, and arranging chairs.

Her next turn brought her to a place where the stairwell looked vaguely familiar. She hurried along and passed a trophy case, certain it was the gym area from yesterday, just seen from a different angle, and she thought she heard the hollow echoes of something bouncing on a polished wooden floor.

Kickball maybe?

Made sense. He was a jock after all, and maybe he was in there passing the time.

She pushed open the gym door, and the ball bouncing stopped. Five girls. Amazons playing volleyball. Looked like seniors who could have cared less about making it on time for homeroom, therefore reminding Becky of her own obligations. Her cell said seven-twenty-four. She had English first period, and she certainly didn’t want to be late on her second day.

“Sorry,” Becky said. She ducked out her head and did her best not to run at this point.

The bell went off just as she was passing room 129. The halls cleared immediately, and she heard her own footsteps echoing. She passed the photography lab, the tech support room, and then slowed and steadied her breath. Room 245.

She pushed inside.

“Meyers…” Mr. Marcus called out.

“Here,” some guy said, his voice cracking a bit on the first ‘e,’ and the class laughing back at him. The chairs were arranged in the ‘U’ shape like yesterday, with Becky’s seat at the far corner under a Salinger poster. But today, all the desks had been pushed back farther, so close to the wall that she had to make kids shove in as she passed. Teachers were insane and cruel, they really, really were.

“Messersmith,” Mr. Marcus said.

“Yeah.”

“Messersmith?”

“What! What?” She was had short, butch hair and a ton of bracelets going up her arm. Mr. Marcus looked up with a thin smile.

“Take out your ear buds, and you’ll better know the volume of your voice.”

The girl was a statue. The smile on the teacher’s face vanished.

“Take…out…those…ear…”

“I hear you! Whatever! She took them out and folded her arms. Becky rounded the near corner of the ‘U’ and banged her book bag on the laptop cart parked behind her, blunder number one of the day.
Slow down!
she thought.
One step at a time,
and of course, her bag swung back a tad and brushed the crown of this muscled guy in a black t-shirt, blunder number two and counting. He hunched in and rubbed the back of his crew cut.

“Head shot, dude. Hit in the head. Can I go to the nurse?”

“No,” Mr. Marcus replied.

“I gotta see the counselor,” someone else chipped in.

“Not today.”

“I left my calculator on the bus,” another tried.

“Buy another.”

“My cell buzzed. It’s my mom. Can I take it?”

“No.”

“What’s for homework?”

“It’s on the board.”

“Where’s the pencil sharpener?”

“Michigan,” Mr. Marcus said.

“Here.” She had arrived at her seat, and she’d also pretty much solved the mystery of the little rebellion going on. The guy sitting in the chair next to hers had been absent yesterday, and he was clearly establishing himself as the class troublemaker—tall and wiry, knees and elbows everywhere, flannel shirt with a rip in the elbow. He had chin-zits slightly covered by a peach fuzz goatee, haphazard hair curling up a bit on the sides, and a big mole under his left cheekbone. And all through Becky’s awkward entry, he’d been rocking back and forth in his chair, hooting at each outburst, and adding a little “Ooooh-ahhh” at each of Mr. Marcus’s retorts. He wasn’t even the one misbehaving, at least not in any provable way. He was just the instigator, sitting back and prodding.

He also had his foot up on Becky’s chair. Black Converse high top. Dirty too.

“Move your sneaker, please,” Becky said quietly. He squinted over his shoulder at her, laughed through his nose, and turned back.

“Give me a dollar and I’ll think—“

Becky cut him off by lifting the chair from under the back support and giving it a healthy shove forward. His foot shucked off and he swiveled with it.

“Yo!” he cried.

“Enough,” Mr. Marcus said. He’d moved forward. The kid had his elbows on the desk now, and his hands were outstretched in pleading mode.

“Did you see what she did? That was physical contact! That’s a suspension! You gotta write her up—“

Becky cut him off for a second time, blushing hard.

“Mr. Marcus, I am so sorry, but could I have a new chair? This one is dirty.”

The class erupted in whispers and cat-calls, some shaded against Becky, but more in a primitive celebration of the chaos she’d caused. Her heart sank. She hated classes like this, where the students bull-rushed the teacher with dumb stuff, but she had worn her best shredded boyfriend jeans today, and she wasn’t going to sit in filth, not two days in a row. And she’d never backed down to someone just because he was a guy or anything.

“Sit at my desk,” Mr. Marcus said. “We’ll work on the seating chart tomorrow.”

Groans of disapproval sounded, and bully-boy screwed his face into a question mark, shrugging up his shoulders like, “Are you kidding me?” Becky moved the rest of the way around the ‘U,’ feeling any chance at being accepted dipping below the poverty line further and further with every “excuse me.”

Mr. Marcus used the silence to tell them to do a pre-class writing assignment: “Tell me something about yourself in a paragraph, and make it appropriate, yet truthful. Take a risk. And I’m calling on people to read aloud, so please do your best.”

Becky got started immediately. She’d always liked writing, and it was certainly easier than focusing on Mr. Marcus’s back, pretending to not notice the baleful looks coming from around and behind him.

At the edges, Becky could hear some resistance to the desk work and some grudging participation, but all of that got easier and easier to ignore the deeper she got into the process. She started with her typical brainstorming web with interlocking circles—and flower shapes in the corners—and wound up scratching out a poem of sorts. She finished in about five minutes, looked it over, fixed this and that, and finally came to the conclusion that it basically sucked. She was just putting down her pencil when Mr. Marcus addressed the room.

“Ok,” he said. “Mr. Hatcher will start us off. Give us your paragraph.”

Bully-boy pressed his fingers against his chest all innocent, like.
Me? Golly-gosh,
then sat up in his chair with a smile that was mostly scrunched up in his nose. He flicked out his wrists and let out a big “A-hem!” Then he said,

“My name is Cody, and I live in Scutters Falls. The end.”

Some laughed a bit with him. He bowed his head a couple of times like “Thank you, thank you,” then looked back at Mr. Marcus as if daring him to criticize. Marcus stared back, and it got quiet fast.

“Tabitha Messersmith, read for us, please.” He said it all soft and scary, still staring down Cody Hatcher who was holding his ground, staring back.

Somehow, Tabitha Messersmith didn’t see Marcus baiting her. She huffed and puffed, bottom lip out, and shoved her paper forward with the heel of her hand.

“I like reality television,” she said. “The end.”

“Yeah, ‘Jersey Girl’ rocks!” someone added.

“Quiet,” Mr. Marcus said.

“Oooohh,” Cody Hatcher tried, but Mr. Marcus stopped him fast.

“That’s enough from you,” he said. “If I need your back-up, I’ll send you a memo. You want to ooohh and ahhh, then go to the circus. Here in my class, you’ll keep your mouth shut unless I tell you otherwise.”

“But—“

“This isn’t a two-way conversation,” Mr. Marcus hissed. “So go ahead and text home about it. You want to bring in your mommy for a little chit-chat, I’m there. You want to go crying to the principal, I’ll follow you down.”

The room had gone silent again, and Mr. Marcus started to pace from one side of the ‘U’ to the other.

“My name is Cody and I live in Scutters Falls,” he said, as if the words themselves had an odor. “
That’s
the first impression you give of your writing?” He glanced over at Tabitha Messersmith. “I like to watch reality television.” He walked in front of her desk and made her look up at him. His voice went down to a whisper. “I’m not angry, Miss Messersmith. I’m disappointed.”

He shot his glance back at Cody Hatcher and barked, “Now go ahead and say something!”

Hatcher jumped a bit in his chair. Mr. Marcus had played the dynamics perfectly.

“Mr. Marcus,” Becky said.

“What!” He was still looking at Cody Hatcher, he who was not staring back anymore, but rather making an intensive study of his fingernails.

“What?” he repeated, lowering his tone and turning a bit.

“I want to read,” Becky said.

For a moment, he considered. She had clearly screwed his timing, clipped his moment. But he was not the only one who could play a long pause, and Becky didn’t wait for permission, she just stood and held her paper before her, trying to keep her hands from quivering. In truth, she didn’t know why she had done this. She certainly wasn’t sucking up, at least she didn’t think that she was. Maybe she just wanted to be brave for once in her life. Maybe she just liked writing a little.

“Baseball,” she said in a small voice. “By Becky Michigan.” She looked up to a sea of eyes. Mr. Marcus had his arms folded. She glanced down at her paper, barely seeing it she was so nervous.

“I like baseball and freshly cut grass,

I like the scoreboard, and I like the stands,

A slugfest is nice on a hot summer’s day,

Capped off with an out-pitch low and away.