Chapter Text
Season 7, Day 63
Birds circled the Moist Diamond, high above the harsh stadium lights. A six-foot-tall peanut shell quivered in the outfield. The crackle caught one bird’s attention; the bird diving toward the field caught two. Soon, the entire flock settled just above the Gleek Arena’s Splash Zone, waiting for the opportunity to strike.
A ball whizzed toward left field. The shell rolled slightly left, but not before the flock surrounded it. With each satisfying peck, they came closer to the delicious nut inside. Peck. The shell was wearing thin. Peck. Only another few mouthfuls of fibrous skin before the real prize.
CRACK.
Much to the birds’ dismay, no peanut was buried in the shell. They were met instead by a woman with bleached-blonde hair, a horrible rash running down her face and arms, and the largest (and only) rotary phone they had ever seen. “Shoo!” she shouted at them, swinging the handset around until the flock retreated into the empty sky.
The crowd roared, some members literally. “Would you look at that?” an announcer said, their voice blaring to the arena from a dripping mouth-shaped loudspeaker. “The birds pecked Jessica Telephone free!”
Jessica brushed the peanut dust off with her hands. The crowd cheered again as she stood. She looked up for the first time, her neck aching from the effort and her eyes burning from the lights. “Thank you,” she whispered to the birds, then hustled to the Pies’ dugout as the umpire called to change innings.
The Pies were nothing short of ecstatic to see Jessica as herself again. Bright almost swam into the Moist Diamond to greet her. Kennedy, Hobbs, and Ruslan had prepared her favorite whoopie pies to celebrate, but since Jessica emerged several weeks after their initial prediction, there was little more in the container than mold and crumbs.
Peanut Holloway reached to give Jessica a crunchy slap on the back before she stopped him, explaining the slow and painful immune response she developed in her shell. She would never enjoy another fluffernutter sandwich, she realized. Her Pies teammates taught her the joy of peanut butter and marshmallow creme, something the Tigers weren’t quite as receptive to.
“How’s the team been doing without me?” Jessica asked Nolanestophia.
Nolanestophia stopped grooming herself mid-lick. “Even with the leagues shuffled around last season, we’re down in the rankings with the Fridays. I don’t know if we’ll recover by playoffs.”
Despite spending most of her games in the shell half-conscious at best, Jessica had been able to make out enough to know her teammates carted her on and off of right field, inning after inning. She reflexively pounded on her peanut-shaped prison every time she was called to bat, but neither her fists nor the Dial Tone could break down the walls. Jessica felt almost guilty about the inaction forced upon her by the gods.
“I must have been a burden to you guys,” Jessica said. “How long has it been, a week? A month? Six seconds?” Time had never meant much to Jessica, especially if the year didn’t have an eight in the tens place.
“You were trapped for sixty-three games,” Nolanestophia told her. “That’s nine weeks’ worth of games, never mind the time it took to get to and from each stadium. You will never know how hard it is to get a giant peanut into hotels or past TSA.”
“How have things been for everyone else? I know I was on that stupid podium with Peanut Bong and Nagomi…”
“Nagomi wasn’t as lucky as you.”
Jessica’s guilt solidified. “What? I was at the top! If anyone should have died—”
Nolanestophia patted Jessica’s shoulder with a soft paw. “She’s still alive, but she was shelled like you.”
“What about the Tigers? How are the Tigers?”
“Cookbook and Scorpler got cooked, and I have a bad feeling about Yasmin and that new guy. Shmurmgle, they called him?”
Cruel irony, Jessica thought. Had Scorpler been allowed to keep their jacket…
“Oh, yeah,” Nolanestophia remembered, “ and Elijah Bates was incinerated in the same game.”
“WHAT.”
“They brought Hotdogfingers from the Garages back to life. She doesn’t throw like she used to, so now getting hit by a stray pitch puts some kind of curse on you. All those guys were cursed.”
Jessica checked the Mild League schedule. They wouldn’t be playing the Garages anytime soon, but Sebastian would. “Are the Steaks in one piece?”
“Your brother’s fine,” Nolanestophia said. “I wouldn’t worry about him.”
Jessica pointed at the next series. “I would.”