Conviction (40 page)

To the game today, I brought the home run ball I caught at that Giants game with Trey and my dad. And I’m glad I have it with me because I’m too jittery to sit still. I flip it back
and forth between my palms as I watch Dutch chase two pitches outside the zone, the way he does when he’s nervous, and then strike out. When Chase swings too high and gets out on a foul tip,
Colin comes and lowers himself down next to me.

“Hey,” he murmurs, low enough so only I can hear, “Reyes bats fourth.”

I know that. I’ve spent the past three months combing through his stats, and there hasn’t been an at bat he’s made that I haven’t gone over a dozen times. And all this
time I thought I knew what I’d want to pitch him: fastballs, straight across the plate. No breaks, no tricks, all heat. That’s the most I’ve got, and if there’s a way to
measure yourself against another person, it’s that. I say, “I know.”

“We can make it look like an accident if one gets away from you,” Colin says. “We can afford to put one runner on base. Or maybe”—he glances around to see if
anyone’s listening—“whatever else you want to do. I know you won and all, but, I mean—the guy lied about your dad in court because he wanted to see him dead. So whatever you
want to do, it’s your call.”

I’m about to answer him when Zach flies out for the third out, and everyone gets up to take the field. “Half our town’s here watching,” Colin says, over the noise of bats
tossed against the fence and gloves swept up off the ground. “There’s not that much La Abra can get away with doing back.”

The dirt crunches under my cleats as I leave the dugout and cross the field to the mound. When I do, the La Abra side of the stands goes silent. I try not to hear it, try not to let it wrap
around me and choke the air from my lungs. Taking the mound, I try to block everything out: the stands, the other team, even my own fielders. It’s just me and the ball and Colin’s
glove. That’s it. I don’t let myself look anywhere past.

Their first batter’s Nick Washington, the catcher. Nick’s five for seven in his last at bats; he hit a home run last week off Jay Allen from Hilmar. On the first batter you
haven’t learned the umpire yet and you don’t know his strike zone. So Colin signs for a fastball, just outside.

There’s no one on base. There are no outs. This is their first at bat of the game. But just as I release, Nick gets into position to bunt, and because you never bunt this early I know
exactly what he’s doing, and when the ball gets to him he punches it forward, right down the first base line.

That’s my ball. I don’t have a choice; I go for it. I can feel him coming toward me, and I brace myself, but just as I get a hand on the ball and flip it up to Chase, Nick barrels
into me so hard my teeth are knocked together and my eyes water and the wind’s knocked out of me. Nick doesn’t bother looking toward first; he gets up and walks back to the dugout, and
as he does it, he cuts right across the middle of my mound.

Everyone sees it. Colin screams something at him as he comes around, but Nick just smiles. Lying on the ground, I can hear someone from our side of the stands yell, “You going to call
that, Blue?” But the umpire pretends not to hear. It takes me a couple seconds to catch my breath and get up and get back on the mound. There’s an ache starting in my side and my knee,
where he got me with his cleats. When I look down, there’s blood starting to seep through the white of my pants where I got spiked.

I need this game to mean something. It’s the last thing I have left here, a last chance to get something right, and I can’t quit now. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t
scared as hell.

Up next is their center fielder. He waits on a fastball that I miss outside, he swings at a changeup and gets a foul tip off it, and then, when I throw a slider that’s so low in the zone
he shouldn’t swing, he slams it right back at me, a line drive right at my knees. I catch it, all instinct, but my hands are shaking. That wasn’t a pitch he should’ve swung at. I
know he knows that. And like Nick, he doesn’t bother heading for first, either; I’ve barely gotten my hand on the ball before he’s turning back for the dugout like he’s
done, like he already did exactly what he came here to do.

Vidal Medina bats third. He takes his time before he steps into the batter’s box; he swings his bat around a couple times; he lets it hang to the ground and surveys the outfield. He turns
around and says something to Colin, then he smiles at me. I can feel my pulse shooting like laser beams around my skull. I know for a fact Vidal gets greedy on anything up in the zone and has a
tendency to roll over changeups, too. When Vidal gets into the batter’s box, Colin calls for a fastball up high, but I miss. It’s a ball. I’m down 1–0. Colin gives me the
sign for a curveball. I position two fingers and thumb on the seams, hiding the ball in my glove so the batter can’t see.

Colin flexes his glove. He’s nervous. He reaches up and adjusts his mask. The umpire is crouched forward behind him to watch the pitch come in, his shirt straining against his chest
protector and his mask like a cage over his face, and when I look behind him, when for just a second I let my eyes stray, Alex isn’t taking practice swings, or stretching, or even holding a
bat, even though he’s on deck. He’s standing straight up with his arms crossed, and through the chain link of the dugout I can see his whole team standing behind him, ready.

Vidal makes two small circles with his bat, and he swallows hard enough that from the mound I can see his Adam’s apple shift. I know what that means in a batter: that he just realized how
fast ninety-four miles an hour is, that he remembered in the batter’s box you belong to the pitcher and you have to answer for what you’ve done, and when I see him shift his weight back
onto his heels, just the smallest bit, I wind up. I watch him tense. I stare right at him and let my eyes blur so I can’t see Alex. Then I release, my arm rocketing forward so hard I think it
might explode out of its socket, and the ball screams forward in one long blur, a comet, but Vidal connects and like the center fielder’s hit this one comes at me. But I miss it; it goes past
me, I’m not fast enough, and he’s safely at first.

And that’s the heart of their batting order. Now Alex is up.

If I was trying to convince myself that I can hide up here, that a game is ever its own self-contained universe, I know I’m wrong because of this: when Alex walks toward the batter’s
box, a mediocre batter who doesn’t even have a .250 average, a guy who’s two for his last eight at bats, the crowd erupts. On the La Abra side, everyone starts to stomp their feet
against the bleachers, slow at first, and then so fast it sounds like a bombing. My spine and shoulders feel like balsa wood about to snap. Alex takes his time outside the box, ignoring Colin,
surveying the crowd. Then he steps in and lifts his head to look at me. And even though I’ve played this game my entire life, I understand for the first time right then that you hide nothing
from your batter, that he sees everything you are.

I can’t pitch him like I always planned to. When Colin signals for a fastball, high and tight, I shake him off and signal back. It’s a sign we’ve never used once, one I always
said—even just a few months ago to Greg—I never would, and I’m not even sure Colin will remember. He stares at me long enough I think he doesn’t. Then he signs again for the
fastball and I know he understood me, he just doesn’t want to let me do it.

Three times he shakes me off, and three times I repeat it. Finally, that last time, he doesn’t argue. He stands up from his crouch and holds his arm out straight, to the right, like half
of a T. From the dugout I hear Cardy scream at me.

This is the thing about an intentional walk: there’s no mistaking it. There’s no subterfuge. The catcher never even sets up; he has to stand and point with his glove outside the
strike zone to where the pitch is going to go. This is exactly why my dad thinks it means you’re weak; it’s broadcasting to everyone watching the game that you know you’ve already
lost this round. And it’s why I’ve never done this before, either, because it means you have nothing. That you measured yourself up against your batter already and you came up
short.

My blood is thundering in my ears. I throw. It’s supposed to be an easy toss, something that gives the catcher enough time to get behind it without much effort, and when I do, the crowd
falls silent. But before Colin can catch it, Alex lunges from the box and hacks at the pitch with his bat. He misses, but the suddenness of the motion catches me completely off guard. When Colin
tosses the ball back to me, I nearly drop it. You never, ever swing on an intentional walk. It’s a free base.

We go through it all again, and again—again—Alex swings. The crowd’s making noise again now, except I can feel how it’s shifted—they aren’t yelling for Alex
anymore, they’re yelling at me. I can hear the jeering, the way the tone’s gotten ugly. The dugout feels incredibly far away.

Almost there, I tell myself. Every inch of my skin is on fire. Colin stands again, calls for the pitch, and I throw. This one doesn’t make it to him; it bounces two feet in front of him,
because my arms feel like rubber. But Alex swings anyway, swings so hard he spins around and the bat goes flying, and that’s three strikes.

And that’s it. Not in a way you could ever prove in court, but now every single person watching knows that I couldn’t face him. That my best wasn’t good enough, and that my
worst couldn’t touch him, either, because it doesn’t matter to him that I’m sorry.

But I am. And now everybody knows.

Trey’s waiting in the parking lot when I come out of the bathroom where I spent the last inning trying to pull myself together. He changed his flight for after the game,
and when I get into the car, I know he knows the game’s still going—you can hear the roar of the crowd still—and from the way he looks at me I can tell he wants to ask more, but
he doesn’t; after all this, I still think there’s a lot we’ll never ask each other. Instead he hands me his phone and says, “Get me directions to the airport, will
you?”

“Yeah, okay.”

He drives. It’s good he does; I’m shaky still, and there’s a film over my eyes. We’re quiet on the way to the freeway, the suitcases rattling around in back when he hits
a pothole in the road, and we stay quiet on the freeway as he passes the turnoffs for the police station, Ornette, the lake. There’s a lump the size of a city in my throat. Halfway there,
Trey’s phone rings, and he pulls off to talk to his restaurant manager and I watch the line of cars zooming by send clouds of dust up at the sky. When he hangs up, I say, “Are they glad
you’re going back?”

“Yep.”

“What about—you know?”

I mean Kevin; I still can’t bring myself to say it, but from his silence, I’m pretty sure he knows. Trey pulls into the left lane and picks up some speed, something in the car making
a whirring sound. He looks over his shoulder, and I think he’s going to ignore the question. Finally, though, he says, “I think that might be over.”

“What do you mean you think that might be over?”

“How many different things can
over
mean?”

It’s supposed to be sarcastic, but there’s no heat behind the words. When I turn to look at him, his eyes are glittering. That shuts me up. I’ve never, not once, seen Trey cry.
I say, “You mean—I mean, because you’re going to end it, or he—?”

“Does it matter?”

“Um, I guess not.”

Maybe it just means I’m weak, maybe I’ve just shattered whatever I had left of any kind of moral compass, but I guess it turns out no matter how much I think what he’s doing is
wrong, I still want to him to be happy. I say, “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

A few miles later, it occurs to me that was kind of him to say it. I probably would’ve wondered if he blamed me.

The parking lot’s crowded at the airport. When Trey closes the trunk, it echoes against the concrete of the parking structure in a way that feels so final, like
goodbye
is
reverberating through my heart. The airport’s busy, the departures flashing and then vanishing on the screens above the baggage claim, and there’s a long line to go through security.
Before getting in the line, Trey checks his pocket for the tickets.

“Well,” he says, “I guess this is it.” He hitches his suitcase up on his shoulder.

I try to force a smile. “Guess so.”

“You good?”

My ribs are shrinking around my lungs. Even if maybe sometimes an ending’s not all bad, I don’t think it ever feels that way at the time. “I guess.”

He hands me my boarding pass, checks for the dozenth time I’ve got ID. I kept that home run ball in my jacket pocket and I reach for it with my other hand, rubbing my thumb against it like
I always used to as a kid. Up ahead there’s a bin for all the contraband stuff that gets confiscated, bottles of liquid and nail clippers and pocketknives, and I think about leaving it there.
Trudging through the line, I think about my dad, how in a month when he gets out he’ll find out I’m gone. I feel my eyes well up. I turn away so Trey won’t see, but there are
people everywhere and then the line steers us around a corner and Trey sees anyway. He stops in line for a second and ducks his head next to mine.

“Hey,” he says, his voice low. “It gets easier, Braden. It does.”

We get to the front of the line and the security agent reaches for our IDs. His uniform looks like a cop’s, and I hold my breath—I think maybe it will always go this way when I see
something that reminds me—but of course nothing happens, of course to him this is just routine, and he waves us through. Then I waver for a second by the bins. Eight hours from now,
I’ll get off the plane in a place I’ve never been and try to carve out some kind of new life there, so for a few seconds I let myself think it might mean something if I toss the ball
away. That somehow I can leave all this behind.

But that was what wrecked me at the game today, that you can’t. After I finished pitching to Alex, I stumbled off the field, ignoring Cardy and my teammates yelling at me and the cold,
stunned silence from my side of the crowd. In the bathroom, I sank down on the ground and crouched under the buzzing fluorescent lights until my legs stopped shaking, and I thought how there
won’t ever be a time when I get up on a mound and all this doesn’t haunt me, doesn’t reach me, doesn’t come rising up again with every pitch. How baseball is a game you play
with ghosts.