Screaming at the Ump (14 page)

But all at once, everyone was around me—the woman who had jumped out of that car, who had to be Sly's mother, Ralphie-O, and some guys who worked for him. Everyone was asking everyone else, “What happened? Are you okay? Is the little girl okay?”

Sly's mother went inside for something to clean Sly's knees, and Sly stood next to me, clutching my arm. I wanted to clutch someone's arm too! I wanted someone to tell me it was okay, even though I kind of mostly knew it was. I looked around for Zeke. He was sitting by himself on the grass near the driveway, where he'd been filming. I was relieved that he was no longer filming, even though I thought that if he had turned that camera on himself, he might have had a perfect entry for
So You Think You're the Biggest Idiot?

“Listen, are you okay?” I asked.

Sly kept shaking her head and saying, “It's just like that,” which seemed kind of crazy, which is not exactly the way you want someone to be acting after an accident that was kind of your fault.

“Is she okay?” Ralphie-O asked me, as though she had just been speaking to me in kid code that I would obviously be able to translate.

I shrugged. How was I supposed to know? I wasn't even sure I was okay. My heart was still speed-beating, like it was trying to find its way right out of my chest.

“You saved my life,” she said. “Just like Larry the Lifeguard saved Patrick and SpongeBob.”

“Are you okay, Sly?” I asked again. “Why don't you go inside and—”

“I'm fine. I hurt my knees, but I'm fine. But did you hear me?”

“Go inside—”

“Isn't that the coolest thing, that you're like Larry? Like a hero, Casey. But wait, does that make me SpongeBob or Patrick?”

She didn't know Zeke as well as I did. “I think Zeke must be Patrick. You can be SpongeBob. Are you okay with that?”

“Definitely.”

We
were
talking in kid code!

Ralphie-O looked around and said, “So, Casey, maybe make up your mind, you know? You're going to be an umpire, a salesman, or a hero? Man alive, that was a good heads-up play.”

“Thanks.”

Sly's mother, back now with washcloths and bandages, said to Ralphie-O, “Thanks for stopping and making sure she was okay.” And then to Sly she said, “Are you sure you're okay, Sylvia?”

But Sly was still talking to me, as though nobody else had said anything. “So you saved my life. That's a big deal. Can I do a favor for you now, to even stuff out?”

“You don't have to.”

“I want to. Maybe I could help you at your school or something.”

Sly's mom said, “Sylvia, come inside now. Let's go.” Then she turned to me, and as I was ready for her to thank me for helping her daughter, she asked, “Why were you letting my kid play in the street? Shouldn't you know better than that?”

I was trying to stammer my way through an answer—like,
Lady, no. I saved her from the street. And brought her home when you forgot her.
But she turned and started walking with Sly, who was limping back up the driveway. When Sly passed Zeke, he asked, “Want to film just one more time? We were so close.”

“This really isn't that much fun,” she said. “I don't want to do it anymore.” And then she went inside.

I looked at Zeke. He said, “Don't say a word.”

T
HE
next morning on the bus, Zeke literally ran up the steps and to our seat. He sat next to me. In fact, he again sort of sat on top of me, but then shifted over. “I know I've said this before, but you won't believe this. Really. You won't.”

“Okay,” I said. I was barely holding in all my own news.

“Remember that contest?” He didn't wait for an answer. “Remember? Where you have to come up with your own reality TV show idea—Your Show Here?”

I started to get a really bad feeling. That near-catastrophe yesterday had kept me awake most of the night, so I was twitchy to begin with.

“You had to send in your idea by filling out this online form, and I did and then I forgot about it, mostly, while I was working on other things, but I got a response, an email this morning that mine was one of fifty ideas being considered.”

“You won?”

“No, not yet. They're just considering it. But still!”

I asked slowly, because I was very, very scared. “What idea did you enter?”

“America's Next Umpire!”

I pictured the headline:
OVERWEIGHT CATS OF NJ BREATHE SIGH OF RELIEF
.

But wait, what?! “What are you talking about?”

“A TV show about Umpire Academy, and America gets to vote on who becomes the next umpire. They get to choose who gets sent to Cocoa.”

I could think of so many reasons that was a bad idea. “What does America know about umpire training?” was the first to come out.

“The show will sort of educate them, right? Like they'll learn along with the students what the right stance is, how to, I don't know, crouch, all that stuff. Everything about timing, and knowing the rules, and positioning. You know how I filmed all that stuff for the before tapes? That's how I got the idea.”

Part of me thought it was a bad idea, but who was I? Some punk kid who was maybe too close to umpire school. Some real live national contest-judging person obviously thought it was a good idea. Maybe Zeke had found his reality-TV claim to fame.

Zeke said, “I couldn't decide if it was okay to do this without checking with Ibbit. I figured if he said no, we'd just can it. But when you told me about Florida, I thought about how maybe if more people knew about the school, Ibbit wouldn't have to move Academy to Florida. Right? And I know if I ask, Ibbit will say no. But I know you don't want to stay with your mother, and who would even sit with me on the bus if—”

“I get it,” I said. Who knows? Maybe Zeke's idea
could
somehow help the school. If more people heard about Academy, more people would enroll, and maybe if we got more people, like we used to have, it could always stay in New Jersey. Even if Zeke's idea didn't go the whole way through, maybe it could be featured on a finalist show, and people who never knew about Behind the Plate would hear about us. “Didn't you need my dad's permission or signature or something?”

“You don't need to sign any release forms until the next level,” Zeke said as the bus pulled into the lot. “I have to send a video by next week, so I want to film on You Suck, Ump! Day
. Which I planned to do anyway. Now I just have a better reason.”

He stood to get off the bus and I blurted out, “You know that MacSophal dude?”

He nodded.

I whispered. “It's really him! I wrote an article about it, and I'm hoping they'll print it in the school paper.”

Zeke's mouth was wide open. I had left him speechless.

I know!

I
TRIED
to figure out what Mr. Donovan was going to say by looking at him. He didn't appear to be almost exploding with sure-to-win-the-Honorbound-Competition joy, but maybe he didn't want to be too obvious. Inside my stomach, this little seal of hope flipped back and forth. A dancing, prancing, ball-on-nose balancing seal performed slippery turns of nervousness each time I thought about what he was going to say to me. But even if he was blown away by my article, would Chris Sykes and the other editors be impressed enough to break that stupid rule? And then . . . what about Dad? He knew this was what I wanted more than anything. He'd have to be happy for me finally getting to do what I wanted, right?

At last, after we compared and contrasted the themes of two boring short stories, the bell rang. I shot up to Mr. Donovan's desk.

“Thanks for staying, Casey,” he said as the last student left the room. “I wanted to talk to you about your submission. I think it's super that you tried your hand at this. But you do realize that the paper has never published an article written by a sixth-grader, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I vaguely remember hearing something like that.” I was sure he'd get to the but-we'll-make-an-exception-soon part, so I nodded and kept nodding, to keep him moving swiftly along.

He handed back my article.

Wait, what? He was handing back my article? “Did you even read it?”

“I did,” he said.

“Are you saying it's not good enough, or that we can't break the rule?”

He stood from his desk and went to get his keys, which made me think he'd be out the door in a second. What was going on?

“It's not a bad article, Casey. There's a lot going on here, and I'm not sure where to start. As we go through more meetings, you'll have a chance to learn a lot—about objectivity, the ethics of journalism, invasion of privacy, interviews. That's a good starting point. Interviews. Given your access to this guy, I couldn't help but wonder where you got your information and why you didn't include an interview.”

I couldn't talk. I was so stunned I literally could not speak. I had known exactly what Mr. Donovan was going to say, and it was very much not this.

“Honestly, Casey, I admire the effort you've put into this. I think it's great that a member of the Newspaper Club is writing, with the full knowledge that it will almost surely not be published. Any teacher would appreciate that kind of initiative. If you want to continue to grow from this, I recommend you interview this character. I think that would strengthen your piece considerably. I'd like to see you include that. And you have to work to keep your own feelings out of the article—you'll want to reconsider your headline, for example.”

I wasn't even sure I was listening. “And then could it be included in the paper?”

“It's not up to me. I'm trying to help you write the strongest piece you can, help you learn. I'd be happy to talk more about this with you another time, but I have to meet someone for a quick lunch.” Before he stepped out the door, he said, “Keep at it, Casey. You show a lot of promise.”

Promise. Like potential.

Like not there yet.

O
N
the bus home, I was still reeling, and feeling grateful that Zeke had been picked up early for an orthodontist appointment—I could barely keep it together. I couldn't believe Mr. Donovan hadn't loved my article. He must not have been a big baseball fan. Anyone who knew anything about baseball would have loved that article.

Still, I kept thinking about what Soupcan said, how it's not always what you're writing about. Sometimes you could make someone love your article by the way you wrote it, even if, as a reader, you didn't care about that subject.

And I hadn't done that.

The truth was it wasn't good enough. I hadn't written a good enough article.

No one started out perfect, I knew that. But I'd really thought I'd hit it out of the park. I'd been sure I'd nailed it. And in the end, all I did was prove that sixth-graders weren't good enough to write for the paper.

BTP students had to listen to their evaluations in the outfield, look their instructors in the eye, and hear all the ways they needed to improve. It was awkward—and I hated it—but it was also the reason they started to change from lamely going through the motions to looking like real umpires.

It killed me that my article wasn't perfect. I didn't want to need to learn. I wanted to see my byline in the first issue. I didn't want to think about what Mr. Donovan had said, that the article would be better with an interview. I hadn't included one because I hadn't wanted to. When I thought about the reason for that, I kept getting answers that seemed untrue. Like I was lying to me. Which was kind of a waste of time, since I was right there in my brain with the lies. More than anything, it was scary. And I had figured J-Mac would say no anyway. And I just kind of wanted to tell the story the way I knew it to be, without having to deal with what J-Mac had to say for himself.

And then there were those words Mr. Donovan used
, invasion of privacy
. That got me a little worried. I had thought reporters were supposed to sniff stories out. And expose the bad guys. Did reporters have to protect the privacy of cheaters?

I got off the bus and walked through the gate, up the long drive. I headed straight out to the rear field to watch Pop work students through his balk-or-not-a-balk drill. I sat on the top row of the bleachers. Mac-Sophal was in Pop's group today, and it was pretty clear that he was good at this. He had a great understanding of the game, he was quick, and he used his voice and body well. Pop would say that he sounded like he meant it.

I wasn't exactly hit by a lightning bolt, and I didn't see any giant cartoon lightbulbs appear above my head, but I did have that kind of sudden realization about my article: I had completely forgotten to be objective. Mr. Donovan pretty much said as much, but I had thought, I don't know, it somehow didn't apply to me. Or that all bets were off when you were writing about someone who was a known cheater. But anyone who read the article could see that I, the supposed-to-be-fair reporter, was happy that J-Mac had lost his place in the major leagues, and that I thought there was some kind of justice that he couldn't play anymore, that he couldn't even get a coaching job, that he was trying to get back to baseball on a back road, by attending the third-best umpire school in the country.

I had to rewrite it. And make it better. And think about an interview. He was, after all, right here. It was an opportunity too good to pass up. Wasn't it?

The thought of that byline—
by Casey Snowden
—kept my brain revving. This was no time to give up.

I
TRIED
rewriting that article every day. I made no progress. Unless you counted the false starts piling up in the recycling bin as progress. I decided to try again on Sunday, my day off from everything. I was planning to sleep late and write for the rest of the day.